Opinion

What happened on that night should never happen to another woman

Jul 04, 2010

By: Register Staff

By Ann DeMatteo, Register

Since this column began almost two years ago, it has been a vehicle for discussion and education about how people who have overcome cancer and other personal challenges have helped and inspired others.

Today, I want to talk to you about Donna Palomba, a woman who has blown the doors off the secrecy and shame of sexual assault.

She is Jane Doe No More.

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Today, the New Haven Register declares independence

Jul 04, 2010

By: Register Staff

TO OUR READERS:

We are very proud of today’s Sunday newspaper and website — let me tell you why.

Today’s Register and this special edition of our website (nhr.jrcbenfranklin.com) — are special for two reasons.

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Readers respond to questions about Facebook addiction

Jul 03, 2010

By: Register Staff

WE ASKED: Would you quit Facebook if the site started charging a fee?

Tami Peterson Jackson said:
Originally I signed up to keep track of my kids and what they were saying with their friends. It is fun catching up with people, but I would not go out of my way to find many with a fee. This is purely for pleasure. Not necessity. It would free up my time. Now if my teenage kids paid for a service I would pay to keep an “eye” on them. That is important to me.

Betsy Driebeek said:
If there was a fee, probably be happy (to get free time back and have less pressure to respond – which is innate for me) and quit. If it closed, I’d also be very happy for the very same reason, however, something else will pop up to take its place in to time. There is obviously a demand.

Brett Savageau said:
Well, I wouldn’t pay for any social networking site. Period. If it closed I suppose I would be disappointed, but I’d probably just start a Twitter or photobucket account.

Amy D Scholvin said:
I’d like to say I’d stop using facebook but in the end I would probably pay. All my friends and family are either in Chicago and military.

Ginny Rainbow said:
I would be willing to pay no more than $40/year – But only if it gave me ad free pages and offered 2 for 1 facebook credits.

WE ASKED: Are you addicted to Facebook?

Jamila Jones said:
Its the first thing I do when I wake at 4 am, when I come in the house from work or where ever I went that day. While I’m cooking, after I eat. While I’m out and about via my blackberry…I’m ALWAYS on it. I have to make sure my crops and animals are harvested on my farm.

Cathy-Ann DeMayo said:
YES I AM , does farmville , zoo , 2-3 islands , vineyard etc …………. COUNT !!!! LOL ♥♥♥♥ from 5 am through out day (all most all day ) till very late @ NITE

READERS RESPOND: The future of news media

Jul 03, 2010

By: Register Staff

We asked our Facebook fans, Twitter followers and others these questions: How do you see news media evolving? Is a free press important to you and our country? Here are their responses:

Nancy L. Carrington, Chief Executive Officer, Connecticut Food Bank, via e-mail:

The news media, specifically the traditional hometown daily newspapers and local affiliates of the television networks, needs to return to its roots and build on the formula that weekly newspapers and hyper-local news websites are now using: offering more local news, including neighborhood and community events.

Local news is the single commodity that only local news media can offer. It’s not available through the regional, national or international media outlets, unless it is some catastrophic event, like the recent power plant explosion in Middletown, or a story that has statewide—if not national or international consequences—such the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in connection with the Times Square car bomb plot.

Local news coverage should extend beyond municipal, police and court coverage. Although coverage of those topics is important, readers and news consumers would also like to know what business will be coming to their town or cities, what planned events they can attend in their community, and the services offered by local educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and government agencies.

It’s news about our neighborhoods in our towns and cities that people want because that’s the news that will impact their daily lives the most.

The concept of a free press is extremely important to me because I rely on the media to inform me objectively of the news and events of the day and its impact on my life and my community. I hope the press will stand for me in government halls where the public’s business is being conducted; and I hope the press will shine a light on the injustices in our communities and recognize those people who make our society better. In order for that to happen, the press has to be an independent entity, beholden to no one but to the public it serves.

I strongly believe we must continue to strive for a free press because as Benjamin Franklin said: “This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.”

