Some Fun OUT of the Sun

Since starting my blog here on News12.com, I've become interested in what bloggers around the world are doing. It's interesting. Not only have I read some great poems, but I'm learning more than I ever thought possible about on line technology. I've also come across some fun quizzes to help you get to know yourself better.

First, a personality quiz I found on the blog of a new media firm maps out your qualities in color! Below are my results. Scroll over each color and the graph will reveal what they mean. Click on Dynamic Director to take the high-tech test yourself.

Dynamic Director

Thanks to the blog of Design Sojourn for helping me figure out which city I'd live in if I lived in Europe. (Though the first time I took the test it said Amsterdam.)

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris. You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.

What European City Do You Belong In?

And if you'd like to see what your work or personal website looks like as a graph, this link will do it for you. I tried it out with this blog website. It looked cool and said I could put it up on my blog, but in order to do so I needed to make a screenshot of the graph, put it on flickr and tag it websitesasgraphs. Okay. If anyone figures out how to do this, please let me know! Also- if you send me your graph I'll post it here. Oh, and here is the blog in which I found out about the graph.

Living a Fantasy

As baseball bestows praise on its greatest this weekend during the annual Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, sports fans are getting ready for some football!

While Bruce Sutter, the first pitcher elected into the Hall of fame who never started a game, is inducted Sunday, it's already day three of NFL Training Camp.

What this means is that if you are still in baseball mode but are planning to join a Fantasy Football League this season, you better start strategizing. Fantasty Football fanatics intent on winning the office pool are already stressing over which running back and quarterback to pick if they don't get the ones they want.

If you do decide to join a league this season, you must realize how time consuming the fantasy is. The basis of the game is that you have to pick a team of players from all the teams. You get points depening on how each player does. In order to score for your team, you could potentially end up cheering against the team you've loved  since you were three. Of course during the season, you can make trades, but realize you will have to keep up with every player on every team for every game. This means you won't have time to actually sit and watch any of the games nor go to one. You'll be too busy running back and forth to your computer or clicking through the channels to see how your players and your teammates players are doing.

Fantasy Baseball also exists. But imagine keeping track of every player on every team for every game in baseball! For example, the football Giants play around 17 regular season games per season. Compare that to the baseball Yankees' 163! There are more baseball games in a month than during football's entire season.

For those of you who would like to see the baseball season wrapped up before the Football rage kicks in, here are a few highlights from the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Weekend 2006.

Along with Bruce Sutter, 17 electees from the pre-Negro league and Negro league were also inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Gene Elston, a radio announcer for the Houston Astros, was named the 2006 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award.

Tracy Ringolsby was elected the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. This award is for sports writing.

There was also a special screening of a movie coming out in September. It's called Everyone's Hero. Christopher Reeve was the original director on this animated film about a kid who believes he can make a difference if he just hangs in there despite overwhelming odds. This is said to have been Reeve's dream project.

Litter Leads to Bad Things

One soda can thrown on the ground instead of in the trash leads to gang violence.

One fast food wrapper or napkin thrown out of your car's window promotes depression.

The above might sound impossible, but the concept that one small careless action can turn into larger problems is what the non-profit Keep Stamford Beautiful and a local ad agency want teens to understand.

They're launching a new campaign called "Litter Leads to Bad Things." You should start seeing ads that read: "Litter leads to cockroaches lead to rats lead to bacteria lead to disease and I will not share my block with those bad things" on the back of buses next week.  Over time, other versions of the ad will follow, such as "itter leads to neglect leads to vacant lots lead to gangs lead to fear lead to stress leads to depression and I will not contribute to those bad things."

The nationally known teen advertising agency, North Castle- which is located in Stamford, came up with the "domino effect" theory and language for the ads. The famous London-based design team of Kai and Sunny , known for their work with Nike and Levi's, was brought in for the visuals. The ads were created so that you see something new, like a wrapper or a rat, each time you look at it.

I came across the plans for the campaign by contacting Keep Stamford Beautiful after a concerned 15-year-old sent me an email to tell me that people who don't clean up after themselves BUG HIM! He wrote: "My mom, sister and I went to Cove Island Beach Park to have a day off and relax. But the problem was that the beach was completely filthy. There was bottles and garbage everywhere. My family and I have been living in this beautiful town for more then 14 years and never saw the beach so filthy. What can we do?"

Click here to watch the What's Bugging You with Esty. July 31st and after, you'll see the most recent "What's Bugging You" report.

