It takes more than a few signs

This blog is following the lead of many publications these days, going from a daily to a weekly to a twice-monthly to....well, whenever I can. Thanks to you who look in from time to time to time.

And now, the complaint of the day. Well, it's not really a complaint. It's a suggestion.

It has to do with street crosswalks.

My daughter lives in Western Massachusetts, where failure to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks is likely to get you hard looks (if you're lucky), a ticket (if you're caught, which is quite likely) or pulled out of your car, beaten, hanged and drawn and quartered (an exaggeration, but not as much as you might think.)

There are raised, lighted crosswalks in downtown Amherst and Northampton, crosswalks every few feet on Route 116 in South Hadley, the home of Mount Holyoke College and a serious, serious mindset about obeying the rule: When a pedestrian presents himself or herself at a crosswalk, traffic stops. That's all she wrote.

Now, this isn't a new phenomenon. In Britain, it's been going on for decades. Some Americans just don't cotton to those things. My friend Harold Snyder used to stick out the white cane he carried (yes, he's blind) at crosswalks in Oxford, England, when he heard a car approaching close to the crosswalk, just to hear the screeching of tires (or tyres, as they spell over there.) 

He was talked to more than once by the constabulary, but, being an American, he continued to play the game, saying he had no idea the chaos he was causing. Right.

But, I digress. (If you're new to this blog, I do that a lot. It's part of the charm.)

Back to New Haven. The city fathers are starting to take stopping for pedestrians at crosswalks seriously. Or at least, they are spending money on signs, both those on stands that picture a crosswalk coming up, and the white plastic-looking signs by the crosswalks themselves.

Last week, there was a guy acting like a crossing guard at Fountain and West Prospect streets in Westville, standing in the crosswalk with his arms out, staring at cars that approached the crosswalk too quickly (not me!!!).

Fine. The law says people in the crosswalk have the right of way, unless the crossing is protected by a WALK light. Well, really, even then. Pedestrians have the right of way at crosswalks.

So far, so good. 

Sorry, but it's not going to work. Just isn't. Take this to the bank. 

The last statement is not an absolute. It has a big IF...

So, let's take that again. This is not going to work...

IF people don't stop crossing everywhere they darn well please -- everywhere except the crosswalk. 

That means they need to walk to a crosswalk.  You can't have people crossing in the middle of a block, a few yards from a crosswalk, a couple of feet from a crosswalk.

People have to stop being so darn lazy and move to a crosswalk. 

I've been on this jag for a few weeks (Yalies and people who are on Whalley Avenue seem to be the biggest offenders), so I've been keeping watch. 

Folks on Whalley, particularly in the area between Park and West Park (that's about three-quarters of Whalley between Broadway and Westville Village, cross in the middle of the street. They will cross a few feet from the crosswalk. 

Yalies, and other people downtown, are really cute. They'll cross 10 feet from the crosswalk, darting out from behind a car or a bus.  Oh, did I say darting. I meant walking with all the get up and go of a frozen sloth across the street in the middle of the block.

You get what I mean. 

Look, I'm hardly the crossing police. But I don't want to hit anyone. I don't want to hurt anyone. I certainly don't want to listen to some idiot's mother screaming that I hit her kid, and deprived the world of the next Jonas Salk. (Look it up)

So, city fathers, when you trot out this campaign, please trot out the education package with it. Cross at the crosswalk. Every time. Walk the half block or 20 feet, or 2 feet to the crosswalk. 

Believe me, I'll be the first guy to stop and let you saunter across the avenue.

Page 2

This afternoon (May 31, 2009), the Jewish Historical Society had a gala lunch or brunch, launching Volume IX of Jews in New Haven. Please read the piece in the New Haven Independent. 

Dr. David Fischer, an oncology professor at Yale School of Medicine, writer of medical textbooks, teacher of doctors, healer and nice guy, was the editor and wrote many of the articles. OK, I wrote one, too, but still, buy the book. 

It's a wonderful peek into many New Haven institutions and people whose names you will recognize whether you're Jewish or not. It's $25, but mention my name and I'll bet they'll let you have it for $25. 

Page 3

Nobody asked me, but some of you know I do some reporting and writing for the New Haven Independent. 

I've covered some controversial things, some fun things and some BBI things (that's boring but important). 

Don't look for my opinion on those things here. I won't do that. 

