Take two and call me in the morning

“The Spheres,’’ by Kathleen Kucka, in her show “Slow Burn,’’ at Heather Gaudio Fine Art, New Canaan, Conn., through April 25 but not open to the general public. New Canaan is in affluent Fairfield Country, which has had a high incidence of COVID-19, a bit of it attributed to a big party in Westport, which turned out to be a big spreader.

‘Natural Lineage’

“Charged” (oil on canvas), by Natalie Arnoldi

Heather Gaudio Fine Art, in New Canaan, Conn., is showing through March 7 "Charles and Natalie Arnoldi: Natural Lineage," recent paintings by father and daughter.

The gallery says:

“Although the visual language of these two Californian artists could not be more different -- the brightly colored geometric abstractions by Charles Arnoldi a bold contrast to Natalie's muted representational evocations of light and atmosphere -- the two share common threads in their investigative approach. Both enjoy conveying their creativity in series, encapsulating ideas and delving deep into their enquiry, painting several canvases of the same subject to fine-tune the aesthetic in question. Both are not shy to present their output in oversized scales, unabashedly captivating the viewer with patchworks of color or quotidian references, and both are equally deft at pivoting their magnitudes to smaller, more relatable sizes.’’

Chris Powell: Leave vaping to the vapers; 'the right to be forgotten'

Just when the country is realizing the futility of criminalizing marijuana, it is lapsing back into incoherence with campaigns, nationally and in Connecticut, to outlaw flavored "vaping" products.

Do people really think that smoking marijuana and chronic intoxication are better than inhaling flavored vapors? Science suggests that "vaping," risky as it may be, is less harmful than smoking tobacco and can help escape tobacco addiction.

Drug criminalization has done more damage than drugs themselves -- creating violent crime in a contraband trade, luring the undereducated into dangerous business, and burdening people with criminal records. Only drugs that can cause immediate death are worth criminalizing.

Tobacco smoking is being defeated without criminal law by publicity and taxes. Outlawing flavored "vaping" products promises only to create another contraband industry even as most people already know "vaping" can be harmful.

Indeed, if Connecticut wasn't full of convictions for drug possession and dealing, there wouldn't be clamor for the records-erasing, history-rewriting "clean slate" legislation that Gov. Ned Lamont has just endorsed in principle. The legislation would erase all sorts of convictions -- not just drug-related ones -- for people who go on to stay out of trouble for five years or so.

Erasing convictions for conduct that is decriminalized would not be so objectionable, since criminal law is sometimes unjust and unnecessary. Homosexual acts and adultery once were criminal offenses in Connecticut and now are considered none of government's business.

But blanket erasure of convictions for acts that remain criminal would diminish the deterrence of criminal law and the public's ability to protect itself with job applicants, tenants, contractors, and romantic partners. Blanket erasure also would diminish the advantage to offenders to stop offending, giving them not only second chances to achieve decent lives but also second chances to offend, their first offenses being concealed.

Besides, much of the burden borne by former offenders is not their criminal records at all but their lack of job skills when their sentences are discharged. Most people will give second chances to former offenders who can show that they want to go straight and that they have the skills to do so.

Crumbling from its loss of self-respect, the European Union has just established its own form of "clean slate" policy, a "right to be forgotten," requiring news organizations to suppress records of crimes and other disgraceful acts upon the request of the people involved. This doesn't make that misconduct any less disgraceful. Rather it minimizes disgrace, diminishing society's standards.

With its "right to be forgotten" Europe eventually may be asking, "Adolf who?" With "clean slate" legislation Connecticut eventually may be asking, "Fotis who?"

{Fotis Dulos, of New Canaan, has been charged with the murder of his missing wife, Jennifer Farber Dulos.}

Repealing statutes of limitations relieves accusers of their duty to come forward while evidence is fresh and available and justice more possible. Repeal also is grossly prejudicial to the accused, who will be tainted forever even if innocent. But these days discarding the ancient standards of justice is politically correct.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

'Geological strata'

“Compression 2” (books and wax), by Jessica Drenk, in her show “Jessica Drenk: Second Nature,’’ at Heather Gaudio Fine Art, New Canaan, Conn., Nov. 23-Jan 11.

The gallery says:

“For Drenk, the material is the starting point of her artistic inquiry, an exploration that takes her from simple notions and ideas to complex expressions of information, systems and patterns. She reconfigures every-day materials such as books, pencils, plastic bags, even PVC pipe, drawing on their physical properties to re-contextualize them into visually compelling and thought-provoking sculptural outcomes.