Following the report, I received email from viewers letting me know it's not just people in Stamford who aren't picking up after themselves. Here is a response from Fairfield. " People in this are think they are so entitled, they simply do not think of other people or the consequences of their actions. As a frequent dog walker at The Cascades in Fairfield, I come face to face with filth on a daily basis. The very day I saw you report, I not only stepped in a pile of dog feces there, but then, 30 seconds later, caught a man urinating on a tree in the parking lot/picnic area, even though there were port-o-potties about 20 feet away." "Picnickers leave garbage, bones, food and broken glass."  Yet this viewers add she is glad that people like Esty exist in his generation.

Not every teen thinks like Esty. With Keep Stamford Beautiful,
North Castle did research in schools and found too many young people didn't think litter was their problem. The teens said trash already on the sidewalk was the city's or a neighbor's problem, but not theirs.

The campaign is based on the broken window theory, and designed to help teens understand the domino effect of what they do today, tomorrow and overtime, add up to serious consequences. It's meant to help instill a sense of self-respect and control of their environment.

Depending on funding, you'll continue to see the ads in such places as Metro North platforms and in schools. All involved are working on the campaign gratis, with Heyman Properites sponsoring the entire effort. If you would like to help with the "Litter Leads to Bad Things" effort, contact Ellen O'Neill, Executive Director of Keep Stamford Beautiful at 203-358-8268.

Dog Days of Summer

I thought I had the shedding dog problem all figured out. Twice a year I have my lab mutt Willamena shaved. Her short hairstyle is all the rage, all the cool dogs are doing it. However, upon interviewing Talia Senna, a kennel manager and trainer at Dog Gone Smart in Norwalk on how to keep your pets safe during this heat wave, she tells me my dog's coat is there for her protection. That it actually helps her stay cool.

But what about my floor?

To my relief the trainer said as long as I wasn't shaving her as a means to keeping her cool, its okay. Whew. She did warn, though, that close cutting the fur on a dog that is outside a lot, can risk sunburn and skin irritation.

While much hot weather safety is common sense, such as not leaving your pet in the car where temperatures can reach 140 degrees, there are a few things you might not have thought of.

I could tell Willamena wasn't liking something about the hot weather, since she's been trying to pull me back into the apartment after only a third of her usual walk. It turns out her paws might have been sensitive to the hot sidewalk. Unlike popular belief, Senna says dogs' paws aren't leather-like and tough. She says they are the most sensitive part of the dog's body and can burn very easily. So advice is to not take your dog on a log walk on the pavement. Try to get to grass as soon as possible.

Here is Willamena after a long walk on not-so-hot pavement to see magician David Blaine.

If a situation occurs where you need to check for dehydration, Senna says to look at your dog's gums. Lift up its jowls and look right where the gumline meets the tooth. If it's white, your dog is in the first stage of dehydration. Also, if you pinch your dogs skin and it doesn't snap back right away, Senna says you need to get your dog to the vet for fluids.

While cooling off in a lake or swimming pool is fun for many dogs - did you know dogs die in swimming pools because they can't figure out how to get out? They can't see the stairs and panic when they can't pull themselves up. Willamena loves to swim, she'll jump into any lake, mud puddle or fish pond she sees. But did you know places like Dog Gone Smart offer doggie swimming lessons? The trainers there also advise the use of life jackets for your dog. Not because it can't swim, but because, like Willamana, it might not want to get out! With a life jacket, you can use a long line and pull your pet in if it gets tired.

Learning from Past Mistakes

Mistake

One morning a couple of weeks ago you might have heard me tell you about a fire on "Harold Avenue" in Bridgeport. Photographer Lori Golias heard it too and corrected me. "Heather, it's Harral Avenue. Not Harold. I shot that video last night. Don't you know Harral was a Bridgeport leader?" 

No, I replied, what did he do?

"I don't know."

Lesson Learned

After correcting the writer's mistake in the copy, I googled Henry Harral and found he was Bridgeport's 8th, 10th and 12th mayor. There wasn't much else about the successful saddle maker. No biography. No Wikipedia entry. No campaign website. But I did find an old Time magazine article and a mention in Antiques and the Arts.

Harral commissioned the great American architect Alexander Jackson Davis to build him a grand Gothic-style home fit for a mayor. Davis was also the man behind  Lyndhurst, in Tarrytown, New York. Work began on Harral's home in 1846 and was complete about a year after  P.T. Barnum's mansion, Iranistan, modeled after the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Executive Director and Curator of the The Barnum Museum, Kathy Maher, points out how magnificent it must have been in Bridgeport at that time with two architecturally important structures. Iranistan was destroyed by fire in 1857.

Click to enlarge. Replica of Iranistan courtesy of The Barnum Museum.

Harral died of Tuberculosis in 1854. His family lived in the Gothic villa in Bridgeport until 1866 when it was sold to Nathaniel Wheeler. The mansion on Golden Hill Street came to be known as "Walnut Wood." Wheeler's son Archer lived in the home until his death in 1956. He willed the house to the city of Bridgeport, allegedly for preservation.

Mistake?

However, within a year, the longtime socialist mayor of Bridgeport, Jasper McLevy ordered the mansion torn down to make room for a new city hall. Running on an "urban renewal" yet "save the mansion" platform, democrat Samuel Tedesco beat out McLevy in the mayoral election of 1957. But within less than a year, Tedesco went back on his election promise, and the mansion was torn down in 1958.

There were protests, but at least the city of Bridgeport, the Smithsonian and the Barnum Museum were able to save some of the molding, mirrors, art work, furniture, doors - and doorknobs- of the home. A room is recreated at the Barnum Museum. Be sure to look for the Tiffany clock from the 1860s and the famous semi-nude Pandora sculpture by Chauncey Ives.

Lesson Learned

If the Harral-Wheeler house still stood today, it was be of great importance to the city and the country because of the rarity of Gothic architecture in America. But according to Mayer of the Barnum Museum, the country actually benefited from the loss of the home. She says the destruction of such buildings led to the preservation movement in this country. Less than ten years after the Harral-Wheeler home was destroyed, in 1966, the Historic Preservation Act  was instated.  Just this year the city of Bridgeport was designated a Preserve America Community by the the White House for its role in recognizing the cultural heritage and realigning it with redevelopment and growth.

Capturing the Moment

On the same day last week that I saw Crunch 'n Munch for the first time in the vending machine at work and decided to try it since it was just a small bag and only 50-cents, I found the picture I was looking for in April when writing about the month in 2004 that Crunch 'n Munch was sold at Yankee Stadium instead of Cracker Jack.  See "Take Me Out to The Ballgame" in the April archives.

Okay, this this picture is back lit and not as good as I remembered, but it made me think about how we take pictures in our personal lives compared to the way we shoot the news.  In the news world, this cute picture of the salesman happily smiling and showing me his box of Crunch 'n Munch is a no-no. Its called "staging." Yes, I asked him if I could take a picture of him holding a box so I could see. In news, we are supposed to capture the moment without interfering. Actually, that's what I tried to do with this other picture, but I knew you wouldn't be able to tell what he was selling. In shooting news, the photographer would have had to somehow get close enough to shoot a tighter shot of just the box, of course without disrupting the vendor's selling. Often when we are shooting a story, the subject will ask us what we want her to do. My line is, "Pretend we aren't here."

So here is a tip if you see a news crew out in the field. If you want to be on camera, don't start waving at it. Remember, we are supposed to be capturing what's going on as if we aren't there. So what are you waving at? 

This next problem you might have encountered with your home video camera. Out comes the camera, you are rolling, yet everyone stands in line as if to take a family photo. Or have you noticed as soon as you pull out the camera, whatever action is going on ceases, or the story they are flawlessly telling turns into "uhhs." It can be a challenge. But it's so much fun.

Your Part in Art

Here in southwestern Connecticut, artists of all sorts seem to be able to develop talents. The area boasts topnotch performance halls, stages, art galleries, schools and programs and mentors. The proximity to New York City doesn't hurt either.

However, young art and creators can't prosper without patrons.

Last month, Deborah Gibson played a supporting role in a new musical, "Saint Heaven" at Stamford Center for the Arts. During an interview, she told me that while she always prefers a larger role, she in part took this role to help support the new production. She questioned, "What art and plays will our generation produce?" She said unless you want to continously see only revivals, young people need to be involved in the production - and viewing- of new ventures.

The World Premiere of "Saint Heaven" at Stamford Center for the Arts was part of the Center's SCA Stages. The program was previously known as "the Fringe Festival." The mission of SCA Stages is to provide a supportive environment where new works can progress to the next stage of development. 

Saint Heaven has finished its run in Stamford. However, the producers hope the musical will either go on to Broadway or other stages in the future.  Currently, Deborah Gibson says she is in Los Angeles working on a musical of her own.

If you are not familiar with Gibson, at the age of 16 in 1986, she became the youngest person ever to write, produce, and perform a number one single. Since then she has managed to stay alive in the entertainment industry in various ways.  Here is a picture of me with her back in 2000 while she was promoting a new album in upstate New York. Click to enlarge.