07/27/08 You Can Meet The Nicest People In Greenwich

Today I went to Harvest Time Church up on King Street and left about 1:30 pm.

I then started walking down King Street to go to work.

After a bit of walking down the road a man I had never met stopped his car and gave me a ride to where I needed to go.

The driver was a Greenwich orthodontist named Dr. Albert Repicci.

Dr. Repicci is a local dentist who still remembers when Greenwich had farms and you could buy groceries on Greenwich Avenue.

In a better, faster cheaper world that would love to outsource the reading of dental X-rays and treatment plans to Bangalore, India, it's nice to know that there a local country doctor in town.

From talking to Dr. Repecci it is clear that he is truly a "Country Dentist" that will give an orthodontic patient the individual care and attention that they need and deserve.

We have all heard of the old "Country Doctor" of of long a ago who would see patients one at a time,

I am sure that a kind man like Dr. Repicci is keeping the tradition alive and well in his Greenwich dental office.

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07/27/08 Where's The Democracy? A Greenwich Democrat hasn't won a trip to the Legislature from Greenwich since 1930

Greenwich Time Editors Has A Message For
Political Party Leaders
It's Time To Poop Or Get Off The Pot

Voter's Deserve A Choice!!!

The democratic process is hurting

Greenwich Time Editorial

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

- Sir Winston Churchill

Few can match Sir Winston in the pithy quote department. But we can only imagine what he might say about a democracy where only half the candidates show up. We suspect it'd be a some bon mot about it being no democracy at all.

While it's certainly a stretch to say we're no democracy, the elections coming up are far from ideal.

As of this writing, 11 of the 20 races in lower Fairfield County for the state General Assembly are uncontested.

That means thousands of voters in Greenwich, Stamford, Norwalk and other towns will be able to choose who runs their country on Election Day, but not who represents their neighborhoods. A sad state of the state, indeed. And the fact that many residents won't notice, because they'll be nowhere near a voting booth that day (Sir Winston's cynicism can be contagious), is no cause for relief. This is a particularly bad year to have uncontested races because turnout should be relatively large, given the high-octane presidential contest.

Most of us care much more about who is president, but our local and state representatives in many ways have a greater impact on our lives. Not only do uncontested races mean citizens have no choice as to who gets that power, they allow incumbents to sail through the very phase of our governing process designed to hold their feet to the fire. Without an opponent to debate, they really have no one to answer to. That doesn't necessarily mean they will act in bad faith while in office, but it's a lousy way to run a government "by the people."

We're used to a smattering of empty races in our cities and towns, but this is a particularly bad year. Who's to blame? Hard to say. Perhaps circumstance as much as anything.

It's the political party leaderships who are responsible for enticing new candidates. But in our communities in particular, it can be a really hard sell.

Take Greenwich, for example, where incumbent state Reps. Livvy Floren and Lile Gibbons, both Republicans, are unopposed. A Democrat hasn't won a trip to the Legislature from Greenwich since 1930. With that kind of history, it can be awfully hard to convince someone to spend the time and energy to mount a race.

In Stamford, the situation is reversed: The city GOP has one candidate nominated among six legislative districts, now that Democratic state Sen. Andrew McDonald's Republican competitor has dropped out.

In Norwalk, state Rep. Bruce Morris, a Democrat, remains unopposed in his heavily Democratic 140th District. As does House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., despite the fact that he retained his seat by less than 600 votes in 2006. Many believe this will be a tough year for Republicans, which could make Mr. Cafero, an eight-term Republican, even more vulnerable, although that might be countered by the high visibility he enjoyed this term with his newly acquired leadership position. Either way, it doesn't matter. Looks like he gets a free ride this year.

Party leaders in our towns and cities also face a significant challenge that those in other communities don't: Hartford is far, far away from here. It's understandable why many wouldn't relish the prospect of that commute, but even that deterrent hasn't had this kind of impact in the past.

As sorry and serious as this situation is, there are many reasons why it is difficult to get people to run. That said, we are not sure how to regard a head-spinning excuse that rose out of Weston, where the Democratic Town Committee has been unable to field a challenger to 14-year Republican incumbent John Stripp.

"It is perceived as just plain bad manners (to challenge a long-standing incumbent), and the social repercussions loom large," the DTC leader told reporter Brian Lockhart. "How to navigate the sideline at soccer or church on Sunday?"

We don't even want to think what Sir Winston would have to say about that one.

