Several years ago, probably more, I remember reading a story about Linda Ellerbee of Nick News. Do you all remember Linda? I think at first she was on CBS News. She got angry at one of her editors I believe and wrote something nasty and derogatory but never intended for her words to be read by anyone but herself.  Unfortunately, she hit the send and her tirade went out in an interoffice email which resulted in her termination.

To me, Linda Ellerbee, outside of Candy Crowley of CNN, is probably of of the best news people ever. She was passionate and emotional and her work showed that aspect of her personality. There is a price that people with that sort of talent pay because many times the emotions are strong and cannot be separated or controlled.

I remember when Linda Ellerbee went to anchor Nick News because my old long lost friend from childhood Joe Curiale wrote the theme song to her show. I know Linda was probably writing those words to herself to blow off steam without trying to hurt anyone.

Back in early December, I believe it was around the eighth, I was home trying to put up some holiday lights because I had some time off when my smoke alarm in the upstairs bedroom started beeping.

I thought it was because the battery might have died so I decided to take it out to stop the beeping. The smoke detector is hard wired to the electricity so it still would work. But, when I took the battery out, I did not realize that you had to leave the sleeve the battery comes in out of the detector. I pushed the sleeve back in and the alarm started going off. Then, I swore I heard another alarm going off so I called the non emergency number to the Cheshire Police Department. I asked for the non emergency number to the fire department.

I got the fire department and spoke to a woman there and told her what was going on and what I should do. I told her she did not have to send fire equipment. She told me she would send out the fire marshall. I said “fine” and then I hung up.

Well, to make a long story short, because I have already touched on this issue, the Fire Marshall came out with the fire department in tow. He went throught the house and ended up giving me the ok. He gave me a smoke/carbon monoxide detector which I mounted in the house. I thought that was the end of the story. Not Quite.

Well, a few days before Christmas, I went to my mailbox and got my mail, started sorting through it and saw something from the Cheshire Police Department.

Now I am not getting into my feelings with these people. The relationship is tempestuous and non-trusting. When I saw this letter my mind started racing. I opened it and it had something to do with registering an alarm  and failure to do so is against a town ordinance and there is a $100 fine blah blah blah. Register immediately or else is what this letter practically said.

All I can say is that I blew a gasket. First of all, the information on the sheet that was sent to me is WRONG!! Please check your facts will you. EVERYTHING on that sheet is WRONG and OUT OF DATE. That is all I am going to say about it.

Then the next day, a friend e-mailed me and told me to look at the Heralds new e-paper which is very good, but now I fear more people will be reading their propaganda. Oh NO!!

Well, I was fooling around and hit the letter to the editor tab and started going off about this alarm letter from the police department. From the bottom of my heart it was not meant to be read by anyone but myself. This is my therapy. I will write what I feel, and a lot of times it is really nasty, but I delete it and it makes me feel better. Sometimes it is like if you thought something about someone but for some reason, your thoughts were made public. Boy, all of us would be in trouble wouldn’t we?

I hit the send button but it was too late. I am not sorry for what I wrote. But like I stated above, it was for me only. Now it is public, but that is how I feel.

 Why can’t these people stop. Leave me alone!! Stop addressing letters to me. Stop everything. Stop Stop. I want to forget everything. that happened that day several years ago.  I am trying to deal with that day still to this day. They are just making it worse. What do they do, sit around and scheme? This is how it looks to me.

Let me ask the powers that be in this town a question: if that were you and you went through that or a member of your family was treated in that manner, how would you honestly feel in your heart?

I know I have to come to grips with this because it is paralyzing me from the inside out. I am so so afraid to drive in this town and everytime I see a police car I nearly have a stroke. It has got to stop because I do not want to live this way anymore-being afraid and I mean real fear. Those words are fear. Do you understand real fear?

I hope I can end my feelings about that situation  that occurred several years ago this coming year and put all of this behind me.

Michael Jackson wrote about these same sort of feelings a few years ago and appeared in a music video with his sister Janet. This was before the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” incident.

