ESPN: Is it New England or American?

ESPN has been headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut since 1979.  It is an New England institution despite its international presence and denials that its programming and personalities have a regional bias.  This is much like the Weather Channel not being Atlanta-centric.  This is not an indictment of the network, merely an observation that its employees reside in the nearby suburbs of Hartford.  Hartford is clearly New England.

Bristol was founded by Puritans from Massachusetts Bay in 1636 as one of the oldest towns in Connecticut.  Bristol became a major industrial area in the 19th Century and remains vibrant.  Otis Elevator has a testing tower in town and employs many residents, who drop the letter t in speech.  It has become a suburb of Hartford via Interstate 84.

The ad-lib references during Sportscenter to local landmarks and sports is inescapable, but it does not become obnoxious until the biases exhibited by former and present employees appear in reports.  When Peter Gammons worked for ESPN as an analyst on Baseball Tonight, his love for the Red Sox was never in question.  For the former professional and collegiate athletes their bias is often based on past employment, friendships, and investments.  This however does not explain the level of intensity that the network focuses upon the New England Patriots, the Yankees and the Sox.
How much of these bias are geographic remains unclear and will likely spark more needless debate.       

The True New England Frontier

The true dividing line between New England and the reach of New York is determined by the towns and their residents that support the Sox and those who follow the Yankees.  There are no other teams and as a Mets fan I can accept that reality, especially since 1986.  The border between Red Sox Nation and the evil empire seems to coalesce around New Haven and Litchfield Counties and follow the Massachusetts-Vermont Line to Canada.


The Boston Globe and the New York Times run articles every few years that attempt to map the two competing territories.  The frontier is fluid based on the success of either team and the cable providers that prefer NESN to YES, although in some areas both are carried.   

Aleister Crowley and HP Lovecraft: Historical Eskimo Brothers?

The English Rasputin Aleister Crowley (1875-1945) and American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)  allegedly both dated Sonia Greene.  Greene was a single mother, widowed after the death of her first husband, living in Brooklyn when she was with Crowley.  She married Lovecraft in 1924 before separating two years later.  Crowley was married multiple times and carried on countlees affairs during his nomadic life. 

Lovecraft



Crowley and Lovecraft could not be more different men, in their personalities, lifestyles, and literary influences.  Lovecraft, who cites Poe as a major force in his writing, uses the first person voice to the point that would make the earlier gothic novelists cringe, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Matthew Arnold, and the Bronte sisters.  Crowley's works, such as the Book of Thoth, are written in a ultra-serious manner that relflects his extreme ego, heroin addiction, possible untreated syphilis, and need to convince people of his supernatural abilities.   Both men can be considered experts in the occult and as products of Victorian upper class privilege.

Crowley

Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life until dying in 1937 to colon cancer.  He claimed that he descended from the first settlers in New England, "Mayflower Material."

Time machine to the 19th Century

The Old Town of Norwalk near Wall Street and the River was once a busy center of commerce along the Post Road.  A high rickety bridge rose fifty feet over the river linking the two halves of the city together and the southern terminus of the Danbury and Norwalk Turnpike (East Main and Wall).  Today, the presence of the river can hardly be noticed from the road.

This sketch can be found in the archives of the Norwalk Museum in South Norwalk.

You may ask what this has to do with anything?  I have a 300 page dissertation to write on the history of Route 7 and the towns it passes through.