18 December—Two local matters. First, it’s over four years ago that I notified Litchfield’s first selectman that my emails to her and other town employees were being bounced back by the town’s server. Not just the Monitor link, mind you, with the Monitor’s address, but other email with my own address (which is what I use for the Monitor link now) and still other email using two other servers.

I was relieved and my paranoia allayed somewhat when a couple of town employees admitted to me that they had the same problem. Even when they tried to send emails to other town-office addresses within the town’s network. And another employee told me that the town’s server often sequestered and trashed emails rather than bouncing them back, so people might never know if their emails made it through.

Obviously the bounced and trashed emails were a function of the security firewall that’s supposed to protect the municipal computer network from malware. So it just needed to be tweaked so as not to block legitimate, safe e-correspondence. And the first selectman was on it.

Three years ago, though, evidently nothing had been done. My emails still were being randomly and unpredictably bounced back and/or possibly trashed, as were those of at least two employees. Two years ago, no change. A year ago, the same.

A couple of months ago, a town employee told me at a meeting that he hadn’t received my reply to his email. Nor had he received a phone message I’d left on his voice mail, which I still call an answering machine. But that’s another matter, and a new phone system is supposed to be installed.

A couple of days ago, in the po’ folks corner of Stop & Shop, a reader complained to me that her email to a town office—the first one she’d ever sent to a townoflitchfield.org address—was bounced back. And again, after she’d confirmed the address. And a third time. She ended up phoning the office in question.

And who knows how many other emails never get through to Litchfield’s powers that be? And how many people think municipal officers and employees are ignoring them? So it’s about time Litchfield’s administration—which certainly is aware of the problem—did something about the hypersensitive and maladjusted email server. Among other things, of course.

The second matter of local interest (or not) concerns the Hearst RepublicanAmerican. Yesterday’s editorial-page spread had a column headed “Why Connecticut’s treatment of faith-based nonprofits matters,” with a byline and picture of Philadelphia-based conservative columnist Christine Flowers. Christine wouldn’t ordinarily write about Connecticut. But she’s a good Catholic. So what the hell.

But the column wasn’t in Christine’s style. So it was only when I got to the end credit that I learned it had in fact been written by Andrew Fowler, the communications specialist at the Connecticut-based Yankee Institute (a very valuable resource), and editor of RealClearReligion. Also a good Catholic.

Made sense. Leave it to the semicomatose HRA staff to confuse Fowler with Flowers. But Andrew Fowler looks nothing like Christine Flowers . . .