Michael Jackson: Scream

(Michael):
Tired of injustice
Tired of the scemes
Kinda disgusted
So what does it mean
Kicking me down
I got to get up
As jacked as it sounds
The whole system sucks

(Janet):
Peek in the shadow
Come into the light
You tell me I’m wrong
Then you better prove you’re right
You’re sellin’ out souls
I care about mine
I’ve got to get stronger
And I won’t give up the fight

(Michael):
With such confusion don’t itmake you wanna scream
You bash abusing victimize within the scheme
(Janet):
You try to cope with every lie they scrutinize
(Both):
Somebody please have mercy cause I just can’t take it

Chorus:
Stop pressurin’ me
Just stop pressurin’ me
Stop pressurin’ me
Make me wanna scream
Stop pressurin’ me
Just stop pressurin’ me
Stop pressurin’ me
Make you just wanna scream

(Michael):
Tired of you tellin’ the story your way
It’s causin’ confusion
You think it’s okay

(Janet):
Keep changin’ the rules
While you’re playin’ the game
I can’t take it much longer
I think I might go insane

(Michael):
With such confusion don’t it make you wanna scream
Your bash abusing vicitimize within the scheme
(Janet):
You find your pleasure scandalizin’ every lie
(Both):
Oh Father, please have mercy cause I just can’t take it

Chorus:
Stop pressurin’ me
Just stop pressurin’ me
Stop pressurin’ me
Make me wanna scream
Stop pressurin’ me
Just stop pressurin’ me
Stop fuckin’ with me
Make me wanna scream

(Janet):
Oh my God, can’t believe what I saw
As I turned on the TV this evening
I was disgusted by all the injustice
All the injustice
(Michael):
All the injustice

(News Man):
(”A man has been brutally beaten to death by Police after being wrongly identified as a robbery suspect. The man was an 18 year old black man..”)

(Michael):
With such collusions don’t it make you wanna scream
Your bash abusin’ victimize within the scheme
(Janet):
You try to cope with every lie they scrutinize
(Both):
Oh brother please have mercy cause I just can’t take it

Michael and Janet Jackson-Scream

What a Bunch of D-Heads!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!!

CLICK ON OUR JOOST LINK FOR ALTERNATIVE TELEVISION PROGRAMMING

Here is a link to another point of view about sprawl in the United States versus what is going on in Europe.

click here

Well I got back alive, (barely) from my trek to Rochester, New Hampshire Thursday night in a blinding snowstorm to see Barack Obama speak.

I started out around 1:50 p.m. and my plan was to go to Manchester, New Hampshire and stop there for a while. When we got to around Exit 10 on the Mass Pike, the sky started to darken and snowflakes started flying.

By the time we got to 495 North, it was a full blown storm. The trees were loaded with snow, the sky was a dark purple. I got to the New Hampshire line around 4:30 p.m. and the traffic was backed up well into Massachusetts past Tyngsboro. Everyone drove slow, but in all my travels that night, the highways were completely clear of snow–no ice–no slush. The secondary roads were another story however.

I don’t travel to New Hampshire that much in the winter. Our house is closed by the end of the fall. But it seems New Hampshire and Massachusetts must use a ton of salt on the roads. I constantly saw plows on the highways. There must have been over 7 inches of snow and if you did not look at the sky or the ground on the side of the highway, you never would have known it had snowed. Connecticut TAKE NOTE.

The secondary roads were all snow covered but passible. You had to drove slow on some of the back roads and Rt. 125 to Rochester which as I found out the hard way because I have map reading challenges was not “near” Manchester where my son lives, but near MAINE!!. It is right on the line–look it up. I thought I was driving to the ends of the earth that night, but it was worth it to see Sen. Obama whom I got a chance to speak with for a few minutes.

Apparently I got a little too close too fast to Sen. Obama for the Secret Service, and they pushed me away momentarily, but I got right up there and moved into the front to be able to speak with him.

Sadly, Sen. Obama has Secret Service protection because some people think he should not be running for President because of his skin color. I wonder how his skin color would factor into things if they were bleeding to death and he was the only person around whose blood type matched theirs!!

I have posted my video of Sen. Obama speaking for several minutes about the war in Iraq, the current administration, and health care issues on the home page under “Featured Media.”

We arrived at 7:10 p.m. and Sen. Obama made his appearance in Rochester around 7:45 p.m. The event ended at 9:30 p.m. We arrived in Cheshire at approximately 2 a.m.

It snowed all the way up and all the way back. We finally hit dry pavement around Willington, Ct. Thank God. Then the old pedal went to the metal.

While I was waiting for the shuttle van to take us back to the parking lot in Rochester, we got talking to a woman who asked us where we lived. We told her we had a house in New Hampshire (and an apartment), but we lived in Cheshire.

I am still thinking about what the first words were out of this woman’s mouth and she did not say it in a mean way. She said to me “oh, isn’t that the town that had those home invasion murders?

As I was standing outside the venue waiting for the van, I felt a chill go up my spine. People still remember that event in July. For that woman, when I said Cheshire, Connecticut, that is what she thought of.

As time passes, so will this event to most people. But in Cheshire, we should never forget and try to learn from this tragedy. We must all re-examine ourselves, our lives, the society we live in.