Jeff Clark of Meriden, via Facebook:

A free press is all we have left… hell, do you know the cost (big $s )to buy a congressman from their corporate owners…

Edward F. Lazarus, president, Branford Chamber of Commerce, via Facebook:

I would ask you in return. Is it more important to report the news then create it?

Wow, how to expand on those thought!? I suspect I could write pages. But I will just put a few bullet items. Clearly I am not saying anything the whole world is asking.

1. Where news comes from. What is reliable, what is real.

2. What was the big summer story before 9-11? Before Gary Condit’s disappearing intern, it was the summer of the Shark Attack. That was manufactured news, there was no big items so one was created.

3. Cable and tabloid news. Manufacturing news. MSNBC vs. FOX Reporting on their own biases.

4. Take an AP story. Look at the headline—-how different is it based on the paper. Or where it is placed.

5. News vs. Entertainment vs. Commentary. How can you believe what you are hearing is true or being created for the sole purpose of creating a story.

6. I love John Stewart, but now the most trusted man in America? Where do kids get their news from. The Daily Show.

I could go on forever. But unless you are living in another dimension, the news has become more about entertainment than hard facts. Sadly, when there are hard facts, you never really know if it is true or not. The industry is changing beyond simply being replaced slowly by the internet and everyone suddenly becoming a “credentialed reporter.”

Jayme of East Haven, via Facebook:

Free press and INDEPENDENT media is SO important to citizens of this country. What scares me is that small news sources are being gobbled up by the larger corporations whose leaders have specific agendas and thereby influence the content published in order to satisfy their means. This in itself is censorship and affects the general public from learning the unbiased truth.

Marybeth Smith Bean of New Haven, via Facebook:

“A free press is vital to our country and to me, but it gets harder and harder to find. Bias isn’t always conscious either, and there is so much blurring of the line between entertainment and reporting the news. I worry about what our kids will have to look to for news. But if nothing else, our attempt at having a free press, and the legal support for a free press that we enjoy is an incredible legacy that our children need to carry forward. And the desire for a free press is alive all over the world. Think about all of the twittering that came during the Iranian protests recently. People wanted the truth to be known, and if the government put a muzzle on official sources, the people got the word out. That gives me hope.”

Anna Manzo, Register copy editor, via e-mail:

I think an independent free press is important to make sure we have informed citizens and a true democracy. The founding fathers knew that the market couldn’t support journalism and unfortunately, as we’re seeing today, the Internet is steering those advertising revenues away from print newspapers. Major media have been shedding their reporting staff at the rate of 1,000 reporters monthly. Original, investigative reporting has been reduced over the past decade, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.

For the first 75 years after American was founded, the government had U.S. postal subsidies for the distribution of newspapers. If there was ever a time for the U.S. government to subsidize American journalism and treat media like a public good like public education or defense spending, the time is now. Our democratic contemporaries in Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland each spend between $8 billion and $40 billion on public media and journalism subsidies. The U.S. only spends about $400 million.

One example of how a free press fulfilled the principles of a democracy: Many of the publishers of small newspapers were actually abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison, who started the very first issue of his anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator in 1831.For three decades, until after the end of the Civil War in 1865 when the last issue was published, Garrison spoke out against slavery and for the rights of America’s black inhabitants.

Duo Dickinson of Madison, via Facebook:

News is ceasing to be a distinct input, like eating. News is becoming an effortless integration that has little sense of process or medium, like breathing.

Absent pollution or perfume we are blissfully unsaware that our lungs expand and accept air as long as we are sentient. Information availability is becoming indistinct from work, entertainment, life as the electronic atmosphere that surrounds us becomes so pervasive as to lose our ability to perceive it.

With each e-mail, Facebook post, CNN website newsblast or Kindle novel purchase we are lightly bathed in stories, news and trivia — all without sound, texture or tangibility other than its ephemeral glow beside everything else on the screen.

We’ve begun to breathe information, but it is neither sustaining nor nourishing — it makes its own space for a few seconds and when the screen is refreshed there is no replay, no yesterday’s paper in a pile, not even memory of its sound.

