Vox clamantis in deserto
By ‘exaggerating details’
“Purple Shimmer” by Leah Barranco, in her show “Color & Scale,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, July 10 through Sept. 12,
The arts center explains:
“In ‘Color & Scale,’ Leah Barranco translates the physical world, examining and exaggerating details found in nature and illuminating the overlooked beauty of the wilderness that surrounds us. Using pattern, varying brushstrokes, opacity, and vivid colors, Barranco presents nature through a new vibrant lens.
“Focusing on the aquatic creatures found within the waterways of Vermont, the visible qualities of moving water mask an elusive underwater realm. Barranco explores a microcosm that is filled with life, color, and radiance – each creature with their own brilliant color palette and unique pattern. Through the medium of paint, we can experience the world from a new perspective.’’
Bram Sable-Smith: Will they take a Lyme disease vaccine?
Federally reported cases of Lyme disease in 2023. The disease got its name from the towns of Lyme and Old Lyme, Conn. In 1975, physicians at the Yale University School of Medicine investigated a cluster of mysterious, severe arthritis cases in children and adults in this coastal region, which led to the official characterization of the illness. Beware summer vacationers! The ticks that carry the disease remain rampant on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island and Long Island.
Edited from a Kaiser Family Health News article (not including image above)
It’s tick season, possibly the worst in a decade.
More and more Americans are being exposed to these parasites as climate change expands the range where they can survive. That means more people are also exposed to the bevy of health conditions they can cause, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the alpha-gal-triggered red meat allergy, and, most common of all, Lyme disease.
For the latter, there may be some additional protection on the horizon. Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva announced this spring they plan to seek regulatory approval for a vaccine to protect against Lyme disease. A previous vaccine for Lyme became available in the late 1990s but was pulled only three years later due to lawsuits, public fear of side effects, and a lack of interest.
It’s unclear whether this latest stab at a Lyme disease vaccine will get a warmer reception if it’s approved, especially in the postcovid era of vaccine skepticism.
For a sense of how it might go over with rural populations at high risk of Lyme, KFF Health News spoke with a group of hunters.
Few people spend more time in the woods exposed to ticks and exposure to Lyme disease
At the same time, as a collective, hunters skew conservative, rural, and male, according to a survey from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. And these are identities associated with increased hesitancy about or resistance to vaccines, according to Ashley Kirzinger, associate director for Public Opinion and Survey Research at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
Left untreated, Lyme can cause a variety of symptoms, from fevers, chills, and headaches to arthritis, shooting pains, and inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 476,000 people in the U.S. may be diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, the CDC says; that’s at least in part because the range of places where cases have been reported has “expanded significantly” since 1995.
So would hunters get the Lyme vaccine if it became available?
“Given my proclivity for the outdoors, absolutely,” said Jess Manganelli, one of seven hunters (and one hiker) who spoke with KFF Health News on a recent Saturday at the Busch Shooting Range in Weldon Spring, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis.
Of the eight, Manganelli, who had been hunting turkeys the weekend before, was the most positive toward the vaccine. Six others said they would consider it but would want more information about its safety and effectiveness as well as their risk for contracting the disease.
But Manganelli was the only one who believed she may have previously contracted Lyme disease, although she was never formally diagnosed with it. Two years ago, she experienced muscle weakness, tiredness, fatigue, swelling, and headaches after a tick bite, but when she went to urgent care she was told they didn’t test for Lyme.
Nearly all the hunters knew someone who had had Lyme disease — an old roommate, a family member, friends, a former student. Lyme can be difficult to diagnose and to treat and is often misdiagnosed at first. Many of the hunters witnessed their acquaintances navigating those challenges and struggling with sometimes debilitating symptoms.
That familiarity among the hunters in Missouri was unsurprising to author and conservationist Steven Rinella, host of the hunting show MeatEater.
“I’m a turkey hunter. In talking about turkey hunting, you talk about ticks as much as you talk about turkeys,” Rinella said. “Just the nature of turkey hunting puts you into exposure. You’re sitting for long periods of time trying to use vegetation for concealment.”
