(c) Connecticut Explored, Summer, 2023 By Kathy Hermes Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Back in 2010 I had the great fortune to join a National Endowment of the Humanities summer institute called “The American Maritime People” at Mystic Seaport’s Munson Institute. For five weeks a group of professors, professional sailors (including a sea captain), musicians, and writers

By Kathy Hermes (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Spring 2023 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! New Offices and New Partnerships  In this issue we bring you the Power of Place. And so it is with great pleasure that I announce Connecticut Explored’s new place, a home inside Central Connecticut State University’s Department of History. We have signed a memorandum

By Kendall Wiggin    (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Fall 2022 Subscribe/Buy the Issue!                                                       Welcome to our 20th anniversary special issue. As the newly elected board president of Connecticut Explored,

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2022 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In Winter 2011/2012 we decided to leave the State of Connecticut—editorially speaking—and explore stories about Connecticans who made their mark abroad. We followed up in Winter 2016/2017 with an issue about Connecticans in the American West. Various issues about wars take readers

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Spring 2022 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Welcome to our latest issue about historic preservation. This is our eighth, nearly bi-annual, issue with this theme. (The first was our second issue: Winter 2003). We return to this rich topic time and again with support from the State Historic Preservation

By Elizabeth Normen There is perhaps nothing more powerful than personal testimony, and so, in this issue, we’re featuring Connecticans’ own words. (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2021-2022 I’ve come to appreciate voices from the past, especially those of people who are not well represented in traditional histories. I value the perspective, which often provides

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The Fall 2021 issue, which focuses on the fascinatingly complicated and disruptive Victorian era, was put together with the assistance of guest editor Briann Greenfield. It’s one of her favorite topics, and not just because she served as the executive director of

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! This issue’s stories are about the cities, towns, and neighborhoods where we live and the way in which human intervention shapes the built environment and our experience of it. Two stories from New Haven show that human intervention can take very different

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! When I was a kid my family visited Yosemite National Park and we all bought the park’s t-shirts emblazoned with sayings such as (complete with punctuation) “Go climb a rock.” and “Go for a hike.” Well, springtime is here, so go for

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2020-2021 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The Winter 2020-2021 issue looks back at the ways in which we’ve communicated in the past, including two 20th-century developments: radio and community access television. But it also looks at perhaps one of the first ways humans communicated—cave drawings. But the drawings

By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! We salute our veterans this Veterans Day, November 11, with the Fall 2020 issue marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. In these pages we bring you personal stories—stories of ordinary Connecticans who did extraordinary things: acts brave, selfless,

By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In the critical months leading up to state-by-state ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote, Connecticut’s state legislature was not in session. While the general assembly now meets annually (since 1970), alternating a long session

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In what must be one of my earliest memories, I can conjure an image of my childhood church in West Avon, built in 1818, before it was moved across the road in 1969 as part of much-needed renovations. Recent projects I’ve been

By Ramin Ganeshram and Elizabeth Normen LINK to Op-Ed as it appeared in The Hartford Courant, February 23,  2020 As we prepare for the 2020 election and celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage it’s time to reexamine the state’s record on voting rights and to appreciate what women suffragists gleaned from the struggle for black suffrage.

by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2019-2020 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Disruptions are the inflection points of history. Sometimes disruptors are major historical figures. Sometimes their names are lost to history and come in small packages—such as the child knitters who struck for better wages in our story on page 46. Children more

by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2019 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! “Family” is the theme of this issue, and one Connecticut family in particular has been very much on my mind this last year. Venture and Meg Smith and their family lived in Haddam during the late-colonial and American Revolutionary era. Smith’s autobiography, A

by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2019 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! When we decided to go with one-word themes for our issues this year (Winter 2018-2019: Create, Spring 2019: Water, Summer 2019: Land, Fall 2019: Family), we didn’t fully anticipate the range of stories that approach would yield. We often don’t get a

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.  Spring 2019 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE Give a Gift/Become a Friend As part of my pursuit of a master’s degree in American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, I signed up for a summer course at the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport.