News is now instant, zipless and creates addiction when absent.

Hank Silverberg, WTOP, Washington, radio reporter, via Facebook:

A thought: The Press..or the media as we refer to it today is the only specific commercial enterprise our founding fathers thought was necessary to protect directly in the Constitution.

The words of the First Amendment are perhaps the most important ever written in the history of mankind. (Yes … I know about the Bible … in all its variations … but without the First Amendment there is no gaurantee you’d be able to read one.)

Think about all the versions of the Bible. Which one is right? Are any of them right? Who knows? But in some countries only one version of the Bible is allowed to be printed. Under some communist regimes none were printed except by underground press. In the United States, thanks to the First Amendment, they can all be printed and we can all spend years discussing them and printing articles on our own interpretation. The right of a free press reinforces the right to assembly and the right to practice the religion of our choice or to practice none at all.

The same appies to any political publication to the left, right or in the center, but the Bible is the best example.

It implies that we have the right to information, and the right to discern for ourselves what that information means. It isn’t the easiest path either. It takes effort to work through all the info that is exploding around us, so I suppose that is the responsibility that comes with the right: making the effort to get to the “truth,” even as each of us has our own view of “the truth.” I’m proud to say that librarians are a big part of defending our right to know. Definitely messy, this freedom, but we’re so blessed to have it. Thanks founding fathers (and mothers)!

Elizabeth Duenkel of New Haven, via e-mail:

If this country were in danger I think ham radios and small presses might be the only way to get “the truth” out. I have lately felt that if you want to hurt the U.S., one way would be to knock out all of the satellites and shut down all communication. Without TV (analogue is not available) and radio, the paper would be one of the only ways to get information out to the people. I think it was William S Burroughs who said that you could put all of the politicians into a ship and sent them into space the world we know would continue. But if you put communications on that ship our daily lives would change dramatically and quickly.

Bruce Altman of New Haven, via e-mail:

I read a daily paper — a powerful, calming experience — in L.A. The New York Times was delivered by 1 a.m. and in Europe there’s the Herald Tribune to connect to.

News evolution is a topic for someone else- the “paper” itself — whichever paper one reads, carries resonance of comfort, friendship and community.

Gail Novaco of Naugatuck, via e-mail:

Technology has outpaced traditional print media. So in order to survive, print news must evolve, too. I hope there will always be a demand for in-depth stories and coverage that quick radio and TV sound bites just don’t have time for. But to be viable, daily newspapers and weekly/monthly magazines must appear fresh to appeal to 400 million (and counting) Facebook users. By being flexible in offering choices of hard copy news as well as sites for in-depth electronic news, users can “pick their poison” as to the “how” of hearing about the news. Exercisers will want easy accessibility to podcasts or other archived audio AND video pieces (instant uploaded reporters’ stories using Flip cameras, e.g.). Stay-at-home types will want to be able to dial in any story any time from anywhere. A free press is critical to society. It must find a way to use old-school reporting (where the human brain is paramount over any quick or flashy news-gathering techniques), yet still be able to survive by delivering that news in lightning fashion AND make a profit. It’s a balancing act, that’s for sure.

Veronica Soell of Guilford, via e-mail:

A free press is the only way we, as citizens, can be sure to learn what is really going on locally, nationally and internationally.

Professional journalists employed by responsible news media (newspapers, TV, radio and Internet) can objectively explore, investigate, examine and report at length on matters that may otherwise be covered up, dismissed or distorted by special interests. They can tell us about new scientific and medical advances, about life in other parts of the world that have come to prominence for one reason or another, about injustices in our own country, about legal and political issues, about education, about possible threats to our safety, and many other interesting and important topics. Professional journalists generate comprehensive information; websites that offer news and information usually acquire and combine it from material originated by these professional journalists.

I don’t know where the free press is going, but definitely hope it’s not going away!