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07/27/08 The Latest From Chris Fountain And His Blog "For What It's Worth"

Here is a cop who loves playing around with taser.

Watch how he uses his little toy to give

three teenagers a nice little taser shock

in the living room.

Don't Taser me, Bro!

Our School Board has sent out a survey to parents, asking if they "support a school resource officer at the high school". The Board eschewed the use of such inflammatory language as "armed and tasered" because they apparently feared that using the more accurate description might alarm parents and cause them to withhold their support for a program the Board itself obviously endorses. "School Resources Officer" sounds so benign - officer Friendly, there to help students find their lost textbooks, perhaps coax a stray kitten from a tree or maybe help out with a tough homework assignment. The reality is that at least one such officer tasered a kid last year for kicking a chair and tossing a water balloon - a dastardly deed, but, speaking as someone who lobbed 1/2 a grapefruit across the Student Center at a group of visiting educators way back in 1971, hardly a capital offense.

The trouble with giving cops toys like Tasers or, God help us, lots of really cool SWAT Team equipment is that, sooner or later, they're going to want to use it. I say, if we're that concerned about a Columbine at the High School, either arm the teachers or take the taser away from the cop. Someone might still get killed, I suppose, but the temptation to use non-lethal force beyond a head-lock would be removed.

More From For What It's Worth:

• Over-sized houses
• The polar bears are drowning! (next year)
• Amazing News

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07/26/08 Winklevoss twins hope to form successful pair in Beijing

Tyler (left) and Cameron Winklevoss, posing with Arnold Schwarzenegger, hope to terminate the competition in Beijing.

(Kimberly White/Reuters)

Rowing machines

The Boston Globe

PRINCETON, N.J. - Lake Carnegie lies still and brown under the gathering summer sun, the early hour no match for the heat of July.

A pretty stone bridge arches across the man-made lake, which stretches along the Princeton University campus toward Kingston. It's not yet 8 o'clock, but the pastoral calm is repeatedly undercut by the whine of cars and trucks as rush hour takes over this idyllic college town.

Across the placid surface of the lake, three boats are pounding down the meters: the United States Olympic women's heavyweight eight, the women's four, and the men's sweep pair. In the pair, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, 26-year-old twins from Greenwich, Conn., pull smoothly and strongly. Their strokes are identical, but mirror images: lefthanded Cameron pulls the oar on the starboard side from the bow seat and righthanded Tyler pulls the oar on the port side and steers, moving the rudder with his foot on a toeplate. Their bodies, carbon copies, move like an assembly line, four legs pushing away simultaneously, four arms stretching and flexing in unison, their faces identically stonefaced, eyes protected by identical sunglasses. Cameron bites his lip as he strokes.

In the final 50 yards, they pull harder and faster, while US pairs coach Ted Nash, chugging alongside in the launch, urges them on. They pull past the buoy markers just about even with the eight, then double over, spent, as Nash triumphantly clicks his stopwatch.

"I'm very proud of them," said Nash. "That was a good piece."

Tyler and Cameron have peppered newspaper headlines and business gossip columns for the last four years after they and classmate Divya Narendra sued fellow Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg for, they believe, stealing Facebook. Their complaint to the Harvard disciplinary board, which was followed by the lawsuit, claimed the trio paid Zuckerberg to write computer codes for their nascent online social networking site and that he abandoned their project, and instead launched Facebook as his own. Zuckerberg is now a paper billionaire and ConnectU, the twins' site, has floundered.

In February, a settlement was reached requiring Facebook to give Narendra and the Winklevosses a chunk of change and stock. But litigation is ongoing as the parties dispute the worth of Facebook, and thus the worth of its stock. To further muddy the water, another Harvard student, Aaron Greenspan, claims he invented a Facebook-like website months before Zuckerberg.

The Winklevosses have taken a lot of guff about the lawsuit, because it's fun to ridicule Harvard, and because they have a background that includes Greenwich, summers in Quogue, and prep school. Also, they are impossibly constructed: 6 feet 5 inches tall, with shoulders that jut out like coat hangers, their limbs wrapped in the long, strong muscles typical of rowers, their heads crowned with identical waves of light brown hair. But the Winklevosses escape easy characterization.

Continued...

