A friend thinks it's strange that I want to live in Waterbury, where I spend most of my life anyway. People are violent--they beat each other for food stamps, babies roll out 3rd-floor windows--and there is a madness about the place we can attribute only to the water. There are brown fields everywhere. This is a wasteland.
I like to think of the place as idiosyncratic. It is to rich in too many ways to simply be mad. I mean, consider the quirky Christmas decorations above. Idiosyncratic, right?
Richness. Look below: In the center display window of a bookshop on Grand Street is a request for food for people who don't have enough this time of year. Here we go putting the other guy first without the slightest danger of personal gain. Yes, I like it here, where people like the woman below are not going to the aiport or train station with their luggage but to the next safe place with everything they own in tow. The people at the bookstore noticed that, obviously. And they're appealing to the lawers, civil servants, and others who frequent their coffee shop to think about it, too. Curse the darkness? Not me, and not when the light is so good.
Sandy Carlson Social