|
CHARLES MONAGHAN (Editor,
Connecticut Magazine): We've always been between New York and New England,
caught between in many ways, and it's been difficult for
us over the years to forge our own identity and you can see what difficulty
we've had if you just look around. You see that our state song, for instance,
is not even about Connecticut -- Yankee Doodle. It's about a person. We've got
to be the only state in the nation who's song isn't about itself.
THE SEARCH FOR A
STATE SONG: PART ONE
TOM CALLINAN (Connecticut State
Troubadour): The purpose was back in early 1977 to establish a state song. They
felt that there was a need for a state song to give us identity when the
governor and other dignitaries would show up at events, so a hearing was held
and many people wrote songs and had all kinds of different people performing
them. Some were on recording and some were live and I spent a whole day in the
hearing. Some of the songs were great and some of the songs were not so great,
but everybody put their heart into it.
"Hail To Connecticut" by Rose Perotta & Young At Heart
Nathan Hale, the Charter Oak,
a history of pride and pain.
Through the years and for all
time, Connecticut, we praise your name.
Hail to Connecticut with a
heritage so grand.
Hail to Connecticut, to the
Constitution state.
Down through Connecticut
where the mighty river flows,
So moves Connecticut as are
mighty nation grows.
Home of the Mountain Loral,
And the robin on the wing,
To you we lift our voices,
And praises we sing.
Hail to your rocky shores,
Your hills and valleys too,
Hail to Connecticut, America
loves you.
THE PURITANS
NARRATOR: Our identity today is
deeply rooted in our history. Our sense of place over the past 350 years has
grown much more complicated. To really know ourselves, we need to know our
past.
Just two years after the violent
displacement of Connecticut's native American peoples in 1637, the general
court of colonial Connecticut drew up the fundamental orders. The orders both
established a government and defined our first common identity derived from a
central authority.
RICHARD GRIFFIS (Sr. Minister,
Immanuel Cong. Church): The state really begins with the coming of Thomas
Hooker and a group of people from Massachusetts who came here for economic
reasons, but also and very predominantly for religious reasons.
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER (Connecticut
State Historian): The Puritan was high thinking and plain living. The Puritans
were also very community bound. They weren't always concerned about their
community out of a sense of community. They were concerned about the community
because if somebody in the community sinned, the whole community was going to
suffer.
BRUCE FRASER (Exec Dir., CT
Humanities Council): The land of steady habits goes back to old colonial
notions of stability and of that Puritan commonwealth, which is very collective
in its approach, and every time the Department of Tourism puts a congregational
spire on some tourist document, whether they know it or not, what they're
saying is -- what they're suggesting is that collective sense of mutual
obligation, shared belief of mutual commitment that was the hallmark of
Puritans.
RICHARD GRIFFIS (Sr. Minister,
Immanuel Cong. Church): They established the commons in the midst of many of
the towns, a shared space, very practical for grazing animals, but it also had
a symbolic and a beautiful quality to it. The church was put on the green.
NARRATOR: If there was a time
when Connecticut had a clearly defined self-image, it was this puritan era.
Puritan Connecticut was collective, but it was also suspicious of change and
insisted on conformity. Congregationalism was the official state religion until
1818.
ELLSWORTH GRANT (Fmr. Pres., CT
Historical Society): It was an exclusive society, only God-fearing
Congregationalists would survive here or be accepted. If anyone moved in to
Connecticut, he had to be voted on by the community to become a citizen and a
member of the church.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist,
Hartford Courant): Well, actually, the very first European people who came to
Connecticut actually were the Dutch who sailed up the river looking for
chocolate and so far no one has ever actually found any in Connecticut, which I
think maybe accounts for the sense of blended frustration you feel here. As for
the original Puritans, a lot of those were my ancestors and of course they were
opposed to fun and we thought to carry on that tradition here in Connecticut
too.
CHRIS BICKFORD (Exec. Dir., CT
Historical Society): The Blue Law State, and that was an expression that was
coined about Connecticut in the 19th Century, and was to a certain
extent true. We still have Blue Laws for Connecticut that are residue of that
Puritan tradition. People use this expression "banned in Boston", but
the fact is that Massachusetts legalized theater in the 1790s. In 1800
Connecticut banned theater altogether and that law remained on the books in
Connecticut until 1952 which was remarkable. No other state had a law
forbidding theater.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist,
Hartford Courant): I can remember a few years ago the Hartford Office of
Cultural Affairs was talking about having sort of a law that allowed sort of
mummers and buskers and spontaneous street performers out there on the street
that would allow sort of street musicians to be around and magicians and stuff
on the sidewalks and the City Council voted it down because they thought it
would be a little too spontaneous. You can imagine what would happen if things
got a little too spontaneous in Hartford. I mean things would just spiral out
of control in no time whatsoever.
|