“The exhibition will feature a new body of work emerging from mass-produced utilitarian and readily discarded objects: plastic bags. Spliced and organized by color, they are transformed into banded formations, layers resembling geological strata. Repurposing this product into a structure resembling its material origins, plastic as a by-product of petroleum, Drenk's reconfiguration timely questions the reverberations of our every-day consumption and its long-lasting environmental impact.’’

More like survival of the fittest

“Courtship,’’ by John Owen, in the “39th Annual Juried Photography Show’’ at the Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, Conn., through Feb. 15.

'Most Pretentious People'

The Waveny Mansion, in New Canaan.

"I lived in a town called New Canaan, in Connecticut, where they are far too snobby to even mention celebrities. Many American towns are famous for things like, "See the World's Largest Ball of String!" I think my town's would probably have to be 'Most Pretentious People.'''

-- Katherine Heigl, Hollywood actress and producer

Don Pesci: The unmentionable 'F' word

VERNON, Conn.

Wander into the badlands of any large city in the U.S.,  shout out “Father” and nothing will stir. Fathers are rare in this environment; far rarer, shall we say, in the north end of Hartford than they are in posh New Canaan. What happened to them? Have they all fled to the Left Bank in Paris to become expatriate artists?

The problem is cultural, say most sociologists. Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said of the  very rich – “They are very different from you and me” – so is the underclass very different than the middle class or the upper class. No one pauses very long to entertain the question: Why are they different? That is one among many questions assiduously avoided whenever well intentioned liberals get together with equally well intentioned professors of raceology to discuss the equally absorbing question: Why can’t we have an honest discussion on race in America?

Answer: We can’t, among other reasons, because we shy from answering the all-important question posed two paragraphs above: Who killed fathers in the African-American community? Indeed, we refuse to acknowledge its importance. This question cannot be properly probed without mentioning the “U” word – underclass -- and its connection with households without fathers.

“Poverty” is the polite word most often used by polite liberals and more earnest progressives to describe the plight of the unmentionable underclass. And, no, people who discuss these things are not racist for having so brashly mentioned the unmentionable; namely, that there is an underclass under the noses of most well-intentioned liberals and that this underclass has become a permanent feature of modern day America.

Poverty in the United States has never been, with some rare exceptions, permanent; in fact the impermanence of poverty is what has driven the desperate poor to the United States since its founding. The boast engraved on the edestal of the Statute of Liberty -- “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The  wretched refuse of your teeming shore./ Send these the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door” – is a celebration of the impermanence of poverty. But an underclass has since become a permanent fixture of our social order; it is that very thing the huddled masses were hoping to escape in their desperate flight to America, where a steady advancement up the ladder of success was impeded by speed bumps rather than the fortress walls of a class system that in Europe kept the rich in splendor and the poor in rags, more or less permanently.

It seems ages ago that the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan  warned us all that the African-American family – dad, mom, kids -- was becoming an endangered species. Part of the problem was – and is – that the welfare system replaced Dad with a kind of sustenance that imprisoned people within the system; welfare clients were held in welfare cages on the periphery of poverty. The more they were helped, the more secure and inescapable their prisons became. A welfare state that was supposed to allow movement from temporary dependency to self-sufficiency became a more or less permanent holding cell, a purgatory whose doors, unlike the door mentioned in the Emma Lazarus poem, never opened upon more hopeful vistas.

How many fatherless children are there in our welfare system? Lots and lots and lots. For the most part, fatherlessness is a precondition for receiving welfare. And some of the younger “fathers” of children born out of wedlock – how ancient that word sounds – have never made it to the alter. Many of them are in prison. Brought up without fathers themselves, they drifted – like ships without rudders, blown here and there by every ill wind. Their children will drift also, unless they are made of very stern spiritual stuff.

Grandmothers and grandfathers, if they have been lucky enough to remain together, may help. Ministers, priests, rabbis, imams, social workers, other siblings and teachers may help. Still, the chance that a young African-American boy whose caretakers have relied on a social-welfare system that strives to “play father to the child” will be able to avoid the pitfalls that lead to gang affiliation, poor marks in school or a prison cell, is considerably more remote than would be the case if the boy were reared under the watchful eyes of a self-sufficient, responsible and employed father who would love and guide him down sure and well-marked paths.

Sons need fathers. And a society that cared for fathers and sons -- and its own welfare -- would not so perversely ignore the ruin at its door.

 

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a political writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.