armies of the road

If you live just about anywhere in this country, you have seen them.

Men and women waiting for you at train stations, on city streets and busy highway intersections and offramps. Their clothes and faces wear the strain of nights spent in the cold. They're as frayed about the edges as the cardboard signs that spell out the circumstances of their lives.

The odd thing is, those signs are usually not easy to read from your car window, or from a distance on the street. But the point isn't to guide you to an exit or a coffee shop. It's a life story in magic marker, written by someone who wants you to understand.

They wait, with a hand out or a coffee can, hoping you'll take pity.

Maybe you've given a quarter or a dollar to one of these people once in a while.

Maybe you haven't.

Perhaps, you were once suckered by someone's sob story – you know the one, about the wallet that got locked in the car that got towed and he needs whatever you can afford for a bus or train home? And five minutes later, when you saw that same person buying cigarettes or making a cell phone call or trying the same heartfelt, desperate story on a tourist, you decided: No more. And so you folded the con artists and phonies in with the drug addicts and drunks – recovering or otherwise – who were appealing to you for your money.

After all, who are you to be judge and jury of their lives? How can you tell the frauds from the genuine hard-luck cases? Who's really sober and who's lying so convincingly that even he or she believes it?

Maybe you've said it, maybe you've heard it and maybe you believe it: They're just lazy. They would not be out here if they really wanted to get better and get a grip on life. They wouldn't be living under the expressway or an abandoned building or spending days on the street and nights in shelters and ATM vestibules. They'd go to AA, take their meds, summon the willpower to give up the bottle or the pipe, whatever it takes. But they don't. So they're here. Day after miserable day.

So you don't believe anyone. You keep your head down and your hands in your pockets and you don't make eye contact as you cross the street or drive by, windows up and doors locked.

You're hardly alone in this regard. And it's not like you were their only hope, right? There are people in this country willing to help them help themselves.

But there's a question to which you don't know the answer.

Who was it you passed on your way to the office this morning?

Was she a bank teller or an account executive? Did he teach, write or fix cars? Have their families given up all hope and forgotten them? Did their friends write them off? Do they have children?

Maybe he was Ted Williams, an ex-radio announcer who somehow wound up begging for change and a clean start in life at a highway ramp in Columbus, Ohio. Maybe he got sobedr after problems with alcohol and drugs, but after all those years of damaging his own life and damaging relationships, there really was nowhere to go, no one to believe in him and no other options.

Until someone wanted to hear his story.

I hope that story's true - and ends well this time.

Dried Nutmeg

We haven't gotten significant rainfall around here in a long, long time.

Here's some statistical proof. And some more.

The current rainfall for September in North Stepford Falls? 0.44 inches.

The monthly historical average for the month? 4.80 inches.

Funny, when we moved here five years ago, our first fall was marked by seven straight days of rain that wound up flooding the basement and having to call the North Stepford Falls Volunteer FD to pump the water out.

The front yard doesn't look completely brown ... not yet at least. The ground's pretty dry, though. The ground where we live is pretty sandy, which is great when it gets enough water. Too much or too little, not so good. Too much and it drains too slowly and it floods. Too little ... well it looks like it does now.

Meanwhile, despite the fact UConn is on a Stage II Drought Watch, the neighbors' sprinklers click on every day, keeping their lawn lush and green -- and this is not to single them out, because they're hardly alone in that regard.

Does this make me want sprinklers? No.

The lawn care industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. But stop and think about that for a minute: How much water, fertilizer and labor is spent on a cash crop that only animals with hooves can eat?

Not wishing for a hurricane, but some rain would be nice.

Good thing climate change is a myth, eh?

News tidbits from the Conn. 5th District, Volume 1

So Republican challenger Sam Caliguri wants 41 debates in 41 towns with the incumbent, Chris Murphy.

This is crazy. But not for the reasons you think I think it's crazy.

If an alien from another planet -- say, Massachusetts? -- visited the district, he or she would think Sam Caliguri is the incumbent and running unopposed.

Chris Murphy might be the second-term incumbent but right now he might as well be in hiding. I have not seen a bumper sticker, a lawn sign, a canvasser, a TV ad (though apparently one just started airing), and certainly not the Congressman.

All I have seen are Sam's signs, and plenty of them. Sam's people came through the neighborhood during the primary. Sam beat two GOP opponents to get here. He's got momentum and a ground game and as any football fan will tell you, those things make for a tough playoff contender come late fall.

As for said Murphy TV ad, I'm not impressed. Heck, Bllly Mays runs TV ads. And he's been dead for a year.

So why extend Murph 41 shots at free publicity? Why would you give a guy who beat Nancy Johnson -- when she was an 11-term incumbent -- an easy way to win points off you in every town in the district? Why not make him spend some of that million-dollar war chest?

You voted how you voted, Murph; if you want to go back to DC in January, you need to get out there and stand behind it, and firmly. Waiting until the fall and running ads showing you riding your bike isn't going to make all that anger go away.

So no, Sam, 41 debates, one for every town in the 5th, are a Very Bad Idea. Keep doing what you're doing and let people forget that your party caused the recession. It seems to be working.

something to remember

Noticing a lot of people remembering Sept. 11 today.

I've been spending the last nine years trying to forget it. Not the folks who were murdered, mind you -- they are much remembered. I'd prefer to forget the horror of the day (I saw the whole damned thing from my desk at AP) and the anxiety and paranoia and war that followed.

But this year, for some reason, some really hateful people really seem to be trying to use the memory of that day to divide us as a nation for their own political agenda rather than solemnize it as an honest day of remembrance.

Now I'm about to touch the third rail of religion, so if you don't care what I honestly believe, I'm not going to make you read it and this is a good place for you to stop.

If you're still with me...

To those folks who would use today to divide us: If we really want to make this divided country whole again and a better place to live, then we need a whole lot less Sept. 11 as a war cry and a whole lot more Luke 6:27 and Matthew 5:44.