This New England

University of Connecticut researchers say the Nutmeg State's median income and tax base will be threatened over the next couple of decades because of the aging of the population. This also means, of course, big increases in social-services spending for old people.

A big question is whether the financial-services and corporate-headquarters money machine of Fairfield County will grow enough to pay for this swelling demographic.

Can Connecticut can find other sectors, maybe even high-end manufacturing -- for which it used to be world-famous -- to offset what might well be a decline in the county's capacity to pay for the rest of the state?

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This sounds grim. A playwright named Maura Campbell has written a play called Dreamtime based on the 2001 murders of two Dartmouth College professors. It opens Thursday at Burlington, Vt.'s Main Street Landing Performing Arts Theater.

The professors were Half and Susanne Zantop, who were stabbed to death in their home by two Chelsea, Vt., teenagers, Robert Tulloch and James Parker. They are now both in prison, Tulloch, the mastermind of the fatal invasion of the Zantops' house, for life, and Parker for 25 years to life.

Ms. Campbell, who changed the names of the characters, highlights in her play the Zantops' happy life together in and about the Dartmouth campus and so, and she asserted to The Rutland Herald, "for me, it was a really beautiful story.''
We shall see.

Meanwhile, a movie on the topic remains close to inevitable.

 Tags  James Parker Tulloch Zantop

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