I'm from the old school where you didn't mix news and opinion. I guess Fox News won't come looking for me, because I really think people are smart enough to decide what they think on any issue for themselves -- without my help.  Hear that, Limbaugh?

Until next time...

A pleasant surprise, a sad goodbye and some thoughts

Happy Monday. It's been a while. 

Let's start out with some good stuff. 

Congratulations to Jennifer Weber, my niece, daughter of my sister, Paula, and her husband Joe Weber, of Marlborough, Conn., on her graduation from the School of Visual Arts, a prestigious, well respected college in New York. She's a cartoonist, quite a good one, and looking for a job. (hint, hint)

Those running her school, bless their little hearts, decided to have the graduation on a Friday afternoon. No biggie, unless you're an observant Jew. There are a few of those in New York. So, we weren't able to take her out afterwards, or help her move from her dorm to summer quarters in the city. 

This is going to be like Arlo's "Alice's Restaurant"...I didn't come to talk about graduations, I came to talk (not about the draft) but about honesty and wanting to do a good job.

There wasn't time to drive back to New Haven after the graduation, so we spent the Sabbath with daughter Malka (many in New Haven know her as Melanie) and family in Washington Heights, Manhattan. 

As we emerged from the subway, we meet son-in-law Josh and two grandchildren heading for the park. That's unusual for a Friday afternoon. The first words out of Josh's mouth were, "There is nothing to worry about, he'll be OK, but..."

There are few phrases as heart-freezing as those. Turns out Raphi, 4, had fallen and opened a small gash on the back of his head, and was bleeding a lot. Head wounds do that, but he had his his head hard, so Malka had taken him to the nearest hospital, Columbia Presbyterian, on 168th Street, and was not expected back before the start of the Sabbath. 

Suffice it to say Raphi was fine after treatment and Malka showed up about 10 p.m., after having walked back from the hospital. Observant Jews don't ride on the Sabbath, unless it was an emergency. This wasn't, at least not anymore. They don't carry, either. So, a bag holding their cell phone, insurance card, some $40 in cash, hospital checkout forms, identifications, and the like, had to be left behind. Malka had tried to get the emergency room guard and others to take possession of her bag, and finally, in disgust and with a few choice words, she left the bag there and walked home.

Fast-forward to Saturday night. Malka and Josh were about ready to start canceling the cell phone, applying for new IDs and the like when grandpa (me), always the optimist or at least the proponent of never assuming the worst (or anything else for that matter), urged them to call the hospital to see if the bag was recovered. 

It turns out that not only was the bag found and turned in, but the security department of the hospital had conducted a thorough inventory of the bag's contents and sealed them in a plastic bag with a copy of the inventory. Nothing was missing, not a cent and the cell phone had not been used.  Although the guard on Friday night had seemed uncaring, obviously he either had a change of heart or someone else decided to take charge of the situation.

Let's hear it for Columbia Pres' security staff and a hearty thanks to all concerned.

Page 2

Yesterday, there was a memorial gathering for Rev. Sidney Krauser, who has been a stalwart at Cong. Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim in Westville. Mr. Krauser had touched many lives in the Jewish and general community for nearly 60 years before moving to Maryland three years ago. He died last month.

His daughter and many leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community talked about Mr. Krauser, but the essence of the many was best captured by a piece in the New Haven Independent by Paul Bass.  Mr. Krauser had run the synagogue, making sure there was the minyan, the quorum of 10 men necessary to say certain prayers, especially the Kaddush for the departed that ties one generation to the other, and to read from the Torah. 

He also took care of more mundane duties, making sure there was oil for the furnace, that the place was cleaned. During the days when the New Haven Orthodox community was thriving, he was principal of the Hebrew school. He oversaw the cemeteries and knew the location of every grave in the synagogue's cemeteries. 

Sue and I met him in 2002, when we joined Bikur Cholim. He so much reminded me of the men in my father's synagogue in New Britain, men with Yiddish accents who followed Jewish law to the letter and had hearts that could melt gold. Usually, they had names like "old Mr. Cohen" or "old Mr. Lifshutz." 

Nobody called Mr. Krauser old. Some people called him Sidney. I couldn't. He would stand on the Bimah, the stage from which services were conducted on Sabbaths and holidays and say things like, "Dis veek, ve got a good kiddish (post-services refreshments), no like last veek. Dis veek, it's a good kiddish,." 

It seemed to lack tact, until you found out that last week's kiddish was his. This man read from the Torah, but he had it memorized. He also knew the Prophets and writings, from Joshua to Malachi, by heart. He wasn't a rabbi, but he easily could have been. 

I'm sorry I didn't know Mr. Krauser a the height of his powers, but maybe it's better that we knew him when he could let down his guard and be himself.  I remember sitting transfixed for hours as he told me his story. 

They're mostly all gone now.  Mr. Krauser and Norman Rubin in New Haven, Max Prager in New Britain. Those who were not rabbis but held their synagogues together.

Now, I guess, it's up to us.

Page 3

And another one bites the dust. The Tucson Citizen, which had been publishing for 22 years when the gunfight at the OK Corral occurred in 1881, is printing no more. It's now web-only.

The usual...no idea how many of its 60 employees will be affected, but most probably will lose their jobs. 

Of course, one usually knows someone who works or had worked at that paper. Jon Ainsworth, still riding the desk at the Connecticut Post (at least I hope he still is...you never know these days), labored for that publication. It's a Gannett paper, and Gannett has announced that its paper publications, even its star USA Today, will take a back seat to the Web. 

Page 4

A couple of quickies....I did a piece in the Independent about the upcoming hearings on the Journal-Register's bankruptcy and its plan to pay $1.7 million to executives, either for closing newspapers and firing people, or just for not leaving the company in its bankruptcy. That's the company that publishes the main print newspaper in the city and the second-largest in the state.

It seems the response was underwhelming. Only two people commented. One said, basically, why would anyone be surprised that people are being paid to destroy something? 

That's pretty sad.

Also pretty sad was the fact that the mayor of New Haven (choose one) pitched a fit, threw a nutty, started screaming in public at the electric company for leaving the city. 

Nobody has a quibble with his message. The mayor should be upset with the power company. That's his job: to keep business in the city, and the electric company could have cut a deal with the city on parking for its employees. That's the excuse it's using for moving to the site of a former movie theater in Orange. 

I've met some really strange people who were heads of government. Probably the strangest was Abe Grossman, mayor of Meriden in the 1970s. He was known to take out his dentures and lay them on the lectern before speaking.  He stormed out of meetings, but I never heard of him losing it on the public sidewalk.

Mario Cuomo was famous for screaming at enemies and even at staffers who didn't measure up to his standards. The late Gov. Ella T. Grasso could verbally peel wallpaper off the walls when angered and could teach a sailor to cuss. 

But never in public. Not in this country. And certainly not in front of the cameras. 

Until next time...

Some good news, a little bad news on newspaper front

Happy Monday. Rainy days and Mondays...You know. 

Some good news on the newspaper front: It looks as if The Boston Globe will live to fight another day. 

According to Newspaper&Technology: The Globe's owners, otherwise known as The New York Times Co., announced that it had reached deals with six out of seven unions and would not be issuing a 60-day shutdown notice. It looks as if the six unions gave the paper enough of the the $20 million in cuts and givebacks it said it needed to forestall the shutdown. The Times had threatened to shut down the paper, the largest in New England, unless the concessions were reached.

The Newspaper Guild, which represents 700 editorial, advertising and business office employees, did not reach an agreement with the paper.

"We are very pleased to have reached agreements with six of the seven unions that were involved in recent negotiations," The Globe said in a statement. "As a result of these agreements, which are subject to ratification by union members, we expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility and the financial savings that we sought from these unions."

But all might not be well in Globedom. The Globe said it will now pursue other options with the Guild "to achieve as quickly as possible the workplace flexibility and remaining cost-savings we need to put The Globe on sound financial footing." 

Maybe that's a good thing for the workers, or maybe it just puts the sword of Damocles over their heads a little longer. Pursuing other options could mean more layoffs or it could mean finding a way to make money from Web ads. Time will tell.

Now for the bad news. Two other newspaper groups have filed for protection under the Bankruptcy Act. 

American Community Newspapers, which publishes more than 80 papers, mostly community weeklies,  in Texas, Minnesota, Ohio and Northern Virginia, owes $273,000 to Gannett for printing. That's walking around money for Gannett, which is listed as ACN's largest creditor. 

The other company, Vancouver, Wash.-based Columbian Publishing Co., owes $17 million to Bank of America. Columbian borrowed the money to for a building in downtown Vancouver and BofA wants its money. The company filed in order to address credit issues with BofA, it said.