Rabbi Herbert Brockman, Congregation Mishkan Israel, Hamden, via e-mail:

Some random thoughts: We are entering a period of tremendous flux in the world of journalism. Everyone seems to have a desire to report and comment on events of the day and with the internet, one’s opinion can be spread far and wide. While this may seemingly expand our world of information,, our limited ability to evaluate the imformation may not improve our knowledge at all. What we see happening is the rise of “opinion news” and most people seem to choose to get their news from people whose opnions they already agree with. And yet, journalism, getting objective information, is at the heart of any democracy. As any autocrat/dictator knows, to seize and hold power, one of the first things you must do is take control of the news media. Only then can you control the people. Should newspapers and TV journalism succumb to the increasing pressure for profits or to the power of government, we may very well lose a fundamental pillar of a free society. As citizens then, we have a vested interest in securing, supporting and promoting objective journalism in all forms, free and unfettered from economic and political constraints.

Jefferson Freeman, Guilford, via e-mail:

For those long accustomed (as Landa and I are), I can’t imagine how we’ll get through breakfast or post-dinnertime without a printed version to browse, flip back and forth, share sections.

On the other hand, 30 years ago I couldn’t imagine communicating with other than written letters or phone calls — telegrams and faxes being poor substitutes. Today, I wouldn’t dream of sending this back to you other than via e-mail. Who knows what will come next? This is way more than a tweet, and way too much to text.

I hope e-versions of news media become add-ons to the entire news package, not replacements — that’s how I use e-versions of Economist, New York Times, other journals. Finding, retrieving, e-mailing copies of previously seen articles has high value to me. Accessing midday to check on evolving stories, e.g., McChrystal firing, is also important

(News is) increasingly important, as a counterweight to blogdung (or is it blowdung?) that is more invasive than kudzu weed. I don’t have time to sort through more than the tiniest bit of this stuff. Having access to trusted objective sources that dig out and report on matters that I want to know about and/or ought to know about, and that make a clear distinction between reporting and opining — critical to a functioning society.

Free press is the most important antidote (maybe only antidote) to H. L. Mencken’s “No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” We can’t be made to drink the water, but a free press leads us to it. The degree to which free press does its job effectively helps keep Mencken’s observation from becoming reality.

Ron Spiegelhalter of Milford, via e-mail:

I see the evolution of American news media happening in terms of speed of delivery, and in media type. The elimination of paper news being replaced by visual multimedia news reporting is in process now. I see that part of the challenge of good news reporting is that it is at times too immediate, too “now.” This provides the public with a false sense that they have a right to know immediately everything that is happening with real way to make sense of it all regardless of the news analysis of the reporter. The result can and has been that what we just saw isn’t really what has happened. I am reminded of the battlefield during wartime where bullets and explosions are going on and everything is utter chaos and horror. Yet in a battle there are several structures of preparation and deployment in place that are occurring that can only be seen once the battle is over. Attempting to report within the midst of battle is futile and often counter-productive. I think good news reporting needs that kind of time to reflect, but the speed of technology seems to take that away.

A free press is vital to the future of America and advanced countries around the world. A free press for all its faults in public pandering and bias provide an indispensible service of informing the public, alerting us to events and issues of common concern.

One area I am not very concerned about is the accuracy of reportage and news bias. 18th and 19th century news has seen extreme bias, public manipulation, blatant character assassination and over the top reporting. With some exceptions in my lifetime, this hasn’t changed. Having said that, I do think that news reporters believe in their duty to report the news and have remained faithful to that duty to their best ability. Hype, bias, junk news are a part of the world of news, unfortunately. My hope is that reflective analytical reporting of events with a delay of time to provide better perspective on these events remains an important aspect of the news profession.

Walt Dembiczak of West Haven, via e-mail:

I see the news media evolving with the times.

Electronics makes the speed of communication almost as fast as the speed of light.

The good side is the public SHOULD have access to information from anywhere around the globe, whether it be good news (peace treaties, charitable events, people-oriented events, etc.) and bad news (nature’s violence, killings, war news, oil spills, etc.).

I think the public is made aware of those news items that someone, with the authority to do so, decides for us what we should see or read. Unfortunately, this is usually the bad news. I can switch from channel to channel, or go from newspaper to newspaper and see mostly “bad news.”