By Elizabeth Normen, Publisher (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2018-2019 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Long before I discovered a love of history—and particularly Connecticut history—I was a student artist who eventually realized that I was not meant to BE an artist. But in my second job I was “artist-adjacent.” I worked as the membership coordinator at

By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2018 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE This special issue commemorating the 200th anniversary of the state’s adoption of a constitution includes a two-sided centerfold poster presenting the complete text of the constitution, annotated by members of the Connecticut Supreme Court Historical Society (CSCHS). Pull it out and refer to

By Walter W. Woodward (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2018 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE The Constitution of 1818 is a revolutionary document, not just in what it did but in what it signified—the culmination of a long-fought revolution of the state’s “lesser sort” against the “better sort,” of the “Sitting Ordered” against the venerable “Standing Order.”

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored, Summer 2018 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Sports have a way of putting Connecticut on the map. UConn basketball is Exhibit A. I’m sure I’m not alone in this experience: While I was poking around La Quinta, California on vacation last February, a local shop owner raved about UConn basketball

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2018 SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE I’m a sucker for a property with a long driveway. I love the anticipation as you turn in from the road and drive through a tunnel of forest, ideally following a few twists and turns—the suspense building—until, bam! A clearing bathed in

by Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2017-2018 Happy Valentine’s Day! What better theme is there as we celebrate our 15th anniversary than one inspired by the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday and our passion for Connecticut history? SUBSCRIBE/BUY THE ISSUE In this issue you’ll read stories about love, hate, and rivalry in Connecticut’s past.

WTNH’s Ann Nyberg recently interviewed Betsy Fox about Connecticut-made cocktail shakers, the subject of Betsy’s Summer 2017 story. Nyberg and Fox talk about cocktail shakers, CT Explored’s 15th anniversary, and Betsy’s upcoming Winter 2017-2018 story about Connecticut’s intimate-apparel industry (think CT-made corsets!) Watch the interview HERE Read the story HERE Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Celebrate with

by Elizabeth J. Normen, Fall 2017 With this issue, Connecticut Explored celebrates its 15th anniversary! Since our first issue in Fall 2002 we’ve produced 60 issues, more than 3,800 pages, hundreds of stories, a book, a website, a podcast with more than 30 episodes (approximately 900 minutes of Connecticut history), and—launching this fall—a social studies

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2017 The theme of this issue—food and agriculture—is not only seasonally on point, it’s fertile territory. The last time we dug into Connecticut’s historic foodways was Spring 2006. In that issue we featured stories about émigré Jewish farmers in eastern Connecticut, the state fish (American shad),

By Elizabeth J. Normen, Publisher (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2017 This issue is produced in collaboration with the Connecticut State Library and its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of World War I. On April 6, 1917 the United States officially entered the war. Earlier issues of Connecticut Explored, including the Winter 2014-2015 issue, focused

We’re as shocked as anyone that some students in Connecticut are reading a whitewashed history of Connecticut (http://m.ctpost.com/news/article/Fourth-grade-textbook-s-take-on-Connecticut-10779004.php?cmpid=fb-desktop#photo-12002718).  Luckily help is on the way. CT Explored will be launching a pilot of Where We Live: Connecticut, a social studies textbook and web site about Connecticut for third/fourth grade, in January 2017 with the intent of a full

By Leah S. Glaser (c) Connecticut Explored, Inc. Winter 2016-2017 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Connecticut Explored invited CCSU history professor Leah S. Glaser to write this issue’s column about this issue’s theme “Connecticans in the American West.” Last summer, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy staged a high-profile filibuster demanding the passage of gun control legislation and moved

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2016 Our Puritan forefathers dealt with crime swiftly and harshly. Punishment, not incarceration, was their preferred method of bringing a wayward lamb back into the fold. In 1773 Connecticut’s General Assembly decided to try a different approach, opening what is generally considered America’s first modern prison,

By Elizabeth J. Normen As our Fall issue went to press, we receive word that, due to Governor Malloy’s line-item veto of funding for Connecticut Humanities (CTH) in the state budget, we will not receive funding from CTH this year. Many have asked how this will affect CT Explored. The answer is that we’ll need to rely on our Friends