That makes seven newspaper groups, some large, some small, that so far have sought protection under the Bankruptcy Act. Let's see: The other five are Tribune, Tribune Co., Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, the (Minneapolis) Star-Tribune, Journal Register Co. and the Sun-Times Media Group.

Page 2

Here's something you don't see too often: a newspaper announcing that it had filed for bankruptcy protection.

Columbian Editor Lou Broncoccio wrote a column detailing the bankruptcy and what led up to it and his hopes for the future. 

That takes guts. Looking at your future hopes and dreams is one thing. Sharing the possible tearing asunder of those hopes and dreams is another. 

The Columbian is a paper that covers Clark County, Washington. There were a lot of fires yesterday there: a longtime bowling alley caught fire, a man who had been burned died and another who somehow burned will survive, the paper said.

But the burning issue for Lou and his staff is survival. He said his group was tough and the tough survive.

I hope so, Lou.

Page 3

Hey, weathermen. Get your act together. No, not the most radical members of the Students for a Democratic Society, made famous by Bob Dylan (you don't need a Weatherman to tell you how the wind blows).

I'm talking about Geoff Fox and Brad Field (there's a real name for you) and whoever took over for Hilton at Channel 3. You know, weathermen. Those people who promo the weather at the top of the news show, then give the statistics and show the map halfway through the show, then promo the forecast, and who finally give the forecast five minutes from the end of the show. Those people.

Hey, don't you know it's May. Showers are for April. This is May. Knock it off.

Until next time...

Tribune Baltimore layoffs provide a clue to strategy

There is bad news from Baltimore that may have repercussions closer to home.

The Baltimore Sun, owned by Tribune, is laying off fully a third of its newsroom staff. Closer to home, Tribune owns the soon-to-be-combined Hartford Courant and Channel 61, as well as the New Haven Advocate. More about the connection later.

It's not the number of layoffs, although I have ex-colleagues who work there and am worried about them. It's the jobs that will be eliminated that concerns me about where they are going. 

For once, they're keeping the reporters. But they are laying off top editors, news photographers, columnists, sports reporters, copy editors, page designers and graphic artists. (The Sun's designers and artists once were at the top of their field. Other papers sent their designers to learn from them.)

The story says the newsroom was being restructured to fit in all media. It seems as if it is being structured to fit in all media except physical newspapers. 

Here's Len'sLens' instant analysis. Let's see how close I come.

Top editors: You want editors who don't have a strong connection to newsprint and you want to get rid of those who believe a good number of readers and the few advertisers who are left want something the reader can hold in his or her hand. 

News photographers: Who needs them? Just give your reporters cameras that can shoot still photos and videos. That's what Gannett is doing. Keep a couple of pros around just in case.

Columnists: Who needs them? Just let your reporters opine about their beats. Saves a lot of money. Who needs fair, impartial reportage? 

Sports reporters: Keep a few around to follow the major-league and really big college teams. For the rest, get the small-college and high school coaches and members of recreational teams to send in reports and statistics. Besides, most people get their sports from their BlackBerries anyway.

Page designers and graphic artists: Don't need them if there's no page to design and no graphics to create for a newspaper. The artists you want are video designers and Web designers, not people used to working with a physical, 21-inch-long page. See ya!

Copy editors: You'll notice this is out of sequence, keeping the best for last, as it were. It's because this one concerns me. I almost said puzzles me, but it would only puzzle me if I thought the folks running the Sun cared about content. 

Copy editors are the unsung heroes of newspapering. Yes, I was one at various times during my career, and still do some editing. That's called the disclaimer. 

Cutting out copy editors is like a hockey or soccer team taking away the goalie. The copy editor is the last barrier to libel court, to embarrassment, to, for example, the ever-growing numbers of dumb mistakes that require corrections in the New York Times. 

The copy editor should be able to think about the top story, to run it through in his or her head, and then say that this fight in Congress happened in 1858, not 1958.

No matter what format you are using -- paper page, Web page, video, Tweet, you need to have your facts straight. That's why I'm concerned about the copy editors. And the folks who are burning down the Sun should be, too, if they care at all about quality and the peace of mind of their remaining staff.

Believe me, you don't want to pick up a newsroom phone after your publication left out an ingredient in a recipe, or got an important fact wrong in some big shot's obit, or left the "s" out of Johns Hopkins. You get the idea. 