I think that there are so many things happening worldwide during the course of a day that it is impossible to report everything. There is just not enough space or time.

I do not have an answer for this.

Freedom of the press is very important to me. It should not be open to interpretation. It is one of the amendments of our Constitution and is one item that makes us “free.” I see and hear too much about how the Second Amendment is being re-interpreted and I see how some of our freedoms can be lost. I would not want that to happen to “freedom of the press” or any other constitutional amendments for that matter.

My parents sponsored several people from “iron curtain” countries. One of them was as jumpy as a jackrabbit. He had been exposed to a way of life that made him afraid to speak his mind. The other was an angry person, angry at most anyone with authority because he was told what to do and when to do it.

In both cases, the common denominator was “not given the opportunity to think for themselves.” What a pity it would be if that were to happen in this country, the wonderful United States of America.

Deborah Moore of Woodbridge, via e-mail:

In my senior year of high school, I took a class called Modern World History. It was a fantastic class for a multitude of reasons. At the time I loved our Friday class. It was first period, making it insanely early in the life of an 17-year-old. The teacher had arranged for us to have the New York Times delivered to the class. The first 20 minutes we read several articles (in the front section), some she suggested and we would pick something of interest for the other. Up until that time the newspaper was something the Dads read on the train, or the funnies on Sunday, or searched through for grocery sales for Mom. I never considered it something for me. This class changed that for me permanently. Dr. Miner taught us how to read the paper, and I became an informed news consumer, a vital skill in modern times.

Boyd Griffin of New Haven, via e-mail:

I don’t follow this closely, at least not in a professional way, as many do but here are my responses to your questions:

The last 20 years have been more of a revolution than an evolution; with the development of the WWW and broader bandwidth news cycles have become shorter and shorter — almost instantaneous. The very term “newspaper” has become an anachronism, and just in recent months/years, electronic reading technology has gotten better and more powerful (examples: Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle), not to mention “smartphones” or, the better term, “personal digital assistants” (PDAs). So the news media will continue to evolve in an increasingly competitive, digital arena and the news organizations that survive (the “fittest” as Darwin might have put it) will be those who adapt and are able to move away from their traditional business model, which relied so heavily on classified and space advertising.

With all the new sources of news and the digital delivery possibilities mentioned above, the fundamental, constitutional provisions relating to free speech are more important than ever. Also, the value of good editors and responsible publishers who strive to give their readers the truth and correct facts is to be more appreciated than ever. For the traditional news organizations that survive, the respect for their “brand” and a reputation for accurate reporting will be among their most important strengths in protecting and gaining market share. So, regardless of the number of news sources and the media technologies involved in the delivery of their articles, the essential foundation is a FREE PRESS. To see what it would be like if the USA were ever to lose its free press, look to China where an article about religious practice (Falun Gong) or an important historical event (Tiananmen Square) can land you in jail or worse.

Murry Harrison of Meriden, via e-mail:

The urgency of a free press (and broadcast media) to the continued viability of our nation and our life as a free people cannot be over-emphasized. Without the guaranteed and protected free flow of information, our democratic and republican political system cannot long remain viable and indeed, so it would seem, it now gravely “hangs by a thread” on “life-support.”

Over the past decade, we seem to have become dislodged/entangled in our national psyche with an uneasy sense of having somehow “lost our moorings,” adrift in a flotsam of national/governing policies that do not “add up” in our collective “gut.” Although manipulation/distortion by the media and popularized “opinion makers” is a practice well-honed over the course of the last century, I believe the extent of the problem we are presently experiencing is attributable to the intentional subrogation of the mainstream media (MSM) into an organ of deliberately orchestrated, assaultive corporate-state propaganda/intentional public manipulation.

Rather than impartially convey vital information to a discerning citizenry, the “news” content of what is now being purveyed by the MSM for public consumption is at best incomplete and “spun”/”sanitized” to reflect an elitist agenda that does not prioritize or value maintaining the freedom, economic and political sovereignty of the American people and nation. (I find it “interesting,” for example, that in terms of all the issues being propounded across the print/broadcast media with regard to Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination, very little concern or attention has been given to addressing her apparent support for expanded executive authority, which in my opinion, is a “core” constitutional issue!)

