While prayer at football games enjoys overwhelming support in Santa Fe, some local people have expressed misgivings about the pregame prayers being used by groups from out of town interested in making political hay.
The Deweys held the Cottage School as an example of training in good citizenship, commenting on its mock elections, self-government, and public service: "The school organized by the pupils into a civic league has made itself responsible for the conditions of the streets in certain portions of town, and is not only cleaning up but trying to get the rest of the town interested in the problem".
However, local wholesaling and retailing have fallen increasingly under the control of out-of-town interests, which have either bought out or squeezed out department stores and retailers in several product lines.
The items range from the humble (a set of Pernod glasses, a lounger) to the extravagant (a 74ft yacht, a small plane, a castle) and add up to an inventory of French small-town interests and obsessions, as well as a fund of anecdotes.
They gave Union Street a modest reputation as "the Wall Street of the South," but in recent years they have been sold to out-of-town interests, along with The Tennessean, long the city's dominant newspaper, and a number of the more important radio and television stations.
"It's in the cities' and towns' interests, it's in the state employees' interest, it's in the State of Connecticut's interest to get this done," Mr. Donovan, the House speaker, said.
"A lot of the information in C. L. and P.'s application is incomplete," said Monte Frank, a lawyer hired by Redding, Wilton and Weston to represent those towns' interests before the Connecticut Siting Council, which has jurisdiction on such issues.
Tells about other clever publicity schemes to draw the out-of-town interest.
As in many suburban towns, interest in sports -- participatory and spectator -- verges on the obsessive.
Batters Up USA, a nonprofit organization supported in part by sporting goods companies, gives free bats and balls to towns interested in hosting sandlot baseball and softball games.
