A Good Run For A Local Business

Something - and someone - was conspicuously absent in the November edition of The Extra.   This month marked the first time in almost ten years that Tina Chapman has not advertised her shop in our monthly direct mailer.   The doors closed on October 31st.   Pachaug Aquarium & Reptiles Too had been open less than one hour  in the summer of 2002 when I first called on Tina Chapman about advertising.    Since then, she has been a model advertiser.    She was so dependable that I would always start each month by calling on her aquarium on Route 138 in Griswold.   In 2003 when Tina wanted to renew her lease, her landlord was surprised because no other business had ever lasted there longer than a year.     The small store outlasted many of the startup businesses around her, but Tina finally decided it was time to pack it in.   While the recession had impacted her business this year, I got the impression that being the sole proprietor was becoming a bit of a grind.   She just wanted a break.   Anyone who knows Tina can say that she is one of the most down to earth people you could meet.   She spends much of her time close to home along the Route 138 corridor with a life full of friends and family.   A big fan of the great outdoors, Tina has also been active in promoting the Griswold Fish & Game Club.    As I hear the commercials about "shopping small" for November 26th on Small Business Saturday, I wish there were more people like Tina in business.

This Departure Means A Lot

Regis Philbin hosted his last "Live" show this morning. With all the commotion surrounding his departure after 28 years, I think Regis knew it was time to move on as executives didn't exactly bend over backwards to keep him on board. We may never know the real story of what appeared to be a hasty decision on his part, but daytime TV is evolving. This loss of an icon in many morning routines marked a milestone in that change the same way ABC's cancellation of two long-running soaps reflected a simple fact: the audience is aging and fragmenting. The age of the average "Live with Regis & Kelly" viewer is 60. "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" haven't exactly been courting the youth movement either. True, a huge chunk of the available daytime viewership is older, but corporate decision makers would rather risk shaking loose some of the 55+ crowd and have a greater percentage of younger women 25-54 (or 25-49) even if it means a smaller overall rating. Radio has done the same thing, which explains why Frank Sinatra disappeared from the airwaves by the 1990s, fifties music soon followed and sixties songs are now few and far between.

Regis still leaves on a high note, much like Oprah and Seinfeld. On a local level, Regis was a role model to me in co-hosting a morning radio show. So many people would tell me how WBMW's Wakeup Club with Glenn & Rebecca had good chemistry. Even our consultant admitted that, but in the last year of Glenn & Rebecca the only positive comment I ever got from him was about my Regis impression. I sensed something was up, but Rebecca and I knew that we were a team and it wouldn't be the same as a one-person show or one where two people didn't have fun interacting with each other. Regis was the master of that genre. He was a huge inspiration for some of the best radio I ever did.

An "Off" Year Election

The race for the newly created mayoral position in New London was one of the few noteworthy local contests that were decided last night.   Democrat Daryl Justin Finizio successfully challenged his party's establishment.   With that one noteworthy exception, there was lack of cliffhangers as turnout was light.   Did you vote?   I cast my ballot, but I had to shake my head as I reviewed few choices here in Colchester.   There was only one candidate for first selectman.   I was asked to pick three selectmen out of three listed and there were no challengers for several other town positions.   I am told Montville choices were equally slim, and incumbents faced few serious challenges across the region.   It struck me as similar to what voters must have faced in the former Soviet Union, where elections were exercises in rubberstamping choices of the one party system.   Are civic minded citizens discouraged by today's politics?    Is the lack of voter participation in off year local elections an unhealthy sign for our democracy?   On a national level, attempts to discourage voter eligibility and radical agendas received a serious pushback.   The latest union busting move by Ohio Governor John Kasich was a stinging defeat for him - and rightfully so.   Even many conservative Republicans had trouble getting behind an all encompassing anti-abortion bill in Mississippi, and the measure failed in a big way.    People need to get fired up, since it is clear that the public is fed up with politics as usual.   With so much at stake, voter apathy in any election will send the wrong message to our lawmakers.         

Infrastructure Failure

Southeastern Connecticut was spared the worst of this October Nor'easter that knocked out power to over 800,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers. In Colchester, it was a close call with major tree damage and power outages to the immediate north and west. My lights stayed on this time. That good fortune was not lost on me, thanks to the recent memories of the six day outage caused by Tropical Storm Irene two months earlier. For CL&P and other area utilities, these two events made for a one-two punch. Connecticut's biggest power provider has taken a lot of criticism over its speed at restoring service, but officials in Massachusetts and New Jersey are also calling for investigations into restoration delays. For CL&P, issues over payments to out-of-state repair crews were not resolved before the storm, apparently adding to the delays. Since Connecticut has more forests and less utility workers than several decades ago, planners had no reason to be surprised when the last two storms brought record power outages. Are we really saving money cutting back on line maintenance when overgrown trees crash down on wires and disrupt millions of lives already in the middle of a troubled economy? This is as much of a wakeup call as a bridge collapse. It speaks volumes about the state of our infrastructure. We can pay for prevention now or disaster relief later.