Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, a dethroned but wiser king, about to be dragged off to prison, says to his only faithful daughter, Cordelia, “Come on, let’s go to prison. The two of us together will sing like birds in a cage. We will be good to each other. When you ask for my blessing, I’ll get down on my knees and ask you to forgive me. That’s how we’ll live—we’ll pray, we’ll sing, we’ll tell old stories, we’ll laugh at pretentious courtiers, we’ll listen to nasty court gossip, we’ll find out who’s losing and who’s winning, who’s in and who’s out. We’ll think about the mysteries of the universe as if we were God’s spies. In prison we’ll outlast hordes of rulers that will come and go as their fortunes change.” The reporter might easily have opened his piece on State Senator Joe Markley – “ Tea Partier Or Constitutional Conservative: Lt. Gov. Candidate Owns GOP Right Flank ” – by noting, very incidentally, that Markley is one of the few, if not the only, state legislator with whom o...

The bad news, some conservatives in Connecticut will say, is that State Senator Joe Markley will not be running for governor. The good news is that Mr. Markley -- now representing the 16th Senatorial District, which includes the towns of Cheshire, Prospect, Southington, Wolcott and Waterbury – has announced he is running for Lieutenant Governor. Why not governor? “When asked why he didn’t aim for the top office,”  the Record Journal reports , “he said there are already many strong Republican candidates considering a run. I’m very interested in having some Republican elected as governor next year because we have to change direction in this state. I feel that this is the spot on the ticket where I can most be of service.”

Mrs. Sherman When June Sherman was receiving her baccalaureate degree in 1943 from the University of North Carolina, I was doing a William Blake: My father cried, my mother wept Into the wicked world I leapt. Mrs. Sherman knew William Blake… he was a friend of hers. She knew Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Emily Dickenson, and the world of literature that was my comfort when I was a callow student in her Honors English class at Windsor Locks High School in the early 1960’s. My very first production under her guidance was a book review of Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” I received an A/D on the report. When I showed the paper, scarred with red ink and marginalia, to my father, he said, “I don’t understand the grade.” “Well, the A is for content, and the D is for sentence structure and spelling.” He wrinkled his brow – spelling was my personal demon – but I could see he was half-pleased. The paper was covered with remarks made by Mrs. Sherman, and I paid p...

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, that thou may’st shake the superflux to them, and show the heavens more just – Lear, from Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” After Governor Dannel Malloy is put through the political grinder by status quo opposition forces that tend to resist his educational reform, he just might begin to feel, perhaps for the first time in his political life, what some Republican governors before him may have felt when faced with an intractable opposition. Mr. Malloy’s’ educational reforms spring from reasonable premises: Some schools are better than other schools; the surest means of improving deficient schools is to note the important pedagogical differences between the two, discover what works in the better schools and replicate it in the poorer schools. Among things that don’t work as well as they should, particularly in failing urban schools, are some deficient teachers. They should be identified and counseled; if remediation does not improve them, they sho...

Former Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker appeared on Face the State over the weekened to defend his friend Sen. Chris Dodd. Weicker’s defense of Dodd consists of a recitation of Dodd’s sterling record in congress and a suggestion that his recent difficulties, when thrown into the scales, are raised up by the weight of the good he has done as a senator. Other senators, among them Weicker’s good friend Edward Kennedy of Massachussets, have overcome difficulties in their careers by applying themselves to the good they do in congress. Shakespeare put all this best when he said that the good men do “is of’t interred with their bones,” while the evil they do lives on after them. In his interview with Dennis House, Weicker offered an apology to the ghost that has haunted both him and Chris Dodd. During his race against Tom Dodd, Weicker recounted that he had said some unfortunate things about him, which he now regretted. In his race against Tom Dodd’s, the current senator’s father, Weicke...

King Lear, dethroned by court intrigues, responds to his faithful daughter when threatened with imprisonment: “ No, no, no, no! Come on, let's go to prison. The two of us together will sing like birds in a cage. We will be good to each other. When you ask for my blessing, I'll get down on my knees and ask you to forgive me. That's how we'll live—we'll pray, we'll sing, we'll tell old stories, we'll laugh at pretentious courtiers, we'll listen to nasty court gossip, we'll find out who's losing and who's winning, who's in and who's out. We'll think about the mysteries of the universe as if we were God's spies. In prison we'll outlast hordes of rulers that will come and go as their fortunes change .” Winning is not always a blessing; losing is not always a curse. And Lady Fortune is sometimes a strumpet. Prior to the final tally this year, there was gossip galore. Bill Curry , who now writes a political column for the Har...

Nothing, one expects, will ever be simple for ex-Governor John Rowland again. He came home from prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania to caterwauling and cat calling. Most of the current spitballs have been launched at him by folk who regularly rail against people for having fallen short of Christian precepts. Here are some random shots taken from radio talk show host’s Colin McEnroe’s blog site, “ To Wit .” McEnroe himself, fresh from moderating a literary discussion at the Bushnell between Jan Weiner, Kurt Vonnegut and Joyce Carol Oates, led the charge by reproducing a letter written by Rowland interlined with McEnroe’s own comments in bold type. “People from all over Connecticut have sent cards, letters and prayers over the past year,” Rowland wrote. “This outpouring has comforted me during this difficult time. Thanks for the skin magazines, Brad .” In his distress, three people friendly with the ex-governor – his wife Patty, fellow radio talk show host Brad Davis and Will Marotti, pastor...