A series of entries designed to capture the ongoing adventures of NINA! See how we came to be where we are today, and follow along as we enter the new century of social media!
Page: 5It was a cold, cold, cold, frigid day in Hartford - so we decided to take a walk! The Mark Twain House & Museum recently installed a walking tour of sites related to Mark Twain in downtown Hartford. It's a great tour, very informative, and it gives a sense of Hartford in the 19th century. Not quite like you are there, but it certainly shows you what was there.
The downtown walk is part of the Mark Twain House's celebration of its 50th anniversary as a museum. There are several links that you can follow to get information on the anniversary exhibtion that includes the walkiing tour and the project supporting it. There’s also a page about the tour itself, with a link to a downloadable pdf of the trail.
You have to look very closely, but there's some sort of mascot-like character pointing to the place into which you are supposed to "park your butts." This is the bus kiosk (and smoke station) on Garden Street, just below The Hartford's visitors parking lot.
Believe it or not, this is – or was – Caroling in the Park! The Friends of Sigourney Square Park decided this year to move the event indoors and to focus on community and “toys for tots.” The event took place at 224 the EcoSpace, and it was an amazing success. About 200 people attended. Members of the Asylum Hill Neighborhood Association served breakfast to everyone. The Hartford Police Department, including Asylum Hill’s Community Service Office Cesidio “Sid” Palmieri, were on hand to deliver toys to children. And of course Santa was there!
Plans are already underway to hold this event again next year.
Shots are of the front of the house, the steeple at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, and Asylum Hill Congregational Church with The Hartford in the background.
The house is ready! And if you’re interested, the real estate agent has put together a very nice video tour of the house.
So close! Some shots of what’s done and some shots of what isn’t, including the walk-in closet in the primary bedroom in the owner’s unit. The house will go on the market this month!
These photos highlight why the two traffic lights get out of sync – it’s the pedestrian crossing signals. The light at Farmington is green, while the light at Asylum is red – and over on the right side of the intersection, the pedestrian crossing has seven seconds to go.
The solution, it seems to me, is to make the pedestrian crossing longer so that a pedestrian can get through the entire Trident in one cycle. When a pedestrian requests a crossing, they do so only for one street, be it Farmington or Asylum. They then have to request a crossing again at the next street. This throws the traffic lights out of sync, and it takes several cycles with no pedestrians for the traffic lights to come back into sync.
A simple solution, right? But it seems that our city would rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to come up with a much more complicated and convoluted traffic pattern ….
I’m not really sure if this counts, but it is a regular occurrence, as trucks come down through the Trident en route to Interstate 84.
Volunteers from Trinity College’s JELLO program volunteered at 102 Huntington Street, and they did some fairly substantial lawn care for us.
The problem, of course, is that the lights on both sides of the Trident are out of sync, but it should also be noted that, despite the signs, the prohibition against blocking the box is never enforced.
