Suburban Camping blog

It’s easy to overlook with the ratio of BMWs to Hondas parked along Elm Street on any given day, but the poverty rate in New Canaan is not zero. Sure, it’s not like up in Hartford where fully a third of the city’s residents are living below the poverty line. But it’s not zero.

Officially – and this is officially according to 10-year-old census stats – the poverty rate here is 2.5 percent, 74 families, 485 people. Given the state of the economy, it’s probably higher by now. And given the cost of living here, chances are that number almost completely masks the poverty that exists in this town.

The poverty guidelines are a federal thing. The “poverty line” is the same in New Canaan as it is in Hartford – a household income below $22,050 for a family of four in 2009. But in New Canaan, $22,050 is just 12 percent of the median household income ($181,161). In Hartford where the median income is just $30,806, an income of $22,050 is not all that far from what your neighbors are bringing in.

The Living Wage Calculator estimates that the living wage for a family of four in Fairfield County (and that includes Bridgeport) is $32.32 an hour, or $67,227 a year before taxes. Guess what? At least 18 percent of households in New Canaan are living off an income that doesn’t meet that threshold.

Now some of those households may be single people who don’t need as much, and some may be retirees living off personal assets, but the point is that it’s clearly way more than 2.5 percent of New Canaan residents who are struggling to make ends meet.

In Hartford, the community is way more set up to accommodate a family with a relatively low income. There are dollar stores and discount grocery outlets, and there is an understanding that pretty much everybody is in the same boat.

Here, you’ve got to drive out of town to find a bargain, which means more gas money and more time behind the wheel. There are 178 subsidized housing units for seniors and low-income families, but if you live there your kid’s classmate might be forbidden from coming over to play.

There’s less violence in New Canaan than Hartford, and the public school system is better, but there must be some peculiar difficulties to being poor in a rich town.

How do you know when the Plant Lady is having her annual plant sale? She puts out her pink sign that reads, “Plant Sale Today.” It’s under the trees on the edge of what’s left of the Calitri family farm. You can’t miss it.

If you catch the Plant Lady at the right time of day (we didn’t), she looks like something straight out of the 1960s – a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and pink curlers in her hair. But even in blue fleece her lemonade-stand style business is a throwback.

She had set out 44 varieties of tomatoes under patio umbrellas in her front yard, but by 3:00 on Saturday, there were only three kinds left: Apple Juice, Orange Punch, and Tropical Fruit – according to the Stew Leonard’s cartons they were potted in. The eggplant plants (just $1 each) have been growing in styrofoam coffee cups.

If you hurry she may still have some petunias and hot peppers left.

St. Mark’s church hosted its 60th annual May Fair on Saturday. The ferris wheel made it’s rounds, the roller coaster followed suit, brick-a-brack and brisket were bought and sold, and fun was had by all until the crankies set in…

Women are really, really, not allowed at the weekly Senior Men’s Club meetings, but I invited myself anyway as a guest of my father. I figured if I put on some slacks and a nice sweater I could maybe sort of blend in. I got the uniform right anyway, but my long blond hair doesn’t quite match the cropped gray monochrome of the assembled membership.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is the scheduled speaker. “They always start the meeting with business, but Blumenthal said he wanted to start promptly at 10,” Dad says, sounding a bit miffed about this break from the routine. Lucky for him and all other creatures of habit in attendance the A.G. is – true to form – late.

Business begins with a rundown of who’s in the hospital, who’s out of the hospital, who’s got a new pacemaker (Dad just got one, but he declines to stand up to share the news). There are announcements of upcoming outings – a tour of the USS Intrepid (itself old and gray enough to be a Club member), golf – of course, bridge starts right after the meeting, so stick around. Sign up at the “Couth” table – Dad’s not sure why they call it that, but I have my guesses – the assembled are going to need some re-civilizing after what comes next.

It’s 10:30, Blumenthal has still not arrived, so this week’s appointed jester takes the podium. He offers a joke about Jesus and his clothier going into business together to cash in on the popularity of those robes the son of God has made famous. Jesus and the clothier, named Finkelstein, go back and forth about whether their shop should be named “Jesus and Finkelstein” or “Finkelstein and Jesus”. At last they compromise – and here’s the punch line – “Lord & Taylor”.