In addition to certain “muckraking” magazines and book publishers, what appears to have thus far “’preserved’ the day” (or has at least served as a “stumbling block” to the pressing elitist agenda) has been the phenomenon of alternate Internet media that in noteworthy “Ben Franklin tradition” has made key information available to the citizenry that the MSM has (deliberately) either distorted or simply chosen to ignore. Even more ominously, it now appears that in the name of “protecting” the public from the potential “threat” of so-called “cyber-terrorism,” there are serious efforts under way by certain “authorities” to eventually corral the public’s open access to the web!

What could perhaps (and only under the sovereign, merciful hand of Divine Providence) help turn this around — particularly if an internet shutdown/restriction were to actually occur — would be for the local media outlets to courageously again act in the tradition and capacity as “’sentries’ for the public interest,” much as they did during those journalistically “freewheeling” days of Benjamin Franklin, and perhaps somehow “partner” with the Internet bloggers so as to continue imparting critical information to the public.

News will always be important – however we get it

Jul 03, 2010

By: Register Staff

By Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor
estannard@newhavenregister.com

Ben Franklin might steam up his bifocals at the ways people get their news today, but the New Haven Register — and, for that matter, “The Daily Show” and Fox News — owe their existence to the freedoms he and his fellow newspaper publishers fought for 250 years ago.

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Wind turbine is symbol of us tilting toward finding efficient energy

Jul 03, 2010

By: Register Staff

The word “icon” is both overused and misunderstood. The American flag is obviously iconic as the visual essence of the United States. One could argue that Harkness Tower at Yale University is iconic as the quintessence of college Gothic architecture, and perhaps Yale itself.

Icons crystallize history, think Colonial Williamsburg; a unique cultural perspective, (the Vietnam Wall; or the distillation of a design movement, the Chrysler Building and Art Deco).

A newly built icon in New Haven is just aspungent as these classics, and is so prominently positioned, that its presence is undeniable. I refer to the 150-foot-tall wind turbine at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River build by Phoenix Press this year.

It is inherently sculptural, abstractly white and overtly kinetic. Its function is integral to its iconic status: generating electricity in its spinning with a stoic stance against a rough and tumble backdrop.

In this timeof economic confusion and panic over the practical and ethical sourcing of energy, this bold statement not only dominates its immediate environment and the attention of commuters on the Pearl Harbor Memorial

Bridge, but also can be seen as a precise line in the sand as to what our culture fears and believes in.

Its $500,000 cost would have been a tough investment for the project’s builder, Phoenix Press, without one-half of its budget being picked up by the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, for which every electric ratepayer in the state ponies up.

This source of funds dovetails nicely with a national mindset that supports alternative energy with a vigor that has not been seen since the Carter administration.

So in its bright and shining countenance, this icon embodies a new way in stark contrast to the ragged industrial buildings and lumpy mounds of plastic swaddled gravel and salt surrounding it.

The old technologies near its setting seem to resonate more with the Peabody Museum’s dinosaur mural on one of the neighboring giant oil tanks.

The Phoenix Press turbine gains luster with this distinction.

Most people would think that a wind turbine would have no aesthetic component. You would assume the aesthetics of a generating device should be practical, like an eggbeater.

But, the truth is the most distilled and efficient engineering has its own latent visual power and presence.

When the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” debuted in 1968, its art directors were hailed as embodying a design world that had previously been the domain of engineering nerds – those who created the efficient, durable and safe equipment for an extraordinarily dangerous effort – sending man into space.

The Phoenix Press turbine embodies that same unselfconscious clarified aesthetic.

Modernist architects of the early 20th century venerated naval architecture and aerodynamic designs for airplanes as “honest” in the unification of form and function.

Many designers freely imitated and simulated that stripped-down aesthetic in the buildings they created. But this icon is the real deal – it is what it does.

