Blog VI: Jack Vauxcelles Update

Alas, poor Yorick, I haven’t updated this very much lately. So it’s time for just a bit more self-aggrandizement.

I’m a horrible Facebook addict. I probably spend four hours a day at least on it, chatting with my friends. Curse you, Mark Zuckerberg.  Between writing about the current drama unfolding in the Region 1 Board of Education, the battles with wind farms in nearby Colebrook, and the obscene amount of snow we’ve had lately (and more to come), Facebook has become a beacon of sanity in insane times. In fact, those little red numbers that indicate a photo or status comment brighten my long days at the office beyond the power of words to tell.

A couple of weeks ago, I received notification that I was tagged in a photo. Was it me at a party in an embarrassing situation that I don’t remember? Surprisingly enough, no!

 Remember my friend Chris Johnson, a.k.a. Jack Vauxcelles (link to prior blog posted here) at the Mountain View Inn? Turns out he upgraded his portrait of me from “beautiful” status to “iconic.” Check out the change:

This is beyond glorious and I’m going to try and find a spot in our company office to hang it. If I had time, money and resources, I’d get it laminated so I could kiss myself every morning.

Until next time!

--Max

For the record: I don’t smoke anymore, but I do in fact own a human skull. Really. Bought it on eBay.

Infections! Infections! Zombies!

Just an interesting (and morbid) nugget from North Canaan: the Geer Village retirement community had to initiate a quasi-quarantine over the last couple of weeks (not allowing new admissions, and closing the nursing center there) to keep a gastrointestinal virus under control. The precautions were lifted this Monday.

John Horstman, chief administrator of Geer, tells me that visitors were allowed in “if they dared,” and that this has happened once before. He also adds that the flu season scarcely touches Geer because most residents (around 95 percent) are diligent about getting their flu shots.

“I don’t like to keep families away,” Mr. Horstman told me today. “It’s healthy for residents to see their families, but it wasn’t right for us to bring in frail, elderly people.”

Mr. Horstman informs me that Noble Horizons in Salisbury had similar controls in place, but their director wasn’t available for comment.

The message from Geer and Noble is clear and appropriate for the rest of us as well during the season when we are all forced indoors with each other: stay safe, wash your hands and try not to infect your coworkers if at all possible.

Blog IV: Cornwall was on TV!

If there’s one thing that reporters like, it’s…having money to pay rent and eat. But if there were two things reporters like, the second would be name-dropping!

I have in my arsenal the Senior Editor of Fortune Magazine, Peter Wolf of the J. Geils band, Caldecott-winning illustrator Marc Simont, Yale Art School dean Sam Messer, Connecticut Attorney General (and now U.S. Senator) Richard Blumenthal, and I ALMOST got to interview Ralph Nader (though the opportunity was nixed).

My coworker likes to brag that he’s talked with Mary Higgins Clark and Juliette Lewis—to which I retort that I recently spoke with someone who lives in Litchfield County named Stephen King.

And now, town of Cornwall, prepare to be name-dropped, as per Mike Agogliati over at our sister newspaper, the Torrington Register-Citizen:

“CORNWALL — A Litchfield County town was featured Monday night in an episode of the hit TV show “Gossip Girl”

Several of the show’s main characters traveled to Cornwall in search of the truth about “Juliet,” a character played by Katie Cassidy.

The search leads them to a fictitious boarding school, “The Knightley School,”,which another character, “Serena,” played by Blake Lively, used to attend.

Dan, played by Penn Badgley, and Blair, played by Leighton Meester find that Damien, played by Kevin Zegers is dealing drugs at the school.”

Unfortunately the episode (called "The Townie") is not available for streaming online. (Maybe that's fortunate for me, since I'd probably have to watch it if it were and I don't want to watch some TV show with people more well-dressed than I ever saw in high school.)

However, rumor has it that one scene set in at a teenaged house party in Cornwall had drinking and *gasp* drugs. This is incredibly shocking, since given Cornwall's nature as a second-home community, I don't think there are nearly enough teenagers in the entire town to fill a house and create a party.

Here's a recap of "The Townie" to browse at your leisure:http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/gossip-girl-season-4-episode-11-townie/

If anyone knows if there’s a local connection to this—like one of the show’s writers is a Cornwaller or grew up there—I’d love to hear about it. The closest I can find is that Cecily von Ziegesar, who wrote the novels on which the TV show is based, was born in Norwalk, but maybe there's more to it than that.  Let me know at mwittstein@ctcentral.com.

Blog number III: Norfolk's own Jack Vauxcelles

And now for something completely different….a bit of good old-fashioned nepotism.

Meet my best friend and college roommate, Christopher Knight Johnson a.k.a. Jack Vauxcelles (his preferred moniker).

Nobly he slaves away each day at Norfolk’s picturesque Mountain View Inn, cooking pancakes and washing dishes until his hands chap.

When he’s not scheduling massages, checking people in, or turning over guest rooms, he paints. And the man painteth well. In fact, he has a degree in it, and plans to further his training in a masters program and eventually teach and sell his works.

Normally, when writing about an artist’s vision, I tend to paraphrase whatever he or she says about his work, sprinkled by a few direct quotes so that I don’t sound like a clueless hack. However, this time around I’ll let him speak for himself about the creative process:

 "The first of two themes that most inspires me is the natural chaos of the universe and nature's struggle to achieve order. This interests me on any scale- from the atrophy of civilization and its attempt to survive, to the mind's struggle to rationalize and make sense of the world around us. The first half of my work is derived from the bittersweet and futile essence of this theme, essentially the warding off of death and the insanity it can cause, but still the necessity of both chaos and order."