By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.,  Summer 2016 Anyone who knows historian Bill Hosley (and many, many do) knows that his passion for Connecticut history is boundless—and infectious. Bill’s particular passion for local history and the museums and historical societies in small towns was the inspiration for this issue. We invited him to put

by Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Spring 2016 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In this presidential election year, we decided to focus our spring issue on stories about voting rights and civic engagement. These stories remind us how hard-won our right to vote is. Often the story of women’s suffrage in this state focuses on the

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Winter 2015-2016 In the Winter 2015-2016 issue, we tell the stories of some of Connecticut’s iconic brands—and we mean the majors! Connecticut has been home to such nationally and internationally-known brands as Pepperidge Farm, Bigelow Tea, Timex, Stanley (now Stanley Black & Decker) and more. I love

By Elizabeth J. Normen FALL 2015 I was raised in a philanthropic family. That doesn’t mean I was raised with wealth. Like many others, my parents shared their time, talent, and treasure, as they were able, with their church and community. They did it quietly; I understood they were taking part in a long tradition,

By Elizabeth J. Normen Summer 2015 Is historic preservation only about saving old buildings from demolition? Unless you’re deeply involved in the field, you might not know that current thinking looks at the bigger picture and appreciates that individual buildings are components of something larger, such as a neighborhood or a community, that deserves preserving,

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Spring 2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! One upside to Connecticut’s proximity to New York City is that so many of our nation’s most creative people have wandered over the border to find refuge and inspiration among our rolling hills and fertile valleys and along our rocky shoreline. Our state

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored, Winter 2014/2015 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! “Knowledge Wins!” proclaims a World War I-era poster featured in the Winter 2014-2015 issue’s photo essay. That seems an apt theme for the entire issue. Last August marked the centennial of the advent of World War I, and though the U.S. would officially

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.  Fall 2014 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! It’s starting to feel a bit like the Wild Wild West out there. And I’m not talking about gun control. I’m referring to the apparent relaxing of standards by some publications (in print and on the Web) and writers that suggests a

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.  Summer 2014 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! 2014 marks the 400th anniversary of Adriaen Block’s 1614 voyage up the Connecticut River. Block is credited as being the first European to explore the interior of Connecticut. Unlike the English settlers who arrived 20 years later, Block and his crew weren’t

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2014 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Here’s why I’m wary of claims of being “first” in history. Last fall I was researching online other publications comparable to Connecticut Explored and came across New York Archives, a magazine published by the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. Their Spring

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2013/2014 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! How often do you shake your head and think, “How times have changed!” Then again, how often do you surprisingly find yourself thinking, “Some things never change!” And that goes for work, which is the subject of this issue and a year-long

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2013 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In our Fall 2012 10th Anniversary issue we explored Connecticut’s enduring reputation as The Land of Steady Habits—a term that stood for nearly 200 years during which political leadership was drawn from a handful of founding families. That tradition, as State Historian

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.  Summer 2013 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The sperm whale was designated the Connecticut state animal in 1975. Why do we have a state animal that’s not indigenous to the state or its coastal waters? According to the State of Connecticut Web site, the sperm whale was chosen “because

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2013 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! One of my new favorite things to do on vacation is to go on bike tours. I enjoy the deeper sense of being in a place that you get from the seat of a bicycle—something you don’t get whizzing by on a

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.  Winter 2012-2013 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! True or False: ____   Connecticut was a slave colony/state for more than 200 years. ____   Slavery in Connecticut was more benign than it was in the South. ____   Connecticut was a stronghold of abolitionism, and our soldiers went off to fight the

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2012 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! 40 never looked so good. With this—our 40th—issue, and a number of terrific events this fall (see page 11), we round out our year-long 10th-anniversary celebration! We have big news, too. Connecticut Explored has incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization independent of

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2012 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Anniversaries provide a wonderful impetus for refreshing our understanding of big moments in history. Last year’s kick-off of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the celebration of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 200th birthday, and the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2012 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The spring issue’s publisher’s letter is creating some buzz. Here’s what people are talking about: We’re calling ourselves Connecticans, not Nutmeggers. It seems appropriate that in an issue about documenting and defining our state’s boundaries that I go on record about an