Whether seen in seas of photovoltaic electric panels blanketing Southwest deserts or parades of wind generators like this tiptoeing across ridges all over the world, there is overt veneration of natural forces in the visual presence of renewable energy technology as applied to our landscape.

By its isolation amid the ancient technologies of its neighborhood, this piece of machinery obtains poignancy and functional necessity, the wind turbine has to have minimal mass and its blades have to be as long and lightweight as possible.

Their spidery precision has a presence that virtually no other structure in this state has.

When you combine that with the kinesthetic movement of its blades (sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes not at all) and the orientation of the rotor, (east or west, seldom north or south) there is a strange quality of fusing the high-tech and the fundamental in one built thing.

By definition, icons not only capture the present, but kidnap our imagination. Phoenix Press’s wind turbine does that effortlessly and completely.

Time will tell whether its blades keep rotating or freeze in a failed effort.

Perhaps, its ultimate message is that our culture has been literally tilting at this particular windmill of progress only to find more efficient sources of energy.

It could well be that better designs render this dynamic and alluring presence absurdly ironic. But right now, this new piece of our landscape is right, now.

Duo Dickinson, an architect, writes about architecture and urban design for the Register. Readers may write him at 94 Bradley Road, Madison 06443. E-mail: duo.dickinson@snet.net.

AMARANTE: ‘Outstanding’ parking tickets aren’t so special

Jul 03, 2010

By: Register Staff

By Joe Amarante, Register TV & Radio Editor

“I’m not paying this!” Yeah, parking tickets make you want to hole up in your car with a cache of automatic handguns (recently sanctioned by the Supreme Court, I hear).

I don’t try to break the law, so I take parking tickets as a challenge to my liberty. I crank up Microsoft Word, get my John Stossel on, and explain how the ticket was unfair, unjust, unAmerican and, in my case, unavoidable.

Occasionally it works, too.

People get riled about tickets (pity the poor meter readers), sometimes for good reason. In Philadelphia recently, six public employees were canned or quit after a probe showed they “fixed” 126,000 parking tickets over a six-year period. The agency director resigned from her $101,000-a-year job.

Because I have young people in my family driving my cars, I get parking tickets when I wasn’t even driving.

My kid received a ticket near college and “explained” it was on a crowded street, “on the edge” of a no-parking zone but not fully in it.

When we didn’t pay it for several busy weeks, the fine doubled from $100 to $200. Now, I understand that some people never pay tickets, especially in locales that they don’t often visit. But I decided to appeal, and this time the city gave me an appointment for a hearing.

Driven by curiosity, I traveled an hour in traffic to get there.

In a medium-sized city outside New Haven County, a 40ish-looking hearing officer sits in shorts and polo shirt (adorned with some sort of official logo) at a table in the small third-floor conference room of City Hall at 5:45 p.m. on a warm summer afternoon. I’m late, but there are at least a dozen people waiting for a chance to make their case, so I sit down and take in the show.

Several speak in broken English, and more than one claim to have been doing charity work when they were ticketed.

“Are there any nuns or clergy waiting? Because I’ve heard it all over the years, trust me,” the officer says, a fast-talking mix of traffic cop and Jeremy Piven’s character on “Entourage.”

An Indian-accented guy sits down and says his name.

“Could you spell that?” says the officer.

The man haltingly voices his appeal, but the officer is a bit puzzled by the paperwork.

Another ethnic man pipes up from the first row of chairs, and the officer realizes it’s a pair of appeals. He waves him over.

“You’re with him, and you have your own ticket … So it was the same event? OK. You have the same name? OK! … This was a religious service of some kind? What day of the week was this?” (The officer is trolling for evidence of lying.)

“A Monday? Services are on Monday? Oh, it was just like a ceremony at a house … So you were parked in a fire lane?” he says to the first man. “Yeah, that’s not good. I can’t do anything about that. (Turning to the other.) But yours I will take into consideration. You’ll hear from me.”

I move up closer by a couple of chairs.