In fact, both Rinella and his older son contracted Lyme disease 13 years ago during a bluegill fishing trip in the Hudson Valley in New York. His son developed Bell’s palsy, a sudden paralysis on one side of the face, but recovered quickly after a course of oral antibiotics. Steven Rinella’s symptoms, on the other hand, lingered for months, leaving him unable to walk down stairs without a handrail or to ride a bike. He ended up receiving intravenous antibiotic treatments for a month.
“I thought my life had changed,” Rinella said, “but I recovered, as far as I know.”
That experience is one reason Rinella said he would absolutely consider getting a Lyme vaccine if it proved safe and provided considerable protection against the disease. Unlike with some other diseases, prior infection does not provide permanent immunity, so a person who has had Lyme could still benefit from a vaccine.
Knowledge of similar challenges influenced the thinking of the hunters in Missouri as well.
Jeremy Hollingshead said he may be less inclined to take a vaccine owing to his former roommate’s experience with Lyme disease, which is not to say the experience was pleasant. In fact, Hollingshead said he thinks his old pal is still dealing with lingering effects of it 10 years later. But Hollingshead has spent his whole life in the woods, and of hundreds of people he knows who have done the same, he knows of only one of them contracting Lyme.
“I know it was a bad outcome for him,” Hollingshead said, but he thinks the odds of getting Lyme himself seem pretty slim.
Meanwhile, Julian Barnes said seeing a relative struggle with Lyme makes him more open to a potential vaccine. It took a long time for doctors to come to that diagnosis, and finding a good treatment has been equally difficult.
“I would say I am vaccine-hesitant, generally speaking,” Barnes said. “But Lyme, I’ve seen the way it affects people in my life.”
“I would definitely have to really understand the vaccine, how it works,” Barnes added.
The new, four-dose vaccine candidate technically missed one of the bars set out in trials because not enough participants contracted Lyme. Still, the companies say it’s about 75% effective in reducing cases, and they plan to submit it to regulators for approval. A Pfizer spokesperson said there were no updates to share on the company’s regulatory efforts when contacted by KFF Health News in June.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a noted anti-vaccine activist before taking over as head of the agency that oversees vaccine approvals, and he’s remade it in ways that have prompted some vaccine makers to pull back on development.
But he’s also been an advocate on Lyme disease. In May, he announced an initiative to combat Lyme disease. And during his Senate confirmation hearings, he said his family had been deeply affected by Lyme disease and that nobody would work harder than he would to find a vaccine or treatment.
If the vaccine is approved by the FDA, an endorsement from Kennedy would go a long way, according to KFF’s Kirzinger, particularly among supporters of his Make America Healthy Again movement, who tend to be more vaccine-skeptical.
“They trust him as much as they trust their own doctors to tell them what to do with their health and for health information,” Kirzinger said. “If he comes out as a strong proponent of this vaccine and says, ‘Look what my administration did, and we made this available,’ I would imagine there would be less vaccine resistance among that group.”
Kirzinger also said this vaccine could be ripe for misinformation. New polling from KFF shows people who don’t have a trusted medical provider as well as those who use social media and AI for health information are more likely to believe common vaccine myths.
Only one of the hunters who spoke with KFF Health News said they definitely would not be interested in a Lyme vaccine if it became available.
“I kind of hand it off to God and the body he gave me. I’m pretty durable,” JP Cummings said. But even while he’s not interested in it for himself, he’s curious to see what his fellow hunters do as more information comes out.
“Hunters care about the wildlife; hunters care about health,” Cummings said. “They love the wildlife, they love their deer, and they love their fellow hunters.”
Bram Sable-Smith is a KFF reporter.
Seek shelter immediately
“The American Dream” (color etching from six plates on one sheet), by Grayson Perry, at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford.
Lifeguard watching
“Sun Child’ (photograph printed on Hahnemuhle photo rag, in a white modern floater frame), by Berkeley Brooks, at Samuel Owen Gallery, Greenwich, Conn.
Ken Burns, Sen. Shaheen among New England Council honorees
The New England Ensign, one of several flags historically associated with New England.