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07/27/08 Katherine Pushkar & Eric Barrow Get Married

Greenwich, Conn Wedding

Rivalries were pushed aside at a New Year's Eve 2007 party, where Katherine Pushkar, 37, features editor for the New York Post, and Eric Barrow, 38, deputy Sunday sports editor for the Daily News, were set up by their respective colleagues. "I think he was complaining about being single," the bride guessed as to why their friends thought to make the match. "I was very actively dating, so [my friend] put us together. When I met him, he looked up and smiled, and it was really, really great."

Her position at a rival paper didn't seem to bother Eric either. "She had an astounding intellect, a fascination and love of baseball and just the right amount of hokeyness that I liked," says Eric. "Her working at the Post was not as big a hindrance as you might think."

Six months later, Eric proposed. "We were just hanging out and had a really great day," Katherine recalls. "At the end of the day, he asked me to marry him. He didn't have a ring or anything, so I don't think it was planned because he's very much a planner and traditionally romantic. I think it was just a super-fun day and the spirit moved him."

Escorted by her father, Katherine made her way down the aisle at Christ Church wearing an A-line dress that "felt very me." She carried green and blue hydrangea with white roses. Standing at her side were six bridesmaids, wearing green and blue tea-length dresses, and her brother, the man of honor, with a matching green tie.

More blue and green hydrangea filled the Riverside Yacht Club, where the 150 friends and family members were treated to carrot cake and chocolate-covered strawberries. The pair performed their first dance to "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now," by McFadden & Whitehead, choreographed by MatriMonyMony. Favors were reporters' notebooks with a cartoon the Daily News' own Bill Gallo created for the couple's save-the-date. The pair of wordsmiths continued their celebration with a honeymoon throughout Rome, Florence, the South of France and Barcelona.

07/27/08 Has the Internet created a "new" kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount?

The Simses of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, gather to read after dinner. Their means of text delivery is divided by generation.

(Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Photo)

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

HendersonvilleNews.com

... leisure time watching television, to read and write. Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online...

Also please see:

Is Our Children Reading?

By Nancy Scola

... There's this great photo accompanying the story in which the Sims family (great name!) of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, is gathered in their living room. Mom is clutching a newspaper, Dad a book, and their two teenage kids are ...

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07/27/08 Greenwich Time News Links For Sunday

Richard Harnett stands next to his backyard
organic garden on Hettiefred Road.
(Keelin Daly/ Greenwich Time photo)

Couple grows a smorgasbord of organic treats

By Colin Gustafson

Staff Writer

For years, Richard Harnett said he whittled away his leisure hours jogging, playing chess and relaxing with his wife and son by the pool.

Assistant GHS coach quits

A Greenwich High School assistant football coach has quit after several of his players were arrested for throwing eggs at his cars, athletic officials said.

Phil Tarantino, who worked as a receivers' coach for the perennial powerhouse Cardinals, has resigned from the team, said Gus Lindine, the school's athletic director.

"He has decided to step down," Lindine said Friday.

Lindine confirmed that "several football team members were involved in the situation" but declined to elaborate, referring questions about the matter to Tarantino.

Messages seeking comment from Tarantino, who lives on Bible Street in Cos Cob, were left Friday and Thursday at his home.

Board may review cop at GHS

The school system may re-examine the School Resource Officer program at Greenwich High School if a poll shows overwhelming opposition to it following an officer's use of a Taser on a student, a school spokeswoman said.

On May 13, School Resource Officer Carlos Franco used a Taser to subdue student Victor Hugo Londono when the student resisted arrest after refusing to report to the assistant headmaster's office following his suspension.

Soon after the incident, school officials sent out an annual satisfaction survey, the Harris Interactive School Poll, to parents, students and teachers, appending a question about the SRO program at the school.

"I support having a School Resource Officer at Greenwich High School," the survey stated, and asked readers to give a response ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."

Though the mailing deadline for the surveys was June 6, the results will not be available for several months, said Kim Eves, a spokeswoman for the school system.

Members of the Board of Education and the GHS parent-teacher association appended the question to this year's poll, Eves said, "simply as a way to open up a discussion" with members of the community following the controversial May 13 incident. However, the question - which appeared alongside another item about the need to "teach character and ethics" in school - should not be viewed as an outright referendum on the SRO program, Eves stressed.

If, for instance, the results came back....

Assembly candidates tap funding

With public funding of elections available for the first time this year in Connecticut, four of the six candidates on the General Assembly ballot in Greenwich are accepting taxpayer money for their campaigns outright or are leaning toward doing so.

