When I was growing up I had a black and white television set with two antennae ears. At the tips of the antennae we wrapped tinfoil to extend the ears in order to improve reception. While the TV set was big and bulky, the screen itself was small. It kind of resembled the face of the robot on the television program Lost In Space, which was a TV series that was popular during my childhood. It had three manual knobs, one to adjust the sound, a second to change the channel and a third to control the picture so it stayed still and did not vertically roll up and down the screen. In those days, watching TV was a physical feat — it required getting up and having to adjust the different apparatuses on the set, including the rabbit ears. Growing up in New York City in the 1960s I was privileged to get seven channels – 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. There always seemed like there were many options to watch.

Thank your lucky stars the CT 2030 plan hasn’t passed. It needs significant revision and a sharp eye placed on cost control. The rail projects that are included are severely overpriced. As many American leaders continue to shortchange rail, it is tempting to charge ahead with any plan, but the legislature must resist. CT 2030 will, if approved in its current form and entrusted to CTDOT’s current managers, send the state back into the same debt hole out of which it has begun to climb, for crumbs’ worth of transit improvements.

When the University of Connecticut returned to downtown Hartford in 2017, its extensive West Hartford undergraduate and graduate school library had to follow. In an innovative collaboration with the Hartford Public Library in downtown Hartford and the independent Hartford Public Library association which manages and operates it, the university relocated its resources to the Hartford Library one block from the restored 1920’s Hartford Times Building whose façade graces the University’s new downtown  facility.