Edited and excerpted from a New England Council report.
BOSTON
The New England Council, the nation’s oldest regional business association, has announced three recipients of its prestigious “New Englanders of the Year” awards, as well as two recipients of its “Legacy Award.” The awards will be presented at the council’s 2026 Annual Celebration on Oct. 29 at the Encore Boston Harbor, in Everett, Mass.
The New Englander of the Year Award—first presented in 1964—honors natives or residents of the New England region for their contributions to economic growth and quality of life in the region. Past recipients include members of Congress, U.S. Cabinet secretaries, CEOs of some of the region’s most well-known and respected organizations, prominent journalists, and a variety of other cultural and philanthropic leaders.
The 2026 New Englanders of the Year are:
Eliza Dushku Palandjian, mental-health counselor, advocate and philanthropist.
Pamela D. Everhart, senior vice president, head of regional public affairs and impact at
Fidelity Investments.Angus King, U.S. senator from Maine
The council also announced two recipients of its Legacy Award. The Legacy Award was established last year as the council celebrated its centennial, and recognizes past New Englanders of the Year for their ongoing legacy of excellence and contributions to the region. The inaugural Legacy Award was presented to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
The 2026 Legacy Award recipients are:
Ken Burns, Emmy-award-winning documentary filmmaker
Jeanne Shaheen, U.S. senator from New Hampshire
But she built America?
“Shakespeare Sacrificed: Or the Offering to Avarice” (1789), by James Gillray.
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease.’’
xxx
“I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.”
― William James (1842-1910), philosopher, psychologist and Harvard professor
And coffee is an anti-depressant
“Little Things Mean a Lot,’’ by Marian Dioguardi, a Boston-based painter, in her show “Still Reflections,’’ at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, through Aug 2.
Keep it there
— Photo by H. Zell
“As for what you’re actually
hearing this morning: think twice
before you tell anyone what was said in this field
and by whom.’’
— From “Daisies,’’ by Louise Gluck (1943-2023), Massachusetts-based Nobel Prize-winning poet
Wrapping it all up
“The Declaration of Independence” (1950 offset lithograph), by Polish-Jewish-American artist Arthur Szyk (1994-1951), who battled fascism.
The stuff that students leave behind
Excerpted and edited from an ecoRI News article by Frank Carini
PROVIDENCE — Two Providence East Side women have a concept of a plan to stop clothes, vacuums, furniture, and books from being buried in Johnston, site of Rhode Island’s state landfill.
After our publisher and my wife, Joanna Detz, and I recently spoke with the duo, at Coffee Exchange on Wickenden Street, ecoRI News agreed to work with them to find a solution. I volunteered to be a grunt.
College move-out carelessness is a problem that mars the state capital every spring. Neighborhoods around Brown University are routinely littered with abandoned clothing, comforters, sheets, electronics, picture frames, books, unused notebooks, plastic shelving, shoe racks, cleaning supplies and other household items, food (some 42 tons nationwide), and beat-up furniture in need of a little TLC.
The average college student living in a dormitory generates an estimated 640 pounds of waste annually, with extreme waste coming at the end of the academic year, according to a study published in March. These spring spikes are what concern Sara Dorsch and Carolyn Birnbaum.
Chris Powell: Looks like some Democrats oppose ANY immigration enforcement
Immigration cases in Connecticut are handled in this Hartford building.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
______________________________________________
Many Democrats in Connecticut are always looking for opportunities to deplore the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But this week they jumped on what looked like an opportunity before determining what it was really about. They might have been embarrassed if journalists followed up about it.
It began when U.S. Rep. John B. Larson called a rally outside West Hartford Town Hall in support of a local businessman, Seyo Cecunjanin, who had been arrested and taken away by ICE agents nine days earlier as he exited a doughnut shop with his sons. Larson, joined by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, some state legislators, and a few others demanded Cecunjanin's release, and Larson and one of the arrested man's sons described the arrest's circumstances, which included guns and big black cars with covered license plates.
But WTIC-AM1080 talk show host Reese Hopkins also had shown up and unlike everyone else had brought a critical question: Did anyone know exactly why ICE had arrested Cecunjanin?
No one did -- not Larson, not Blumenthal, and none of the rally participants, including former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who is challenging Larson in the Democratic primary for the party's nomination in the 1st Congressional District, charging that Larson is too old and tired even as the rally was another proof that Larson is furiously running circles around him.
As good Democrats, they didn't care why Cecunjanin was arrested. They came to the rally on the principle that any arrest by ICE is to be protested and in the confidence that as more illegal immigrants are admitted to the country or exempted from immigration law enforcement, the next census will lead to the creation of more Democratic-leaning congressional districts and fewer Republican-leaning ones. (It doesn't matter that non-citizens aren't supposed to vote; the Constitution requires that they be counted in the federal census for apportionment of congressional districts, and illegal immigrants concentrate in the Democratic "sanctuary" cities and states that subvert immigration law, states like Connecticut. With enough illegal immigrants, Democrats will have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives forever.)
But if the rally had been postponed until Cecunjanin's arrest was clarified, the Democrats might have not been as strident about it. ICE is usually slow to explain itself, but by the end of the day WFSB-TV3 had gotten a response. The agency said Cecunjanin, a native of Montenegro, was arrested because he came to the United States in March 1997 using a fraudulent Dutch passport and six months later an immigration judge had issued a final order of removal for him. Cecunjanin apparently had been violating the order for 29 years until last July, when he left for Serbia, returning two weeks later despite the removal order. In the meantime he racked up a conviction for drunken driving.
"Cecunjanin has made a mockery of our immigration laws on several occasions for more than two decades," ICE said.
What do Larson, Blumenthal, Bronin, and the other rally participants think about that? What do they think ICE should have done about Cecunjanin's repeated violation of immigration law? Should ICE have ignored them because the people at the rally say Cecunjanin is a good guy, or because they think all immigration law violations should be ignored until the violators are convicted of mass murder?
There was plenty of journalism about the rally. But it is unlikely to extend to critical follow-up questions. For critical follow-up questions about illegal immigration are politically incorrect in Connecticut.
No one would have needed any explanation from ICE to put a critical follow-up question to Blumenthal at the rally. He remarked that the immigration system is "gridlocked and dysfunctional." He wasn't asked why the system is overwhelmed and whose control of the federal government overwhelmed it with millions of illegal entrants and for what purpose.
Another follow-up question might be why the Democrats don't just attempt candor and admit that their preferred solution to the problem they created is another mass amnesty, along with permanent Democratic control of the House.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Stalactites into the sea
“The middle part of Maine, all the way from Bar Harbor to Portland, hangs down like stalactites that drip little islands into the Atlantic. It's divided by rivers and harbors with cozy names that sound like brands of bubble bath or places boats sink in folks songs.”
— Linda Holmes, American author and podcaster
A place to hide?
“Ocean Inlet” (photographic pigment print), by Jim Westphalen, at Front Four Gallery, Stowe, Vt.
Weep and bear it
“There Was No Remedy’’ (acrylic on canvas), by Chris Gollon (1953-2017), British artist.
For further information, see:
‘Immersive, intuitive forces’
“Sun — Penetrating Wind” (acrylic on canvas), by Sheila Isham (1927-2024), in the show “Between Worlds,’’ at the Newport Art Museum, through Feb. 28.
— Image courtesy of Newport Art Museum
.
The museum says the show “features over 30 paintings and works on paper from 1968 to 2004 that traces ‘the evolution of an artist who continually expanded the possibilities of abstraction,’ according to curatorial materials. Sheila Isham, who traveled the globe and spent summers in Newport, took influence from her travels as well as the Washington Color School and ‘treated color and material as immersive, intuitive forces.’ Now, returning to Newport for this expansive retrospective, "this exhibition marks a meaningful rediscovery of Isham‘s work within a community connected to her personal history."
Llewellyn King: The birth of a new reactor
Early thorium-based (MSR) nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
If you are designing a car from scratch, there are certain essentials to begin with. You need to start with the wheels on the corners, for example.