Meeting at Bruce recalls 1940 voyage

Although Ruth Meador, 76, does not remember the voyage that claimed the life of Jacques Goudstikker, a famed Dutch art dealer, she will never forget that it was the same voyage that saved her life.

Children and parents learn about beekeeping

By Meredith Blake

Staff writer

Learning how to harvest honey was a sweet way to spend the day.

Winklevoss twins preparing for

Like most twin brothers, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss travel in the same circles. The 26-year-old Greenwich natives each attended Greenwich Country Day School, Brunswick School and Harvard University, where they excelled academically and athletically.

Do the homework to assure yourself of safety

Investing in today's market environment is a particular challenge for retirees who depend on their investments to cover their living expenses.

Golf group helps members improve networking, game

Coleen Banks has done more than improve her golf game since joining the Fairfield County Chapter of the Executive Women's Golf Association. The Stamford resident also has made some valuable business connections.

The group provides valuable opportunities to network not just with fellow chapter members but also with members of other chapters across the country, said Banks, operator of an Ameriprise Financial office in Mamaroneck, N.Y.

"I joined in the early 1990s. I wanted to learn how to play the game for business reasons," Banks said, adding that her participation has helped her acquire clients outside the chapter....

Others likely would have welcomed field

To the Greenwich Time editor:

I am writing to say how very disappointed I am with some of the residents in Riverside and our town officials. I have lived in Byram for all of my 47 years. I believe if there were a piece of vacant town-owned land - unfortunately, I don't think there is because a lot of it has been used for affordable housing - and children used their energy to create a magnificent Wiffle ball stadium, I could safely and proudly say our neighbors wouldn't complain. They would have embraced the spirit and energy and pitched in to help. Parents and their children alike would play on that field together.

As adults, we constantly try to get our kids to get off the couch; we tell them to be active and creative, and that is just what these kids were doing. However, their reward was a lesson in the law and a reality check. The world, and especially our beautiful town of Greenwich, has changed.

Would it be such a horrible thing for the neighbors near the stadium to listen to the sounds of kids playing, to listen to youth and happiness, for the rest of the summer, a few short weeks? School will be back in session before we know it, and the stadium would become quite a quiet place again.

It's a shame that some adults have forgotten how it felt to be a kid, in the summertime, in Greenwich. My own childhood was filled with whole days spent playing outside, when we would take just a few minutes to go home and gobble down a quick sandwich, only to return to the playground to play with our friends.

I thank all of the kids who built their beautiful stadium. Thank you for bringing back a spirit that, unfortunately, has been lost in some of us.

Happy summer!

Sue Frano

Byram

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07/27/08 Democratic voter registration is up sharply in southwestern Connecticut's 4th Congressional District

Voter surge may hurt Shays

Connecticut Post

... the 2006 Democratic primary. In Washington on Friday, Congressional Quarterly Politics said that Jim Himes, of Greenwich, a former investment banker expected to win the Democratic primary on Aug. 12, can bring a "serious challenge that will be aided ...

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07/26/08 In memory of those who have died from cancer and in honor of those who are battling it

Swimmers dive in to fund cancer research

Journal News

... and corporate donors. The Swim Across America event is also being held in Nassau and Suffolk counties, in Greenwich, Conn., and in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. 'It's such a great feeling to be able to fight back this disease,' said Tony ..

Please also see:

Greenwich Swim

Thank you for making the 2008 SAA event a huge success!

Greenwich swimmers, volunteers and supporters: Thank you for a fantastic event and a fabulous kick-off to the 2008 Swim Across America season. The weather was perfect, the water was still and over 100 Greenwich swimmers raised almost $200,000. View our:

Swim Day Video

New for 2008..... we added a 1/2 mile swim option, in addition to our mile-and-a-half swim which will begin at Greenwich Point (Tod’s Point) and head north to the serene shore of our beneficiary’s headquarters.

Swimmers, boaters, kayakers, sponsors and volunteers made this event a huge success! Swim Across America is proud to team up with the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy (ACGT). In 2001, Edward and Barbara Netter founded ACGT -- the nation’s only foundation dedicated exclusively to funding cancer gene therapy research. ACGT's extremely sophisticated research supports different approaches to gene therapy and makes critically important discoveries as researchers try to realize an effective alternative to the treatment and management of cancer....

For more information, contact:

Jacque@swimacrossamerica.org

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