My wish: I hope something positive comes out of this tragedy for Cheshire. I hope we will be known as the town that got the toughest Three Strikes Law in the country passed.

So if I ever run into someone from out of state again and they ask where I am from and I say Cheshire, Connecticut, they will say, “Oh isn’t that the town that had the toughest Three Strikcs law in the country passed?

Now to switch gears a bit, I noticed our local community paper had a story on the hiring of two new police officers. Well again, I also noticed there were NO women hired. I wonder why?

And from what I understand there were no minority applications either. But at least the Herald ran a front page story on the hirings. You never would have seen that several years ago, I know. The town used to treat police hirings like the Interregnum at the Sistine Chapel. You only know when something transpires when the white smoke comes out of the chimney.

I still don’t like some of what goes on. I don’t like one person making all the decisions. It has nothing to do with who is making the decisions-Lou Zullo. I really don’t even know this man so it is not personal. I wouldn’t like it if my husband was making all personnel decisions.

I believe this is a job for the Public Safety Commission. I mean, this time in the Herald they had all the new hires’ qualifications, albeit one was a relative of another police officer. But I know these two men are qualified. That is not the point. The point is I would like to see several people, not one, making this important decision.

The people that run this town have a phobia about this-but hopefully this year we will make headway with expanding the powers of the Public Safety Commission to oversee police and fire and all emergency personnel.

All the people who pay taxes in this town, excluding me, because I don’t pay any, have the right to know what is going on with all departments and how time is spent.

 We don’t put questions in writing especially to the police department or any department  for that matter. The taxpayers have a  right to know when they ask. 

Whether we ask at the Town Council meeting or Board of Ed, or Planning and Zoning–any department-we deserve the answers right then and there.

Ok, let’s end here and go finish our Holiday Shopping.

P.S. For you Mitt Romney fans out there, (I know Matt Hall loves Mitt), will be appearing in Londonderry, (it really is NEAR Manchester), Saturday, Dec. 22 around 4 p.m. The weather should be partly cloudy.

I just received the Legislative Report from our State Rep. Al Adinolfi who is a Republican and I thought it was interesting enough to make a few comments.

Now I thought it was interesting to read the statement at the top of the flyer that in 2007 “my colleagues and I worked to restrain state spending and hold down taxes to help keep families, jobs and seniors in Connecticut.”

Well the Legislature may have worked hard to restrain spending and keep seniors and families in Connecticut, but the Legislature is getting an “F” on keeping GOOD PAYING SOMETHING YOU CAN SUPPORT A FAMILY ON, jobs in this state.

I am in the job market all the time. It is pathetic what is out there. I even accompanied a friend to the State Labor Department Job Fair. Three quarters of the jobs were from temp agencies. And unfortunately, most of us are not trained machinists or engineers so we are out of luck. And, if you can’t stand the sight of blood I guess nursing is out.

Why should people have to resort to having to work for temp agencies. You go to school and work hard and this is what you have to look forward to. Then, if you do get a regular job, you pray it is full time, which 95 percent of the time it won’t be.

Then, there is always the issue of pay. The State Legislature better start looking at what the average person takes home. And I am not talking about the CEO’S in Fairfield County.

Most jobs today are either part-time, nights, weekends or both. Most offer no benefits, and if they do, you have to either pay a substantial co-pay and/or they take half your pay out of your check.

The Legislature passed tax cuts for businesses and blocked job killing proposals? No, they patronized the CBIA. They will not be passing any of this onto the average worker.

The Legislature lickety split passed the funding for the teacher pension. But watch the foot dragging over the proposed Three Strikes Law. As I stated in my last post, there is nothing (money) in it for the state to pass this law.

And, never mind trying to exempt graduates from paying the state income tax for 10 years. Try getting stiffer penalties for these people who insist on driving with out of state plates in Connecticut and screw their local towns out of the property taxes.

Thank God that 10 year state income tax exemption proposal failed. Why doesn’t the state Legislature give a 10 year state income tax exemption for qualifying seniors? I guess not enough of a significant lobbying force, that’s why.

Oh, and there will be “major increases” in the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) for Cheshire, which will receive $1.7 million, Wallingford will receive $2.8 million and Hamden will receive $3.5 million. Of course we will hear the moaning that Cheshire did not receive enough. Yes they did!!

I like Al Adinolfi. He is honest and hard working and does care about his constituents, but his voice is lost in the sauce up in Hartford to put it mildly.

I will be up in New Hampshire tonight to see Barack Obama. I hope I don’t get buried in that big snowstorm they are having.