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2011/2012 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! You know that feeling you have when you turn out to be right, after all? With this issue, we begin our 10th volume, and we’re feeling it. Arms pumping, fists in the air, proud, amazed, thrilled! 10 years! When we started Connecticut

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2011 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! As a history magazine, we usually draw the line for our editorial coverage at mid-20th century. But as the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 approached, we felt this event had already made an indelible mark on our

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2011 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! I signed up to take part in the 24-hour read-a-thon of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House on June14. Starting at 10a.m., in honor of the 200th anniversary of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birth, we volunteers will begin reading aloud

By Matthew Warshauer (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2011 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! One might not immediately think of Connecticut when considering the American Civil War. We were, after all, a relatively small state, both geographically and in terms of population, when compared to other Northern states. There were no battles fought here, and though some

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2010-2011 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! By the time you read this, I hope to be well on our way to figuring out whether we can some time in 2011 deliver Connecticut Explored to your Kindle, Nook, iPad or other e-reader. I expect this will elicit one of

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2010 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Here at Connecticut Explored, we’re interested not just in the past but in its connection to the present and future. Perhaps nowhere is this connection more apparent than in the areas of land conservation and urban “green” initiatives. The way a parcel

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2010 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! I was recently rereading my great-great grandmother’s journal, a record of her ship-board travels with her husband who captained the barque Hoogly in the 1860s, and came across a heartbreaking entry (August 20, 1867): “I can hardly realize that this passage is

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2009/2010 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! If you’re lucky enough to get a tour of The Austin House in Hartford (the former residence of Wadsworth Atheneum director Chick Austin and his wife Helen Goodwin Austin, built in 1930, and now owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art),

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Welcome to the new Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history. You may notice we’ve renamed this column (which was formerly the publisher’s letter) Hog River Journal. That’s our way of keeping our original name, of which many of you and all

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! You’ve waited with bated breath, and now we’re ready to reveal our new name…drumroll, please; Connecticut Explored. We’ll implement the change with the next issue. Even with our new name, we’ll be the same magazine you’ve come to love, offering stories that uncover

by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored, Spring 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! So often, the great arc of American history is portrayed in terms of westward expansion and manifest destiny. Connecticut played a small part in that movement, claiming and settling 3,500,000 acres in northeastern Ohio in the late 1700s. (Okay, not very far west,

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2008/2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The editorial team has been chomping at the bit to address the theme of vice in Connecticut, and this issue is the result. It’s not quite what some team members wanted—an edgy, unvarnished look at the seamier side of our past. Blame

By Jennifer LaRue (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2008 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In one of our usual freewheeling brainstorming sessions to plan upcoming issues, I proposed an issue devoted to the state’s musical history. The idea initially met with mixed reviews. After all, Connecticut’s not especially known for its music scene. For all the state’s

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2008 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! This wouldn’t be the first time I was a little “late to the party.” I admit I’d only been paying partial attention to the considerable effort by Senator Christopher Dodd, Senator Joseph Lieberman, and Congressman John Larson, along with a host of

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2008 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Do you remember going for a Sunday drive? “Back in the day,” my family would pile into the car after church and go for a spin—just for the enjoyment of the scenery. My brother and sister and I thought the windy, bumpy

by Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2007/2008 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! I recently discovered that both my husband and I are descended from Mayflower Pilgrims John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley. What an eerie feeling it was, then, to discover that it is “by the grace of God,” as Howland himself might have said,

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2007 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! I was all set to crow in this space about how “We Made It!” that is, how HOG RIVER JOURNAL made it to its 5th anniversary, when Jennifer LaRue Huget, HRJ’s editor, e-mailed me a New York Times article (May 17, 2007)

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2007 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Without fail, each issue of HOG RIVER JOURNAL provides me with an “aha!” moment. When I handed the spring (2007) “Bite the Bullet” issue to my mother, she informed me that our family tree included a Sweet, a member of the bonesetting

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2006/2007 Subscribe/Buy the issue! With this issue, HOG RIVER JOURNAL begins its 5th year of publication. To the many, many of you who have been with us from the beginning, a hearty thanks for your support and enthusiasm. For those readers who are just discovering HRJ,