 "
Secondly, absurdity and the avoidance of reality dictates the other half of my work. Creating fictional works that completely avoid the question of life and the reality of the struggle complement my portfolio by illustrating the blind optimism and manic desires of the imagination that humanity has for so long used to fill in the unanswerable blanks. Impulsive and uninhibited, the second half of my work honors absurdity excessively, and is the only stance emotional beings can take to shield themselves from the cruelty of life. Therefore, they are meant to humor and amuse.

 "
As in the case with both themes, I usually depict moments or scenes that are not usually viewable.  I choose to display things that are impossible, or usually censored,because they are more captivating than the things we commonly see. Because of this, many of these things have a dream-like quality about them.

Although I wish to make more sophisticated my compositions, I will keep the same simple themes of visceral struggle counterbalanced with blissful ignorance.”

With that being said, here’s what he paints.

A portrait he did of me—this will hang in my office someday, when I actually have an office instead of a crummy corner cubicle:

And one he did of an ex, to win her back, which I’ll let him tell you if it worked or not:

One of James K. Munz, philosophy chairman at Western Connecticut State University:

And sometimes of himself:

He also asks that I post his abstract stuff.

He can be reached at the Mountain View Inn at 2032974991, or check out his website cknightjohnson.com. He takes commissions. He designs websites. He’ll also probably dance if you throw him quarters. Tough times, we artists live in.

Shameless plug: attention ladies, he’s currently single.

Until next time.

--Max

I call this "The Aristocrats Car."

Hi folks,

I’ve been remiss in throwing stuff up on here. I have a decent entry in the works on my attendance at the Washington DC Rally to Restore Sanity (and some other stuff actually related to the Northwest Corner), but in the meantime, I thought I’d post this nugget of New Milford insanity. Maybe I'll work this into one of my fiction stories.

This car was in the Railroad Street parking lot near our office in downtown New Milford for the better part of a week. I have no idea who the owner was, how it got there, or why it looks this way*, but I had to catch it on my HD Flip as I was leaving. Freeze-frame if you aren't offended by, uh, really offensive graffiti.

(*One reliable source, though, said that the owner did this himself.)

Yes, that is a container of cinnamon sitting on the trunk. As I hear so often, "no comment."

Cheeri-o!

-Max.

Rumsey Hall

Rumsey Hall, that great, vine-covered castle of decrepitude in Cornwall center, finally met its end Monday morning. I’ve written about this old girl so many times that I can recite its history by heart:

Built in 1848 as a school called the Alger Institute, it later was home to a boarding house, the Rumsey Hall prep school, and in the 1960’s, the Marvelwood school for boys. It was left to the town by its last private owner, Nora Wise, who died in 1987. In 1989, a storm tore part of the roof off. There was a preservation movement in the early 1990s to turn it into the town library (which is instead now a fairly new building next to the town hall), but it was instead sold to a realtor named Andrew T. Hingson, who lives in the building behind it, and claimed he would turn it into a single-family residence.

Last year, he applied for a demolition permit instead, and the town building inspector declared the place uninhabitable. I have not met Andrew T. Hingson or ever talked to him on the phone.

I traveled up to lovely Cornwall from my ghetto hovel in Danbury last Saturday to take a few pictures of it before it was no more.  Unfortunately, my Nikon died and my photographic skills are about on the level of a blind chimpanzee holding a camera stolen from an unsuspecting tourist. so I got my friend Jack to take a few for me. Here they are:

Here's me (at left) and the neighbor (right):

View from the church parking lot next door:

The fellow who owns the house next door—which was originally the Rumsey Hall headmaster’s house--dropped by while we were shooting and chatted with my friend and I about the place. He mentioned (if I recall correctly) that Nora Wise was instrumental in keeping a main highway running through Cornwall’s town center, which is why the area—compared to almost any other New England town center—is now almost completely free of traffic.

On Monday afternoon I was interviewing a fellow at the Cornwall Historical Society and stopped back at Rumsey around 3 p.m., where the backhoes from R.V. Noad construction were still running. My camera had been left at home, so you, readers, are instead going to be subjected to my terrible filmmaking skills! Here you go:

 I’m sad as anyone else to see an attractive old building loaded with history like this one hit the wrecking ball, but then again, Cornwall has no shortage of beautiful places. Speaking of which, here’s another photo my friend snapped for the hell of it of the famous Rock Cottage in West Cornwall, located behind and above the post office and built by a prominent Cornwall lawyer in the 1800s; I have never wanted to own a house quite so badly as this one:

Stow a few thousand books and antiques in there, and I'd never leave.

Until next time.

--Max

Welcome!

Hello, my name is Max Wittstein and I spend my life in front of a computer. Well, it seems that way sometimes.

I write for a living, and hope to continue doing so.

I'm a recent (2009) graduate of Western Connecticut State University, working full time at the Litchfield County Times in my lovely--er, tolerable--hometown of New Milford, Connecticut. My beat is the Northwest Corner of Litchfield County, including the towns of Sharon, Cornwall, Goshen, Salisbury, Goshen, North Canaan, Falls Village, and Norfolk. (That sounds like a lot, until you think about how much actually happens in rural towns of 1,500 people, more than half of whom are only there on weekends and in summer.)

This blog is a spot for the goings on of my beat, and I'll be posting lots of interesting blurbs, videos, and photos as time goes by that never quite make it out of the newsroom.

If you know of something in the area that you consider a good topic for the County Times or this blog, please email me at mwittstein@ctcentral.com, or call my office phone at 860-355-4121 ext. 151.