Ahem, Happy 4th everybody. Enjoy that space chicken.

The fiel dof dreams 10 years later. The Hollywood script about to be penned, an abandoned lot owned by town of Greenwich, teens clear it of weeds and added fencing. Then the Greenwich political flunkies get into the mix and say no permission, no mas. From the Advocate:

Taco Bell Field?

Representatives of the fast-food chain famous for its chalupas and gorditas tried to reach out yesterday to offer their support to a group of local teens who are facing eviction from the Wiffle ball field they built on a vacant town-owned lot in Riverside.

With all the tests that we inflict on the student population these days, you’d think that there’d be some sort of national movement to do some basic physical testing that might be actually useful knowledge to students, teachers and parents. Simple vision and hearing tests would perhaps go a long way to determining if there are physical problems making it difficult for students to adapt to the modern learning environment.

I guess the larger issue is how we as a society don’t quite get that basic preventative health care is a commodity that should be affordable and accessible to all. But back to vision and education, from The Center for Health and Healthcare in Schools:

James Ellroy writes some killer crime fiction. LA Confidential. The Black Dhalia. Modern Classics of noir crime genre. He never wrote about the Cleveland Torso Murders, even though you had Eliot Ness and the the flats of Cleveland to work with, mostly because Ellroy writes about LA, and crime, and messy acts of violence and investigation that chase the drama around real life stories And it’s Ellroy at his noirest that I think of when reading about the crime scene investigation of the shooting on Flax Hill. Let’s start with this Hour report:

The Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation has awarded a $25k grant to the Historic Commission targeted towards creating a historical preservation plan for the 9 Mill Hill buildings. The City of Norwalk kicked in $40k towards the same effort, resulting in a project, sorely needed, to move forward. The Hour reports:

The Norwalk Historical Commission received a $25,000 grant from the trust and a $40,000 grant from the city’s capital budget to hire a historical architect to create a preservation plan for nine buildings located at Mathews Park and Mill Hill Historic Park, all of which range from mid-18th century to early-20th century.

The report card, if you will, overall B+, drug enforcement C and Traffic Safety B. Looks like the NPD could boost some of its drug enforcement efforts. The Advocate reports:

When neighbors were concerned about her well-being, Joan Dale got a call from the police. When she didn’t immediately respond, an officer showed up at her Cranbury doorstep.

Dale, 42, gives Norwalk police high marks for their responsiveness.

“My experience was very positive,” Dale said.

She’s not alone.

In a recent Sacred Heart University survey, Norwalk residents overwhelmingly approved of the city police officers’ overall job performance.

State Reps Larry Cafero and TOni Boucher secured $20k for Norwalk High School. The press release below:

HARTFORD – House Republican Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr. and Rep. Toni Boucher, today announced they have secured $20,000 to help build a marquee for Norwalk High School to permit important and emergency information between high school students and the residents of the City of Norwalk.

“This was a team effort among state and local officials and Norwalk High School. Credit is due all around. Gov. Rell’s administration was extremely helpful in securing the necessary funds for this project,’’ Cafero said.

Let’s start out with the fact, statistically, that Norwalk is a very safe city. And let’s also concede that perception is reality for most. And then let’s take a trip to the Marvel Universe and the history of spidey-sense.

Fans of Spiderman know that much of the plot, once stripped bare of the evil doers, was about whether Spiderman was vigilantism gone awry with J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle, representing that p.o.v. or Spiderman being the people’s hero, with Peter Parker representing that view. In reading today’s Hour I kind of get that comic book style positioning:

A $240,000 federal Clean Water fund grant is  coming to Norwalk thanks to State Rep Chris Perone. He sent out an press release yesterday highlighting the details:

State Representative Chris Perone (D-Norwalk) applauded A $240,000 federal grant heading to Norwalk to help deal with the cities outdated and insufficient stormwater sewer system. Norwalk was eligible for the funding, from the federal Clean Water Fund, due to its participation in Connecticut’s Stormwater Authority Pilot Program – a program created in 2007 through legislation drafted by Rep. Perone.

Lately I’ve been noticing more innocent comments being tagged as spam in the spam filter queue. This site, like most blogs, recieves a heady amount of spam attacks because the comments are open. As a result, comments that should automatically appear are being lost due to the fact that I don’t read the spam queue. Today it wasn’t too bad so I did glance through the spam queue, caught a couple of comments and moved them over. But then I sort of was amazed at what some of the spam was targeting.

For instance, these were a series of links: