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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Mr. Greenberger goes to Hartford

Posted by Bob Greenberger on February 3, 2009

While I have served as an elected official in Fairfield, I’ve never had cause to go to the state capitol in Hartford for business.
Until today.
On Saturday, my State Rep, the honorable Tom Drew, called and said that a bill requiring insurance companies to pay for bone marrow testing was being heard in committee and Tuesday. As the bill’s author, he was going to speak on it, but he wanted them to hear from people who have dealt with the issue, and invited me along for the ride.
He collected me this morning around 10:30 and we zipped up to the capitol an hour away. Our reps tend to serve on either MWF or TTh committees then all five days while the full body hears and votes on bills and the budget. Tom, like his colleagues, uses the long drive each way to speak to constituents or do their other job, in his case that of lawyer.
Once we arrived, we collected lunch in the cafeteria and then headed up to his office so I could check things out for myself. The legislative building was built about 20 years ago and is an efficient design for government and well maintained so it has the proper amount of presence when you walk its corridors. And yes, what you see in movies and television is true: you really do a lot of your business in hallways and elevators. Heck, I even got to lobby someone from the DPUC on a cable issue before I got into the building.
He took me to the committee room just before the hearing began and explained that they allow the public to speak on bills prior to the legislators and speakers went based on when they signed up. The 19 committee members, from the State and the House, would be hearing 15 different bills over the next few hours. Over the course of the hearing, members drifted in and out and at its peak, only 13 of them were even present.
Tom had presented this bill before and it died last session but got a sense from his colleagues that this year might be different. He had also brought along Danny Lamos, who is fighting lymphoma and underwent a bone marrow transplant and is currently in remission but strongly believed in the bill. As it happened, the Senate had a mirror bill on the docket, and Danny had signed to speak for that one.
When he spoke, he read from a prepared speech, as did every other speaker before the panel. Me, I had bullet points only based on Tom’s direction so it’s a good thing I’m used to speaking in public.
Around 2, shortly after Danny spoke and while the committee heard testimony on a different bill, the Senate bill’s author, minority leader John McKinney (R-Fairfield), arrived. The committee chair broke precedent to allow John to testify and he brought along Tom so they spoke together. Then, continuing to take things out of order, it was my turn.
I sat the table, facing the committee members, who had now heard some of these facts twice in the space of 30 minutes. So instead, I talked about Robbie and his fight. More importantly, I spoke about his friends. College kids who are on tight budgets and could not have afforded the $50-75 per test and how several organized drives that found grant funding. I spoke about how the cost meant the difference between the global registry being 13 million today and many times that tomorrow.
Half way through the chairman interrupted me. He asked that I turn on the microphone which John had turned off out of habit. Fortunately, I was projecting and they had heard me well enough.
Afterwards, I was told I did well. As I left the room, a woman stopped and introduced herself. She had been with the group that funded the Fairfield U. drive this past summer and how pleased she was to meet me. She recalled the incredible work Denise Honeycutt, mother of organizer Marianne, did that day and all the wonderful things she heard about Robbie.
I continue to honor his memory and am more than happy to credit his friends for pulling together when needed.
With luck, this bill we be passed and signed by June.

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Thinking About the Boss

Posted by Bob Greenberger on February 2, 2009

I’ve been a Bruce Springsteen fan dating back to 1975, just prior to the release of Born to Run. The live broadcast of his concert from The Bottom Line probably sealed the deal for me, but when I saw him at C.W. Post, I was hooked. Rarely have I seen rock and roll played with such gusto. At the time, the rock concerts were getting bigger with elaborate stage design, pyrotechnics and special effects were increasingly in vogue. Some, like the Blue Oyster Cult, integrated them well, others began to slip into Las Vegas mode (see the Rolling Stones’ tour of that era).
Springsteen and the E Street Band were true showman, rocking the house with their music, their instruments and their interplay. Sure, a lot of it was choreographed; by they were loose enough to improvise on the fly which made for terrific memories.
Having seen him steadily ever since, I’ve built up an understanding of his music and his performances. Long ago I concluded that television was not the best medium with which to see him. The concert clips give you some idea of what’s going on and even things like his Today Show appearances have been okay but they still lack the immediacy of seeing him live.
As a result, watching him last night at the Super Bowl, I knew how to process the information. Deb said he appeared flat and the idiot at The New York Times panned the 12 minute set. Instead, I knew it was flat because television sound doesn’t transport you the way an arena’s sound system can. The camera cuts here and there, depriving of you the sense of wonder as the band interacts with one another while the Boss is doing his thing.
I thought he did a great job squeezing four songs into 12 minutes. Adding the extra horns was a nice touch although I could have done without the choir. He was pumped up, excited, energetic and conveyed that to the crowd on the field and to us at home. This was the finest halftime show in years.
Fortunately, today, tickets went on sale for the new tour in support of his latest release. Deb and I furiously clicked through to Ticketmaster and I beat her by a Pico second. My seat offer was far better than hers but hey, we scored tickets for Hartford. And it’ll be a generational party since we grabbed one for Kate who will join us as a belated birthday gift.
Now how cool is that?

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