”I work at the women’s center,” a woman says, “so I was volunteering, and I was in a meeting from 11 to 12 …”

“You’ve got paperwork for the meeting? Oh-K …” he chuckles, noticing the meeting’s minutes.

“Just to show you, I was in a meeting at 11:43 and I had put five quarters in, so it’s not possible I had used up my time.”

“Uh-huh … Tell me, is it possible you put less than five quarters in?”

She pauses and shrugs.

“… because that’s just as likely as the meter not working. Right?”

He tells her she’ll get a letter with his decision. The group knows the officer can reduce or cancel fines, so there’s tension. He works his audience for laughs, meanwhile, but knows the end result might not be amusing to them.

“It’s all funny until you’re the one up here and it doesn’t go your way,” he says, half-smiling at the group.

One woman with a European accent makes her case despite being ticketed for parking in a handicapped spot. No good.

The officer, who has an uncanny knowledge of most parking spaces in the city, is equipped not only with the folks’ appeal letters, but in some cases a photo of the offending vehicle as it was parked that day! (Whaaa? I start to sweat at this notion.)

“Here’s your car,” he says to one man. “Look, you were inches from that telephone pole and … (he says in a gently mocking tone) you’re clearly parked on the sidewalk.”

The man offers an excuse that it didn’t say he couldn’t park there.

“I hear you, parking was tight and you found a place to put it. I’ve been there; I’ve done it. But …”

I finally get my turn. When he hears it was done by a student, he says, “College kids lie. You know how you can tell? Their lips are moving …”

Ba-doom. He’s surprised I drove so far, and says I’ll hear from him in the mail. I say this is quite an entertaining gig he has here.

“Oh, yeah. I thought of televising it,” he says, “but I decided I didn’t want the publicity.”

I vow to myself I’ll never get a parking ticket again. Two days later, there’s one on my windshield at a beach parking lot on Cape Cod. Hey, that was NOT my fault …

Send e-mail to Joe Amarante at jamarante@ ctcentral.com. Follow him on Twitter @joeammo. See his blog at newhavenregister.com.

The Ben Franklin Project, and beyond

Jun 24, 2010

By: Register Staff

If you’re a regular reader of the New Haven Register, you’ve noticed the changes. “Watch the arrest unfold at NewHavenRegister.com” shouts out from the front page of our print edition. Icons referring to court documents, videos and other multimedia features are on many of our stories.

And if you follow newhavenregister.com throughout the day, you know that most of the stories you read in the paper were posted on the Web the day before, along with photo slide shows, videos, arrest reports and other material that makes the story all the better and gives you a richer experience.

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TELL US: How have newspapers changed since Ben’s time?

Jun 22, 2010

By: Register Staff

In Ben Franklin’s day, newspaper publishers were not fighting for more readers and advertising dollars; they were battling to stay out of prison. John Peter Zenger was tried for criticizing the English governor of New York in his New York Weekly Journal, first published in 1733. He won, and the principle of freedom of the press was then enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Today there are concerns that news media are either politically biased or not fierce enough in their role of government oversight. How do you see the news media evolving? Is a free press important to you and to our country? Tell us what you think.

Leave a comment or email Metro Editor Ed Stannard at estannard@nhregister.com.

1ST DRAFT: Online readers don’t see the economic turnaround

Jun 22, 2010

By: Register Staff

EDITOR’S NOTE: We are writing this story for our Ben Franklin Project, to be published July 4. We invite you to be a part of its completion. Feel free to comment, fact check or tell us what we overlooked.
________________________________________________

By Cara Baruzzi
Register Business Editor

The recession may technically be over, but to many consumers it sure doesn’t feel that way.

Over the past several weeks, the Register has asked readers to comment on the economy. With some economic indicators showing an economic rebound is under way, does the average consumer feel things are getting better? If not, how valid is a technical “recovery” if real people don’t feel things are improving?

Posing these questions to readers drew responses — via e-mail, Twitter, LinkedIn and online posts at newhavenregister.com — that show most feel the economy is at best stuck in neutral and at worst still reeling in reverse.

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