The mystery at Yale University

Annie Le was supposed to get married Sunday. She had meticulously planned her wedding, and she was looking forward to becoming Mrs. Jonathan Widawsky, friends say.

Last Tuesday, she entered her lab at Yale University. She never came out again.

The day of her wedding, forensic officials announced they had found the body of a girl who matched Le's description. It was found inside a wall, in a chase on the basement level.

For days, I kept hoping this would just be a case of cold feet. Perhaps Annie Le had changed her mind, I thought. Maybe she wore a disguise and slipped out of the building unnoticed by the security cameras. She could have just wanted to get away from it all for a little while. But why leave her purse, her keys, her ID and her cell phone behind?

When officials on Saturday found bloody clothes tucked away above the ceiling tiles in the laboratory building in New Haven, I knew she couldn't possibly be alive. Despite saying later that the clothes were no Le's, it was impossible not to think of what probably happened in that building that caused someone to stash away evidence.

The suspect, identified as a lab worker with defensive wounds on his body when first interviewed, is expected to be arrested Tuesday. We all want to know who it is and what happened. But of course, the more pressing question is why. Why was a 24-year-old, friendly, pretty girl slain five days before her wedding? Why did she have to die?

Perhaps we'll never know the whole story. But hopefully at least the family will know why their daughter and future wife was taken away too soon. It won't make it any easier to deal with the loss, but at least they will know she didn't willingly abandon this world.

The end of an era

It was the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one Saturday evening at The Register Citizen. The pressroom guys, with a combined 151 years of experience at our newspaper, worked their last night amid a crowd of melancholy onlookers.

Starting this evening, we are printing our daily newspaper at our sister publication in New Haven, and there will be no need for local pressroom guys or a local mailroom crew. That’s two whole departments shutting down – all in the same night.

No longer will we share a bathroom at 1 a.m. with the ladies from the mailroom – it will be empty. The lunchroom will be quiet after 5 p.m. – the rest of us will just eat at our desks. Al from the mailroom, the tallest man I’ve ever seen, will no longer come and ask if we have any obituaries.

We will have no more discussions of the Yankee or Red Sox games with Tom in the CTP room, who has been with the company for 33 years, as we wait for the last page to go through the plate-making machine. And never again will we run outside in a frenzy yelling “stop the presses” for a late-breaking news story. (Not that we did that often anyway, but it’s nice to have the option).

As the staff gathered on Saturday to see the paper printed one last time, old-timers and those who had the day off showed up for a burger and soda and to say a quick farewell.

“It’s family,” said Bill, a company veteran of almost 20 years. “How can you walk away from family, you know?”

Some will stay on for a few more weeks to take care of what’s left of the machines. But it was still hard for Steve, a 15-year veteran, and Peter, who pushed the buttons for the first issue of The Register Citizen 36 years ago, to say goodbye to everyone else, and to the printing press.

“I printed the first issue here in April 1973,” said the pressroom foreman as he pushed the two buttons to start up the press one final time. “Now I’m printing the last.”

Shutting down pressrooms is a common theme among newspapers today. To increase efficiency, printing facilities are combined or the products are outsourced. There just aren’t enough products to keep a printing crew busy in every town, and newer and better-equipped presses can print newspapers in half the time for much less money.

The Meriden Record-Journal, for example, shut down its press earlier this year, cutting 17 full-time jobs and dropping 28 part-time positions. Despite being printed in Springfield, Mass., they are expecting earlier delivery times and better color quality on their pages.

In The Register Citizen, the color pages are also expected to improve. Not only will the pages look better, but we will have more color positions a daily basis, sprucing up the look of the product. Getting the paper from New Haven to Torrington and out to subscribers is not expected to be a problem, and the newsroom will continue to do its best to provide readers with as much up-to-date information as possible.

So the finished product is supposed to remain the same, or perhaps a bit improved. But some things will be different. Several people we know and have worked with for many years will no longer be a part of what we do.

Donnie, who brought his daughter to watch the last press run, started at The Register Citizen 12 years ago. Mark, who delivered newspapers as a boy, later spent 27 years on the press. Jeff, who’s just worked here for about a year, and Kevin, with eight years behind him, are both hoping they will find something else to do. They all have families to support.

And the rest of us, the ones who remain, we just count ourselves lucky that people are still reading newspapers – whether it be online or at the breakfast table with their morning coffee. As long as people want to read what we have to offer, the advertisers will hopefully keep using us as a means to reach their consumers. And so life goes on for another few months, at least, at The Register Citizen in Torrington.

Hiking the Sleeping Giant

Anything is better than going to the gym. Since I only had plans to walk on the treadmill anyway, I asked Albie "can't we go hiking the Sleeping Giant today?" He agreed.

The Sleeping Giant, named so because from far away it looks like a giant laying down on his back, is across the street from Quinnipiac University where I went to school for four years. We took the Tower Trail, which goes all the way to the top the easy way with a nice gravel path. It's about 3.2 miles (5 km) and the highest elevation is 739 feet above sea level.

After our hike, we drove to New Haven for some good pizza. Of course, we didn't realize that today was the St. Patrick's Day parade in New Haven - a big deal to the locals. Everywhere was packed, and we ended up waiting two hours for a pizza at Sally's on Wooster Street. It was worth it though. Every step, and every bite.

Going out in New Haven

I miss going out in New Haven.

Besides standing two feet away from Bryan Adams when he is reaching out to give his friend a hug, there's something so quaint about hanging out in the hometown of Yale University.

While I was at Quinnipiac, my friends and I frequently went to Bar, The Playwright or Van Dome on a Friday or Saturday night. We debated who should pay the $6 for parking and at what hot spot we should end the night.

On Monday, I drove down early to shop at IKEA before the concert. Even though New Haven really isn't that far away, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. I actually ended up killing three, or maybe four.

I had meatballs and French fries at IKEA as a late breakfast/early dinner. Then I walked around the furniture store for two hours deciding how to best spend the "summer money" my grandmother had surprised me with.

Besides a neck-friendly pillow and a new comforter (Albie melted the old ones in the dryer by mistake), I came a cross some cat-friendly plants that might brighten up our home.

I also bought a new "Portis" shoe rack (that will probably get moved to the opposite side of the hallway). I've been dragging around the cheap wooden "Babord" for six years now, and it's falling into pieces.

My friend and former roommate Bo, now a New Haven resident and the sole keeper of our three farm cats (Charlotte, Sprout and Zassemo), met up with me outside the Yale bookstore so we could grab a drink before the Bryan Adams concert. Her boyfriend showed up as well, and we ended up having an evening coffee ("bubble tea" for them - a weird and disgusting combination of a smoothie and tapioca bubbles).

Bo kept me company at Toad's until Bryan Adams started singing his first song. "Bryan who?" she said, finished her red wine and headed home to go to bed. You see, Bo gets up during the hours I like to call "bed time," and I get started with my day just when she is ready to go to bed. When we lived together, we never saw each other. Which had its ups and downs.

I already wrote about the concert in a previous post, so I'm just going to add this: It was amazing. It was personal, it was funny... it was brilliant.

To top the evening off, I had $7 left in my pocket after bailing my car out from the Broadway parking lot. It was just enough to get two falafels at Mahmoun's - a Middleastern restaurant on Howe Street. No eventful evening in New Haven is complete without a stop at Mahmoun's.

Driving home, I just wish I knew what 13-year-old Viktoria would have thought about the evening if she knew this would happen one day.