Hartford, Conn., is a troubled, damnably lovable New England city. It is one of the poorest cities of its size in the country, yet it’s the capital of one of the richest states in the union.
The state once took over the city’s schools. Crime is ridiculous. Gangs periodically rear their ugly heads and make life hell for everybody — including themselves.
Yet is is a tough city to write off. I’ve lived in Connecticut for just shy of 23 years, and I love Hartford — her people and her potential – even though a popular parlor game here is making fun of the city. When something bad or stupid happens, someone will sigh, “Only in Hartford.” It gets so tiresome to hear people talk about how Hartford’s glory days — the middle of the 1800s — are behind her, back when the lure of the thriving and wealthy city brought the likes of Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a host of other glitterati. Katharine Hepburn was born here. So were Samuel Colt and Noah Webster.
Today, it is a gritty city, with all that that entails.
And yet, and yet.
Hartford boasts prime examples of every piece of architecture from colonial days on. Yes, we’ve lost some buildings to “urban renewal,” but we’ve hung onto some, too. The parks are beautiful. The people are interesting. The art world is active. People who move up and out – a trend since the middle of the last century — have a hard time turning their backs on Hartford.
Cue Mayor Mike Peters, a former city firefighter who worked his way up through the ranks of the Democratic party to become Hartford’s mayor in 1993, and continued his reign for four two-year terms.
And what a reign it was. Mayor Mike loved his city. Because of the city’s charter, he was more of a figurehead, but even without any real executive power, he did things like organize the Hooker (for Thomas, one of the city’s colonial founders) Day Parade, where a city known for its primness (you don’t get to be the Insurance Capital of the World on the strength of your wild, drunken parties) loosened its tie a bit. If a new business opened, Mayor Mike was there. He tore down shameful public housing projects. He fought to keep businesses in the capital city. He was tireless in his cheerleading for his city.
Added to that, you never knew quite what he was going to say, but you could bank on it being entertaining. The local paper, the Hartford Courant (where I work), said in an editorial that once, in an effort to get the notoriously hands-off-Hartford suburban towns to indulge in a little regional cooperation, Mayor Mike said, “You give me a dump truck and I’ll give you a gang.”
Yeah. That sounds like Mayor Mike. When I saw him around town — at fundraisers, mostly — he’d cry out, “Susie Baby!” I have never been “Susie” or “Baby,” but so it was with Mayor Mike. At some function or another — at its heart, Hartford is a small enough town where you can easily hobnob with the mayor — I once introduced him to my son. Though the mayor was surrounded with people who appeared to very much want his attention, Mayor Mike stood for what seemed like a half-hour and told my son all kinds of lies — good ones — about his mother’s work. I left a little embarrassed, and my then-teenaged son left a little impressed by his mother’s accomplishments — puffed up though they were by the effusive Mayor.
He decided not to run for office in 2001. Instead, he threw his energies into other projects, including a downtown restaurant — named, of course, Mayor Mike’s — where he was a frequent and happy host.
But he missed the limelight and — to be honest — it missed him. He talked about making another run for office, but that was just talk. Mayor Mike had been sick for a while with liver disease, and on Sunday, he died of complications from it. Old-time pollsters and shiny-new politicans from every part of the political spectrum mourned.
Hartford will have more politicians and busloads of elected officials — some of them Ivy-League-trained, slick and sleek people willing to make a contribution – but we won’t ever have another Mayor Mike. Only in Hartford. Godspeed to him.
That’s Mayor Mike on the left, with Hedda Lettuce at a Real Art Ways auction, post Peters’ reign.
They’re known across the pond as the “laid off,” “bought-out” and otherwise “fired,” and the Church of England has a prayer for them that says, in part:
The problem for most of us if we want to be eco-friendly is that it feels like you have to spend money to be kind to Mother Earth. A 
…this is just a 
As “Dating Jesus” starts to get into the hands of readers too fearless to tremble at the two f-words in the title — fundamentalism and feminism (and bears, oh my!) — I am starting to hear from fellow sisters in Christ — and some brothers, too – who grew up under similar, restrictive circumstances, though not always in the church of Christ. Together, we form a body that takes for its theology a little bit of everything.
Even though I am a sometimes fan of self-improvement, I forgot to make a resolution — a serious one, that is — so I am flying free in ’09, without direction or goals.
Well, two, actually. One’ s on WNPR, 