Look, I know that editors who used to handle three stories a night now handle 30. But if you are going to blow the whistle on the governor, you damn well had better have it bullet-proof right. That's when you get your best copy editor on the story and give that person all night to parse it. Can't do it if you laid off all or most of your copy editors.

So, what's all this got to do with us? Watch what's going on at the Courant and Channel 61. See if it follows the pattern. See if that piece of paper, even if it looks dumb with the name running down the side, still rules the roost in a year or so.

Or see if Hartford gets a publication that tries to be all things to all people, and ends up being not much to not many.

I hope I'm wrong. Believe me I hope I'm wrong.

Trading in misery

Did you know there was a secondary market in bankruptcy claims? 

A secondary market is like the secondary market in mortgages. You get a mortgage and the person who originated it sells it to somebody else. Here, you can sell your bankruptcy claims to someone else. Then they trade them, like pork bellies.

Talk about making money on somebody's else's misery. But then again, didn't thousands upon thousands of mortgage brokers make money on somebody's potential (or damn sure to be) misery? Enough said. Just remember, if you are tempted to make money that way, it really does come around to bite you. 

Rant of the day

The word "after." It's used wrong in news reports all the time, and in television talking heads' advice on how to prevent the spread of the swine flu. 

"He was injured after his car hit a tree." What happened: Did he come through the accident OK, but then get beaten up by witnesses? No. He was injured when his car hit a tree.

The latest: Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue after you cough and sneeze. So, you sneeze out into the open air, get your snot all over everyone, then cover your mouth and nose. Yes, most people know what they mean, but they need to get it right. They need (drumroll) a good copy editor.

Until next time...

A little niceness to end the week

Living in New Haven is nothing if not surprising.

Certainly, New Haven is gritty. It's a city with crushing poverty and the threat of crime hangs over certain places. 

But it is also a shining place. I just finished going through Charlie Monagan's Connecticut Magazine and its 50 places to eat before you die. Of course, eating kosher, you have a sum total of one -- Claire's Corner Copia's Lithuanian coffee cake. 

But for those who don't have that restriction, New Haven offers much more than its share of wonderful gastronomical treats from haute cuisine at the Union League Cafe to the famous pizza on Wooster Street to the burgers at Louis Lunch. 

There are world-class museums, great theater experiences. Yes, it's hard to navigate the streets without running into a beggar, but unfortunately, that experience is pandemic, even in smaller or richer towns. There are homeless in Greenwich. Deal with it.

The people also are shiny. 

An experience: Westville Village is a triangle about three blocks to a side from the confluence of Whalley Avenue and Fountain Street to Harrison Street near the western end of New Haven. It has more than its share of traffic lights and traffic tends to get sluggish. 

Driving west one day last week, I witnessed a rear-end fender-bender. An older econobox rear-ended an SUV. The driver of the SUV motioned for the two to drive to the curb, out of the flow of traffic, to sort things out. 

It turns out that the driver of the econobox probably shouldn't have been driving it because instead of pulling over, he took a quick left into the triangle-shaped parking lot at the confluence of the two streets. It has a food shop there now but it used to be a lot of things, most recently a Dunkin' Donuts. 

In any case, the driver was looking to escape. I pulled into the parking lot after him, wrote down the license plate, and watched him take a dangerous left through traffic and speed off toward downtown New Haven. I also noticed the hood of the car had been damaged, presumably in this crash.

I then left the parking lot the way I'd entered, pulled to the curb where the SUV driver who'd been rear-ended still was talking to a witness. As I was talking to him, giving him the plate number of the car that hit him, two other cars pulled up, one with a couple and another with a family. They also had pursued the econobox until they got the plate number. 

The SUV driver said his car apparently suffered no damage, but he was glad to have the other guy's plate number, just in case.

I drove home buoyed by the knowledge that my neighbors were these kind of people. I'm sure this incident was repeated a million times a year in communities all over the country. I'm just glad it happened in mine.

Page 2

If this is Friday, then there must be another example of the newspaper business down by the bow and sinking fast. This one is from Tribune Co.

That privately held newspaper giant, bought about a year ago by real estate magnate Sam Zell, who now seems to realize that buying a newspaper, something about which he knows nothing, was a mistake. 

Now, his lawyers have gone into court to ask that the corporation can pay bonuses to his executives and severance pay to the ever-growing list of laid-off workers. In this area, Tribune owns the soon-to-be-merged Hartford Courant and Channel 61, as well as the New Haven Advocate. 