Harrumph. Harrumph.

Still no Blumenthal.

“A woman goes to the doctor complaining that when her husband climaxes, he screams. ‘That’s normal,’ the doctor says, ‘So what’s the problem?’ ‘He wakes me up.”

Guffaw!!!

The vamping continues.

“A lumberjack loses his grip on his chainsaw and loses his ‘member’. The doctor tell him he can replace it with an above average one, but that’ll cost $16K, and insurance won’t cover it. An average one will cost $10K, insurance won’t cover that either. A below average but still functioning member will cost $6K. The lumberjack says he has to talk to his wife about it. ‘What did she say?,’ the doctor asks. ‘She’d rather redo the kitchen.”

Guffaw!!! Guffaw!!!!

11:00. No Blumenthal. The peanut gallery gets into the act.

“A prostitute goes to the police to report that she’s been raped. ‘How do you know?,’ asks the officer. ‘The check bounced.”

Harrumph.

11:15. Blumenthal arrives, but his remarks are off the record. All I can tell you is that, yes, one of the harrumphing members in the front row falls asleep.

Back come the crab grass and the patchy fields greased with goose poop. Effective immediately, no more pesticides on public school grounds.

“I know, I know,” said Councilwoman Tucker Murphy, the reluctant chair of the pesticide subcommittee, as she reported the plan to comply with state law to her shrugging colleagues during their monthly meeting Wednesday night.

The ban was enacted in 2007, but towns were given until July 1, 2009 to phase chemicals out of their pest management plans. Now if there’s a wasp nest under the monkey bars you can take it out with a broom, but the principal’s going to have to notify the parents and get approval from the Health Director if you want to attack it with Raid®. And goose repellent, well, you can just forget about that.  

“I’ve walked these fields and there’s so much geese crap,” said Councilman Steve Karl, “That’s gotta be toxic.”

“Shoot ‘em,” offered Councilman Ken Campbell as an “organic” solution. 

“Strike that from the record,” replied Murphy, but it was too late. 

Smooth green fields (grass green, not poop green) are serious business around here, and the sizable population of Canada geese is a serious threat. So serious in fact that there’s a proposed ordinance that would impose a $90 fine on anybody caught feeding the geese (or the ducks or swans for that matter). Discussion of that ditty was tabled until May to give the public more time to think over whether or not to let their unwanted crutons and half-eaten PB&Js go to the birds.

Just so you know, the Nature Center says feeding bread to birds will turn them into junk food junkies and there’s no line item in the town budget for rehab.

“If Christian walked down Elm Street, people would faint,” said Lynne Hippeau about fashion designer Christian Siriano’s visit to New Canaan for a trunk show at L’Amoire.

That was pretty much the consensus among the fans of the Season 4 Project Runway winner who stopped by the store to check out his fall line. And it’s true, Siriano’s skinny skinny black jeans with their superfluous zippers, paired with his patent leather Oxford shoes and angular hair cut would likely stop some residents of this quaint suburban enclave in their tracks – to say nothing of his flamboyant (read: sooo gay) charm.

“You’re shaking up New Canaan, I just want you to know that,” Hippeau told the 23-year-old upstart. Hippeau herself was dressed in a country-club friendly coral and tangerine striped sweater and innocuous pair of blue jeans. She had Siriano pick out a ruffle-fronted black dress as a birthday present for her daughter – he even signed the card.

While Siriano’s fans found his appearance in town to be wonderfully blashphemous, the designer himself found the experience to be more of a relief from the demands of the “divas” he regularly caters to.

“I like this town. The people are so nice here, so supportive.”

Diane Roth, owner of L’Amoire, says Siriano’s fashions will fit in just fine.

“You can wear this to Gates for a nice dinner; you can hop the train and go into New York.”

That’s what people do here: put on alpaca cashmere coats and go out to eat. Maybe Siriano isn’t really shaking things up that much at all.

His fall line will be for sale in L’Amoire starting in June, we’ll see what happens then.