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2006 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! After wandering through the bucolic Connecticut landscape in our summer issue, we “Turn Up the Heat” for fall by examining the ways in which fire, passion, and the pursuit of warmth have left their marks on our state. The 225th anniversary of

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2006 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! I love it when a story idea surfaces that confirms the old adage, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” And this issue, dedicated to pastimes, pleasures, peculiarities, and prominent features of summers in “Olde” Connecticut, has a “beaut,” a marvelous tale that seemingly

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2006 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Food, glorious food. We’ve become such a nation of “foodies,” it seemed natural for HRJ to celebrate Connecticut’s culinary past. We dove into the theme with relish (my last food pun, promise), discovering food historians and learning a new academic term for

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2005/2006 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Some themes are so good, they’re worth revisiting. We last explored the built environment and historic preservation in our second issue. In this issue, we revisit the realm of architectural treasures saved, threatened, and demolished—and, in Kevin Murphy’s account of the building

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2005 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! “Washington slept here.” This claim, often of dubious veracity, long ago became our national cliché. It seemed every inn, tavern, and historic home wanted to claim a piece of the legend of our nation’s first president. But George Washington really did sleep

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc.  Summer 2005 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Thousands of miles from home, on the “Big Island” of Hawaii, I stood half-listening to the patter of the Lyman House Memorial Museum tour guide, absorbed by my surroundings. I snapped to attention, though, as he said, “… built by the Lymans of New

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2005 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! “Hartford was the Silicon Valley of the 19th century,” asserts historian Bill Hosley, member of HRJ’s editorial board and ardent keeper of the Colt Manufacturing flame. That is to say, Hartford was at the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution, a hotbed

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explorded Inc., 2004 Nov/Dec/Jan 2005 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Can anyone really claim, “There’s nothing to do in Hartford?” I can’t imagine anyone could, unless, perhaps, they have no interest in music, dance, theater, film, poetry, or art. The energy and importance of the Hartford region’s arts scene is becoming

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Aug/Sep/Oct 2004 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! As election season heats up, the HRJ team could not resist an issue on the theme of politics and power. After all, Hartford is the capital city, a designation it held from English settlement until 1701 and later wrested back after sharing

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. May/Jun/Jul 2004 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! My husband says my work experience is incomplete because I never waited tables. He considers his stints as waiter, short-order cook, and bartender as important learning experiences in what we now call multitasking and serving the customer. A seminal work experience I

An Apple a Day There’s something deliciously macabre about the history of healthcare. Shivers ran up my spine as I read submissions for this issue [Feb/Mar/Apr 2004, Vol 2 No 2] that describe the devastating effects of our ancestors’ diseases and afflictions—and the sometimes more devastating treatments that were inflicted in response. Seriously though, what

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. 2003 Nov/Dec/Jan 2004 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Last spring, during the buildup to the war with Iraq, when opinions and passions ran high both against the war and in support of President Bush, this issue of HOG RIVER JOURNAL was born. In discussing a possible war-themed issue, HRJ’s

(c) Connecticut Explored Inc., Summer 2003 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! I simply can’t watch those “reality” TV series. But offer me a “historical reality” show and I’m glued to the television set. I took the bait part way through the first of the genre a couple of years ago. In the BBC’s 1900 House, a 21st-century

By Elizabeth J. Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Spring 2003 Subscribe/Buy Back Issues! A common thread running through the Spring 2003 issue on Pastimes is the sense of community that leisure-time activities engendered or were designed to foster. In the 18th century, one’s leisure-time choices may have been more limited but the objectives were often

By Elizabeth Normen (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2003 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Built It/Razed It is the theme of the Winter 2003 issue, in which we look at some of Greater Hartford’s significant historic structures and their surprising sagas.  The dust had barely settled after an SUV crashed through the front parlor of Hartford’s 221-year-old

(c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2002 NOTE: Connecticut Explored began in fall 2002 as Hog River Journal: Hartford and the region’s magazine of history, culture, and the arts. By fall 2009, we’d changed our name and gone statewide. Here’s the publisher’s column for the first issue.  By Elizabeth Normen, Janice Mathews, and Cindy Cormier Welcome