At least, it isn't paying bonuses to executives contingent on the number of people they fire, as the Journal-Register Co. is trying to to. 

I hear the next session for JRC in bankruptcy court is May 6. If there is anything of local interest, especially with Connecticut Attorney General Dick Blumenthal's objection to the bonus-for-layoff scheme, watch for it in the New Haven Independent. 

Page 3

For those in the New Haven Jewish community, there are a couple of events coming up in the next few days. On Saturday, April 25, a kiddish will be given at Cong. Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim to mark the first anniversary of  Jerry Gross' death. 

Jerry's kiddish will be sponsored by his wife, Ruth, and his children Jason and Daniel Gross. 

If you want to join the congregation for services, that starts at 9 at the synagogue, 112 Marvel Road at West Elm in New Haven's Westville neighborhood. The kiddish, a post-services get together with good food, usually starts at about 11:30. 

For those who read that there would be a kiddish for Sidney Krauser, the longtime shamos of Bikur Cholim, there has been a change of plans. A memorial is being planned for the end of the 30-day period of mourning. Plans will be posted on the synagogue's Web site: www.congbikurcholim.org.

Sorry for any confusion. 

Page 4

Here it is Friday again. The weekend looks gorgeous, a great time to get outside. It's almost time to dig the garden, but this is April and it could still be wet. Yesterday, weatherman Geoff Fox was yammering about frost. I don't know what he was on about...I just checked the 10-day forecast there wasn't a low forecast below 46 degrees. 

In any case, have a great weekend and, for those in the Tribe, a great Shabbos.

Until next time...

Two men die; had little, but much, in common

This week brought bad news on two fronts to our family, synagogue and that tiny fraternity of print newspaper editors.

On Wednesday, Bill Cotter died after a series of illnesses.  He died too young at 62. 

Today, April 19, 2009, , word came that the Rev. Sidney Krauser had left the Earth after suffering a series of setbacks. He was in his 90s. 

It would be easy to say the two men had never met. After all, Cotter was an Irish Catholic whose roots were in the Lower Naugatuck Valley and  Krauser was an observant Jew, an immigrant from Russia who survived the Holocaust. But in fact, they had quite a bit in common. And their gregarious natures made it possible their lives met, if for a brief time.

Cotter was known as Big C, just C,  at the old Journal Courier of New Haven. The "big" had to do with his physical size, but also his abilities.. For a while, Big C was majordomo at the J-C, making a lot of things work. He held his boss' hands and worked behind the scenes to help them succeed. He was always a crackerjack editor and mentor. Sometimes it got him in the middle of a family issue.

For example, it fell to Big C to help his boss, Editor Don Sharpe, lose weight. Sharpe's wife, Jane, made C go along with Sharpe on his daily weight-loss walk along the entire Sargent Drive. C didn't tell Jane directly that the highlight of the walk was the stop at a restaurant for an ice cream sundae. But Jane found out and Sharpe did indeed lose weight.

I met C when he was a part-time copy editor. He worked a few days a week, after putting in a long day working for a coffee publication in New York, riding the train both ways. His family needed the income and C came through. 

When my family moved to New Haven from East Haddam, C was there, hauling heavy appliances off trucks and up and down stairs. It cost me a couple of beers.

For a while, C drove an Opel reverse convertible -- reverse because can car had a top but the floor was a hint and a hope. 

I'll never forget the night we got pulled over in West Haven. We were both pretty well oiled and C was driving me back to the paper. A cop pulled us over. We were both counting change for the one phone call we would be granted after our inevitable arrest. 

The cop came back, handed Cotter back his license and registration, and stammered, "I'm sorry, Mr. Cotter. I didn't know it was you, Mr. Cotter." and drove away. We both looked at each other with disbelief and burst out laughing.

The only thing we could think of is that either the cop or his supervisors thought the guy driving the piece of junk Opel was another William Cotter, this one a longtime congressman from the Hartford area.  

Cotter knew everybody. He was one of those guys who couldn't walk down the street a block without being greeted five times. That was in New Haven...I can imagine what it was like in his native Valley. He even ran businessman Joel Schiavone's campaign to be state treasurer.

We hadn't been super close, but Bill always had a kind word, a smile. He was good at his craft and good at life. 

So was Sidney Krauser.  We called him Mr. Krauser. There are no reverends in Judaism, but 

he was called the Rev. Krauser as a mark of respect and reverence by Jews and others in all walks of life. 