But when it comes to building a nuclear reactor, things are different. There are hundreds and maybe thousands of ways of doing it. The constant is that you need fissionable fuel and a moderator to collect the heat and manage the neutron flux.
That embarrassment of choice — now reflected in the number of small modular reactors (SMRs) vying for market acceptance — may be why thorium reactors, which began with promise, have been left on the shelf.
The nuclear establishment, goaded by the Nuclear Navy’s Adm. Hyman Rickover, wanted light water technology. That is what the first 100-plus U.S. civilian reactors employed.
At the dawn of the civilian nuclear age, it was a straight contest between two fuels: uranium and thorium. Thorium is fertile but not fissile: It can’t start a chain reaction unless it is triggered by a small amount of the isotope uranium-235.
Once this happens, thorium becomes uranium-232 and fizzes wonderfully with a steady stream of neutrons, producing heat in the moderator, which is where the first steps in making electricity are taken.
That heat is captured to create steam that turns a turbine.
Thorium was used in part in the first power-producing, commercial nuclear reactor: the 60-megawatt Shippingport Nuclear Atomic Power plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. With three different fuel assemblies, it ran for 25 years, starting in 1957. It used solid fuel, which was to become the standard for civilian nuclear power.
Meanwhile, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee, under its director, physicist Alvin Weinberg, work went ahead on what would become a legendary fast-breeder thorium reactor, using a liquid fuel embedded in molten salt. It went critical in 1965 and operated for five years before it was closed by the Atomic Energy Commission (forerunner of the Department of Energy) in a political move.
A fast reactor uses extra neutrons to create new fuel and burn up radioactive waste. The process is akin to perpetual motion — but isn’t, of course.
Now a charismatic nuclear engineer, Yash Patel, founder and CEO of AMR Reactor, is planning to bring thorium back as a viable future option for space exploration, power generation and, eventually, ship propulsion.
Patel told me he has designs for a microreactor (under 20 MW) and for a SMR (250 MW). The planned reactors are molten salt-moderated, thorium-fueled fast reactors.
He believes they will not only be cheaper, but will also operate better than the SMRs now entering the market.
Patel’s plan for Austin-registered AMR Reactor is to outsource as much of the fabrication as possible.
A fast reactor is called a breeder reactor because it generates more neutrons than are needed to produce fission, and these transmute waste into additional fuel.
Patel went to school in California and while looking for a career, a break came that changed the trajectory of his life. He got an internship with NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. There he worked on Curiosity, the plutonium-fueled Mars rover. His nuclear love affair, he said was “complete and instant.”
From NASA, he went to Texas A&M and graduated in nuclear engineering. He was well along with his PhD, when a family illness caused him to abandon it.
Patel lists two great blessings in his life. “The first was that I moved to America from India. The second was attending Texas A&M. That was another wonderful break.”
After a stint in biopharma, where he prospered, Patel started designing reactors in all his waking hours along with a friend, D’mitri Scott, now the chief technology officer at AMR Reactor.
Patel said the numbers didn’t work for their plans until they switched to thorium. It was a eureka moment.
There followed a period which he likened to Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak working on the first computer operating system. The two young men were obsessed and inspired by what they believed was extraordinary. “Our girlfriends, now our wives, saw very little of us. We sometimes worked all night,” Patel said.
With thorium, they found all they were looking for: a stable source of reliable power that was safe, couldn’t melt down, and was able to handle most of the fission products.
And it was proliferation-proof because of the presence of intense gamma radiation, which made it hard to process, steal or divert. “Thorium was the winner,” he said.
A new reactor is on the way.
Llewellyn King, an international energy-sector consultant, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island.
New England’s ‘dual’ housing/workforce crisis
Triple-decker housing in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
Housing affordability has become one of the defining economic challenges facing New England. As home prices and rents continue to rise, employers across the region are confronting a difficult reality: their ability to attract and retain workers increasingly depends on whether those workers can afford to live near their jobs.
