Located in the breezy hills, on The Connecticut River, it is one of the oldest cities in America, Our motive forces were born here, and gratefully preserved.
Tourist or Native, be sure to enjoy links to Points of Interest, appearing just below this Image Gallery: MY Connnecticut.
My Connecticut
This is a nice page goal, just begun: may your future visits be rewarded. Our state name means "Long River", and our Hartford Capitol is near its head in the State.
Early Settlers from "the Old World" may have experienced the trip to Hartford, up from the Sea, where I was born, like a pilgrimage to Rome, Mecca or Oz. Life and the Long River were synonyms, in a new land, undeveloped and full of challenge.
Success for The Experiment of the American Colonization was Probably the motive for the motto on Connecticut's State Seal: "Qui Transtulit Sustinet" loosely translated means "we transplants are doing just fine", as the image of grapes on vines, carried across the sea and transplanted, re-iterate.
With such a proud Heritage, though Planes and cars, phone, TV and internet null such life equations, we still think in terms of prospering from growth and change, while treasuring grapevines of our own, to tend and share.
Downtown Hartford shares a wealth of sites, each one all history. Each spot, one that has served as a foundation block for America, then and now.
"Her words changed the world!" greets new visitors to The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Website., with no exaggeration.
Even if you cannot visit in person, at the home of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", do stop in at the site.
Our Connecticut became a world giant, third smallest,not counting the District of Columbia. Times change and we must yield, if we miss the new lights, learn and catch up, if we can. Somehow, we must be innately destined to fallow times until we are brought, once more, to ability to be livened at that point of challenge. Whatever the cause, Like a second Glacier, problems befell American cities, creating serious threats to survival; our capital city was no exception.
Reminded of our truths, we got busy, and though far from "home free", Hartford can say, like its illustrious resident, Mark Twain: |
 "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!". And while on the subject, near the Harriet Beecher Stowe House you will find The Mark Twain House, and you might enjoy a visit to its site as well; plan a visit or just be entertained and enlightened at the site.
| |
Hartford Area Points of Interest , Online and Off
Hartford Stage theater is "right downtown" and maybe right for you! The Bushnell Performing Arts Center is the Grand-Dame and recently renovated and a dazzler, inside and out! The Wadsworth Atheneum America's oldest public art museum, and never more involved in today's mission in the community
Unofficial Seals, Signs & Symbols
The past few years have found my work involved with Connecticut Seals and Symbols and Factoids, but the thing that made me take interest, had very little to do with such grand concepts.
To me, loving Connecticut was about its being "home". I have lived and been very happy, since, in other places, but each place does even the exact same things, somehow, with a feeling and experience all its own. Like enjoying a lovely song played on different instruments, or sung in different keys: Many, worldwide, could list the same events, and in reading or writing them, each one's experience unique:
New Years full of snow and snow angels, and toboggans and skates, and snowballs so much fun that we would put some in the freezer and hope Mother would not throw them away, even though,frozen rock-hard, they were not ok for snowball fights, or snow-eating...a safe and fun treat! Getting freezing and then getting all warm and cozy again! Staying in and getting out, more special when the weather makes it a happy challenge!
Crocuses growing through the snow, saying that spectacular was natural!
Forsythia and Pussywillows and Mother's Birthday and Saint Patrick's Day fun all day long!
The falls and brooks rushing more passionately with spring thaws, and the skies showing a truer blue, and talk about the gardens to come. Walking to school with friends, with the weather warm enough in April for chat and social fun, rather than scurrying thru the cold, with no desire to linger.
Everything about May in Connecticut a celebration! You could feel it in the air, and even if you did not know it was State Constitution month, somehow you knew! Flowers everywhere, and laughter! Mother's Day and The Dogwood Festival and the Grange Fair; standing on a hill that gave a view of Connecticut's gentle blue-green hills and valleys, and towers reaching up through the trees; running or rolling down the hill.
Shows and dances and dinners and weddings in June! Summer Vacation, and tying sweaters at our waists and necks when it was too warm to wear them! Delicious jams and jellies, and the fun of making them in loving company!
Fireworks and beaches, and swimming pools, and clamming and fishing and boating parties to the islands, little rubber beach shoes for trips to teh rockier shores, and trips to the hills and their lakes, and friends and cousins in happy gatherings, for work and play!
Ghost stories and romantic dreams and girl talk and guy talk and wonderful things to say and hear! Watermelon, toasted marshmallows and steamed clams and their buttery broths, and singing and making daisty chains, and great summer storms that were more an adventure than a threat.
Sleeping on the porch in August, singing at the fan to make the voice sound strange; trips to cooler country, with windows open for the breeze, and counting blue cars, for real...and back home, buying winter coats,and school books and clothes, autumn plaids with white trims, red sweaters, and the smell of new pencils and papers! Anticipation!
Enjoying the smell of burning leaves when leaves and burning were of the legal sort. The ashes would feed the new growth in Spring, and all of it with a nice of message of the rightness of things. School and new work projects and the feeling of happy change in schedule.
October's Bright Blue Weather was not just poem, but a gift! Indian Summer, taking down the screens and putting up the storm windows,and then the crisp dip in the weather for Hallowe'en, and bobbing for apples and trick or treating when there was no fear for danger in the treats
Tucking down the garden, and planning for the Thanksgiving feast, and the delight in the huge tables full of bounty of friends as well as food.
Christmas and its secrets, holiness, surprizes, gathering and swagging running pine, and christmas carols, and choir practice and the hush of anticipation and adoration, and almost too much celebration, and needing all twelve days of Christmas to visit with friends and relatives, not to be missed! Mistletoe first-kisses, and candles and wishing we had a fireplace and loving visits to homes that did. Skating, plain, facy and teaching it, and snobbing off skis. Painting snow scenes, and christmas cards and angels and infancts and the virgin, and "fox-and-geese" tag circles in deep snow and coats and sweaters and mittens and hot cocoa and popcorn and not at all in a rush for Spring!
In good days and bad, feeling safe, and free and wondering how we all enjoyed the feeling of our home being truly ours, and the very best there was to be!
Brazilian botanists Marie-Anne Van Sluys (L) and Mariana Cabral de Oliveira check over the DNA map of the Xylella fastidiosa bacteria that causes Pierce's disease, a plague that attacks grapevines, in the University of Sao Paulo's Bioscience Institute, February 24, 2003. At the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a Brazilian team of 30-odd researchers led by Van Sluys and Cabral de Oliveira has achieved the monumental task of mapping the DNA code of the bacteria that is threatening the livelihood of California's $2.7 billion wine and grape industry. REUTERS/Rickey Rogers/FEATURE/SCIENCE-BRAZIL-WINE
|
You are also most welcome to contact the artist:
|