My wife and I met Mr. Krauser at the end of his more than 60-year career at Cong. Bikur Cholim Sheveth Achim, where he was shamos, a kind of majordomo. He helped guide the merger nearly 60 years ao of two dissimilar congregations, one mainstream Orthodox, one Lubavitch Hasidic. 

He also helped guide the synagogue from a large congregation in a palatial building at Winthrop and Derby avenues in Edgewood to a smaller one on Marvel Road in Westville. He ran the cemeteries, led services many times during the week, helped with High Holiday and other holiday services and basically ran the day to day activities of the synagogue.

He reached into the secular world to secure funding for the synagogue and to hire tradesmen for the many repairs that an older building needs. He never deviated from strict observance of his faith, no matter how difficult. If he couldn't walk to synagogue, he stayed in the building or secured a bed nearby.

He took my wife and I under his wing. I was the "grayser Levi," the "big Levite" and it fell to me almost every week to raise the Torah scroll after it was read. When I became president of the synagogue, I thought my job would be to sign checks and leave everything else to Mr. Krauser. It didn't work out that way. He had a stroke and required brain surgery from which he never fully recovered.

He moved a couple of years ago to the Washington, D.C., area to be near his daughter. He will be buried there, probably because he wanted it to be easy for his wife and children to visit his grave.

Two brave, good men who  lived in their own worlds but traveled in many others.

Bon voyage to both. Bill, I hope the road to heaven rises up to meet you. Mr. Krauser, may you find a seat near the Heavenly Throne. You deserve it.

Until next time...

It just keeps getting better for Connecticut readers

There are few enough places where Connecticut citizens can get real news about their state government, and now there is one less.

The New York Times this week said it is killing two weekly sections to save money. One is the Escapes section, which is no great loss.

The other is the Connecticut section, which is.

In truth, there hasn't been a Connecticut section for quite some time. The Times combined the metropolitan areas into one section -- Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut, then zoned it. That means that there are local pages that change for each locality.

I can live without the restaurant reviews and features, the ads for overpriced houses and even the lonely hearts ads. 

But one thing I don't want to live without is the political coverage, especially in this vitally important year when there are election for the state and national legislatures next year and local elections this year. 

With local papers as weak as they are, one counts on the perspectives of the two guys that the financially weak local papers laid off: Mark Paziokas, formerly of the Hartford Courant, and Gregory Hladky, formerly of the New Haven Register. 

Last week's Connecticut section had both these guys on one page, and that's the kind of coverage we need. It's not that the reporters left at the local papers are lousy -- many of them are good. It's that there are so few of them that they don't have time to do an adequate job of covering the state scene.

So, with the Connecticut section going away, and the announcement that freelancers, like Hladky and Paziokas, are being cut back, it does not auger well for the coverage of the state political and legislative scene.

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Speaking of bankruptcy, it seems the New Haven Register's parent company's bankruptcy case has been put off yet again, this time until next month. The hearing of state Attorney General Dick Blumenthal's objection to the Journal-Register Co.'s plan to pay bonuses to some executives if they lay off enough people, has been put off indefinitely. 

The AG's office says that's not unusual. 

What that does mean is that the workers at the Register and other JRC papers will hang twisting in the wind a little longer. 

Speaking of bankruptcies, even shopping malls are feeling it. The GGP, General Growth Properties, has filed for bankruptcy protection. Along with dozens of others in the nation, GGP owns two huge malls in Connecticut, the Mall at Buckland Hills in Manchester, and the Brass City mall in Waterbury. Small world time: Judge Allan L. Gropper of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan is handling both cases. Just a little trivia.

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Well, Passover is over. The holiday was wonderful for our family. My wife and I got to spend a couple of days with all the kids and all the grandkids at my daughter's New York apartment. It was wonderful, tiring, uplifting, challenging and all in all, great. And, by the way, it reaffirms why young people have kids, or should. No way we could do this full-time. 

By the way, I haven't written recently, like in the past couple of weeks, because between Passover preparations and work at the New Haven Independent, time has flown. I'll say it again: Since I retired, I've never been so busy.

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This is supposed to be a glorious weather weekend, at least for Saturday. So get out and enjoy. For our friends in Christianity's Orthodox Rite, have a wonderful Easter. And for those in the Tribe, have a bagel and a wonderful Shabbos.

Until next time...