On June 16, 2026, the New England Council hosted a special program, “Housing and the Workforce in New England: A Conversation with U.S. Representative Stephen F. Lynch.” The forum, sponsored by Liberty Bay Credit Union and moderated by President & CEO John Baron, brought together business leaders, housing advocates, developers, lenders, and policymakers to discuss the link between housing availability, workforce retention, and regional economic competitiveness.
Congressman Lynch, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, described what he called a “dual housing crisis.” While housing affordability has traditionally been viewed as an issue affecting low-income households and vulnerable populations, he said, rising costs are increasingly affecting the broader workforce. Employers across New England are struggling to recruit and retain workers, including teachers, nurses, first responders, construction workers, and young professionals who are being priced out of the communities they serve.
Rep. Lynch noted that the United States faces a housing shortage of roughly seven million units and emphasized that increasing supply must be central to any long-term solution. He advocated an “all-of-the-above” approach that includes affordable housing, workforce housing, and market-rate development, arguing that expanding housing opportunities across income levels is essential to improving affordability and supporting economic growth.
The conversation also examined barriers to new housing production. Rep. Lynch cited rising construction costs, elevated interest rates, tariffs on building materials, restrictive zoning policies, and local opposition to development as contributors to the shortage. He also emphasized the importance of transit-oriented development, arguing that investments in public transportation can expand housing opportunities while reducing commuting burdens for workers.
Federal policy solutions were another focus of the discussion. Rep.Lynch highlighted ongoing congressional efforts to advance a broad bipartisan housing package, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which aims to modernize housing policy, reduce barriers to development, and increase housing production. At the time of the forum, the legislation’s path to final passage remained uncertain. Since that discussion, however, Congress has approved the bill with overwhelming bipartisan support, sending it to President Trump for consideration. Supporters view the measure as the most significant federal housing legislation in decades and a meaningful step toward addressing the nation’s housing supply shortage. Congressman Lynch also discussed opportunities to redevelop underutilized public land, including federal properties, to create additional housing without acquiring new land.
The event concluded with a discussion of policy proposals under debate in Massachusetts, including rent control. The Congressman expressed concern that rent control could discourage investment and reduce housing production, arguing that increasing supply remains the most effective long-term strategy to improve affordability.
Throughout the discussion, one theme remained constant: housing is no longer simply a housing issue. It is a workforce, economic development, and competitiveness issue. The bipartisan passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act since the forum underscores the growing recognition in Washington that housing affordability has become a national economic challenge. As New England continues to confront rising housing costs and workforce shortages, expanding the housing supply will be critical to ensuring the region can attract workers, support employers, and sustain long-term economic growth.
A recording of this discussion is available here.
Honoring the forgotten
“Matriarch,’’ by Wheaton Mahoney, in her series “The Forgotten,’’ at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Mass. through Sept. 27.
The museum explains that “The Forgotten’’ “unearths the mysterious world of abandoned portrait art collected over a six-year period.
Throughout history, portraiture has held a profound significance in
immortalizing loved ones and those in power. Yet these portraits, acquired through auctions, had been
discarded and forgotten, leaving the stories of the subjects and the journey of the canvases shrouded in
mystery.
The artist’s mission is to offer these subjects a final acknowledgment by hanging them on living trees in her back woods, symbolizing the connection between earthly origins and their ultimate return as well as the metaphorical family tree. Captured over multiple years, the series reveals the passage of time through the changing of seasons while preserving the agelessness of the portraits. The artist’s titles offer yet another layer of character to each subject.
“The Forgotten’’ aims to honor those who have come before us and have slipped into obscurity.
Our dialect difficulties
Northeastern (NENE), Northwestern (NWNE), Southwestern (SWNE), and Southeastern (SENE) New England English dialects, as mapped by the Atlas of North American English on the basis of data from major cities.
“I'm from Connecticut, and we don't have any dialects. Well, I don't think we have any dialects, and yeah, it's very complex. That Rhode Island/Massachusetts New England region is arguably the hardest dialect to nail.’’
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (born 1973), American actor, comedian, director and producer.