Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Chris Angle's positions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/12/2007 - 21:25Last week, I mentioned that Chris Angle had declared his candidacy for Congress. I mentioned that he said his website should be up in about a week, and that he said he would send me a copy of his key points of his platform. I noted that I am no longer in the Fourth Congressional district, and that I generally vote Democratic, but I felt it was important to have a lively debate about the issues. When I lasted checked, his website wasn’t up and there wasn’t any coverage of his candidacy that I could find, so let me at least get a little of his positions out there.
Ct Youth Forum Recap
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 21:47Cautiously, I enter the high school cafeteria. I look around anxiously. Do I know anyone here? Are any of my friends here? There are lots of people I don’t recognize. Will they like me? Will they be kind to me? I wander around, trying to find someone I can make contact with, someone to reassure me, make me feel like I am in the right place and that I belong.
No, this isn’t one of those horrible recurring dreams that comes back even thirty years after high school. No, it isn’t a character study for a character in my next novel. It was my experience as I entered the cafeteria at Simsbury High School this afternoon. All of those difficult feelings from three decades back come alive as I visit the CT Youth Forum, a monthly gathering of high school students from around Connecticut to discuss the important issues of the day.
The Law and Media Project
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 11:26As is often the case, some of the most interesting discussions at conferences and symposia take place away from the main panels, and for me, the same happened at
the Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. During lunch I found about the Knight Foundation grant to Yale Law School to ‘Train the
Next Generation's Leading Legal Journalists’. While the grant was announced last May, this was the first I heard of it, and was pleased to get more details.
Some of the goals of the program are to study law and media, to promote interactions between lawyers and journalists, to provide opportunities for journalists to teach at Yale Law and to prepare law students for careers in media.
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The Connecticut Youth Forum
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/10/2007 - 21:07Last week, I wrote a blog post about the Teen Task Force that Gov. Rell is appointing to address issues of teen driving. I commented about the task force being made up of the same old political figures and commented,
Perhaps if we adults spent a little more time listening to teenagers, they wouldn’t need to spend as much time doing stupid things like drinking and driving or driving to fast. I guess it seemed that way to me thirty years ago, and it still seems that way to me today.
I’m not the only person to make these sort of observations. In an email to one list, Patrick Rossiter observed,
I see the State of Connecticut has once again taken the bull by the horns. Of course the problem is they never seem to grab the right bull. Now maybe it’s just me and I’m not afraid of teen-agers, but if I wanted to develop more effective ways to convince teens to drive safer, I think I might talk to some teens
Patrick is much more qualified to make this observation than I am. Patrick is the Program Manager of The Connecticut Youth Forum. This is a gathering of youth that meets every month to discuss issues that matter to them. Their next meeting in Tuesday at 3:30 at Simsbury High School. At Patrick’s invitation, I plan on attending their forum tomorrow. Mostly, I’ll be there to listen, something too few of us do, and when we do, we do it too rarely.
Will I have a post about this tomorrow evening? Will I convince others to attend? Can we get CT Youth Forum to expand, do stuff around New Haven and other parts of the state? We’ll see.
Ned on Capitol Hill
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/10/2007 - 14:24Well, I finally got a chance to take a picture that I long wanted to. Ned Lamont at the podium in Congress. It isn’t quite the way I had hoped it would be. It was in Second Life. Yet, I believe that Second Life is an extremely important platform and I was very glad to see Ned in Second Life
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