5 August—It’s most gratifying that 14 Altice captive customers, including two subscribers to former Suddenlink franchises (both former Litchfield County residents who had the smarts to get the hell out of Connecticut), have thanked me for the lead in yesterday’s Daily Disquisition to the Optimum.net website where they found the “junk mail” about the class action suit they hadn’t known a thing about.

Most of those readers hadn’t even known about the website’s email junk box. I suspect and hope that more Monitor readers (and others?) have found or will find the stealthy—possibly unlawful?—notification and file their claims before the 5 September cutoff. It’s curious, though by no means hard to believe, that the Altice legal notifications—but not their advertising—should have been sequestered in the junk mailbox.

I just wonder how many eligible Altice customers—most of whom, of course, don’t read The Monitor, are unaware of the class action suit. For whatever reason. In all events, I’m keeping an Altice lobbyist (government affairs director) up to date on the problem. Will I hear from her next week?

Naturally segueing, then, to grawlix versus Fuck you!, the latest count is 25 to 9 in favor of Fuck you! I’ll close the poll tomorrow, before grawlix can take the lead.

And that naturally segues to the tiny boutique Hotel Sacrilege that’s taking over the little grey Litchfield courthouse. Litchfield doesn’t need it. Most people in town, as I’ve verified through an informal poll, don’t want it. The prevailing sentiment—and hope, in fact—is that it’s going to fail. The fear is that it will become another major derelict building, like the beautiful, historic old Methodist church that’s now being desecrated by Chabad Lubavitch of Litchfield County, Inc., which is allowing or encouraging it to deteriorate as it’s doing with the former Wilderness Shop a few doors down the street.

But the voters of Litchfield have no one to blame but themselves. Remember that they turned down the opportunity to convert the courthouse to the town hall a few years ago because they were too penny wise and pound foolish (i.e., too cheap and stupid), as Litchfield voters have been with every construction project in the half-century I’ve been living here, to approve spending even a paltry seven million dollars on the half-assed job suggested by the Greater Litchfield Preservation Trust to do the conversion.

The GLPT, with the very best intentions, really expected the voters to go for the cheapo conversion. But so many of us knew better—including some members of the committee that recommended the job.

Maybe the town will be able to get the courthouse on the cheap after it dismally fails as a super-expensive hotel. In the meantime, here’s a short photo essay: