Vox clamantis in deserto
‘Utilitarian cathedrals’
Mixed media on canvas by Vermont artist Dona Mara Friedman.
She says:
"Old, abandoned barns speak to me of a highly productive time in our American history. Built by hand, with wood cut from the surrounding area, they often contain individual architectural features that are prized by designers. I see them as cathedrals for utilitarian purposes – sitting in agricultural settings, they are American icons that keep my relationship with history alive.
A spiritual connection to the land began early in life, leading me to study herbalism. A desire to be closer to the earth, drove an eventual move to a rural setting over 20 years ago. My artistic vision perceives these familiar country objects and scenes around me as extraordinary, which relates to a childhood fantasy of life on a farm as preferable to growing up in suburbia. The open land, old barns, plowed fields, hay bales with mountains beyond become shapes, colors, textures, that are expressed with a contemporary sensibility. My use of mixed media, oil, acrylic, collage and wax allows for a complex textural surface with individual coloration that completes my perspective of rural settings.’’
This painting can be seen and purchased at Ellenbogen Gallery,in Manchester, Vt.
See:
FIFA Fan Festival in Boston
Hoped-for spectacle at much-disliked City Hall Plaza.
A Boston Guardian article (slightly edited for New England Diary) by Brandon Hill
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
Boston City Hall Plaza will be a FIFA World Cup hot spot this summer, with a host committee-led fan festival in partnership with the city expected to bring from 5,000 to 15,000 viewers to the plaza over the course of a day, from June 12 through June 27.
A May 5 neighborhood briefing outlined what residents can expect when the FIFA Fan Festival takes over City Hall Plaza for the duration of the World Cup group stage. City officials emphasized large crowds, shifting traffic patterns and a slate of free public programming designed to anchor Boston’s role as a host city.
The event was billed as the central hub of World Cup activity across the region, with live match broadcasts, cultural programming and interactive fan experiences concentrated at the plaza.
Planners at the meeting said that the site will have a capacity of about 5,000 people at any given time, but daily attendance is expected to far exceed that as fans cycle in and out. Matches will be shown on a large central screen, with three to four games played daily during most of the group stage.
The event is free to attend, though a registration system will be implemented and capacity limits will be monitored. While capacity limits may temporarily restrict entry at peak times, attendees will be allowed to come and go throughout the day. Officials clarified their expectation that many attendees will cycle in and out of the area from game to game.
The fan festival will close by 11:30 p.m. on “15 of the 16 days.”
In addition to match viewing, the festival will feature a cultural showcase between games, with local performers, artists and community groups invited to apply online for the chance to make use of the space.
City officials stressed that Downtown residents should prepare for noticeable impacts, particularly around transportation and public space usage. While presenters said there were no plans for street closures related to the festival at this time, “there will always be the chance for the Boston Police Department to be able to do so, depending on what’s happening in the road at that time.”
Parking restrictions will be enforced using the already existing special event signage, and officials urged residents to watch for temporary no-parking tow zones, particularly around South Station, which is being used as a central public transit hub for fans travelling to and from matches at Gillette Stadium.
Other city services will also be expanded to handle the influx of visitors. Public Works and Parks and Recreation said they will increase staffing focused on cleanliness, while the Transportation Department will deploy traffic management teams to high-congestion areas.
To support navigation, the city plans to roll out temporary pedestrian wayfinding signage across Downtown and Chinatown, along with a digital map of publicly accessible restrooms, drinking fountains and other amenities. Officials said additional water stations and portable restrooms will be installed where needed.
Beyond City Hall Plaza, the city is planning a series of six free neighborhood watch parties and is "picking which matches based on the diasporas and communities that we have here in the city,” such as the Haitian, Cape Verdean and Colombian communities.
Residents were encouraged to use the city’s 311 system to report issues or request services throughout the event period, which is expected to be one of the busiest summers in Boston’s recent history, coinciding not only with the World Cup but also with other major events such as the Tall Ships celebration.
After the horror
“The March of Time,” by Henry Sandham (1842-1910), showing Civil War veterans parading during Decoration Day in 1896. The days wasn’t officially renamed Memorial Day until 1971, though people had called it Memorial Day for many years.
Looking at 200 years of Lowell, an early industrial dynamo
“Washer Woman” (oil on canvas), by Wendy James, in the group show “200th Anniversary of Lowell,’’ at Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, Mass., through June 20.
The museum says:
“Lowell holds a pivotal role in American history…. Its textile mills transformed manufacturing, labor, and urban life. Today, Lowell’s preserved canals, mills, and neighborhoods stand as enduring symbols of American ingenuity, social change, and the complex legacy of industrialization.’’
“Through paintings, drawings, sculpture, fiber art, printmaking, and photography, experience the rich history and culture of Lowell through varying perspectives in this exciting show.’’
“From exterior and interior locations of the textile mills, to urban landscapes, and cultural events in Lowell, the exhibition includes artists Debra Poklemba-Anderson, Maureen J. Baker, Elena Behrakis, Margo Behrakis, John Brickles, Troods, Eileen Byrne, Sally Chapman, Robert Louis Del Russo, Linda Demers, Dave Drinon, Michelle Durand, Neal Emmer, Wendy Foy, Diane T. Francis, Claire Gagnon, Tom Gill, Chrissy Theo Hungate, Suzanne Hodge, Wendy James, T.C. King, Dennis Lucas, Richard Marion, Megumi Matsuki, Patrick McCay, Sandra J. Peters, Sharon Premo, Jim Roberts, Bill Tyers, Michael Vieira, Felipe Zamora, and Sandra Zappala.
Chris Powell: Fewer students; higher teacher pay; missing fathers
MANCHESTER, Conn.
What does it mean that, as the Connecticut Mirror reported last week, Connecticut's birth rate is the ninth lowest in the country and that the state's public school student population has fallen steadily since 2006, from 578,000 to 498,000, down nearly 14 percent in 20 years?
Counterintuitively, it means bigger paydays for teachers and school administrators.
Mere taxpayers might think that such a big reduction in students would prompt school systems to economize, but they'd be wrong. For state government, always in thrall to the teacher unions, has enacted a law -- the so-called minimum budget requirement -- that virtually prohibits school boards from reducing their budgets even as enrollment declines. The law maintains that if a school system spent a certain amount this year, it must spend at least that much every year forever. Economizing is actually illegal.
The premises of the minimum budget requirement law are, first, that spending equals education, and second, that keeping government employees happy is government's highest objective -- that any efficiencies in government should flow not to taxpayers but to government's own payroll.
Of course these premises are absurd. Connecticut has been increasing per-pupil spending for decades only for student achievement to decline. Higher spending has correlated with lower results.
If state residents were aware of the law's contempt for them, they might express resentment to their state legislators and the governor and demand an explanation. That would be awkward.
But no one in authority wants people to be aware of the law. The majority party, the Democrats, is controlled by the government employee unions and particularly the teacher unions, and while the Republican minority in the General Assembly dares to complain about taxes generally and specifics like high electric rates, most Republicans are too scared of the teacher unions to criticize the law.
That leaves news organizations to pursue the public interest by publicizing the law and holding legislators and the governor to account for it. But their coverage suggests that most news organizations in Connecticut also think that money equals education, so they see no problem.
Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott, challenging Gov. Ned Lamont in a primary for the Democratic nomination for governor, is the perfect representative of far-left educational ideology.
In an interview the other day with WTNH-TV8, in New Haven, Elliott outlined his platform: "The first thing we're going to do is make sure that we fix our tax structure -- that we have what Massachusetts did, a 4 percent surcharge on people making $1 million or more." The extra revenue, Elliott said, would be "sent back to municipalities to make sure that the quality of your education is not dependent on the ZIP code you're born in."
That's the school spending myth in action. Yes, student performance is terrible in certain municipalities, especially the cities, but it's not because of a lack of spending. It's because two-thirds or more of the children there are being raised by only one parent. Most lack a father in their lives and thus receive half or less of the financial support, guidance, discipline, and intellectual and physical stimulation children need.
The problem isn't school spending but poverty and per-pupil parenting. But it can't be discussed in polite company because, to some lefties, fathers and intact families seem a mortal threat to the ever-expanding government that seems to want to make everyone dependent in generational poverty, not self-sufficient.
The other day, U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, being challenged by former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in a primary for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District, accelerated in his race to corner the lefties likely to dominate the vote.
Larson joined two leading national lefties -- Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar -- to introduce legislation to have the federal government finance free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack for all students every day.
Why stop there? Why not also pay teachers to take their neglected and unfed students home with them at night, or at least start inquiring officially into the disintegration of the family?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
‘To dig for clams’
1677 map
Clam digging on Cape Cod.
—Photo by Invertzoo
“The luscious lobster with the codfish raw,
The brinish oyster, mussel, periwig,
And tortoise sought for by the Indian squaw,
Which to the flats dance many a winter’s jig,
To dive for cockles and to dig for clams.’’
—From New England’s Prospects (1639), by William Wood, in which he celebrates the great protein factory of Massachusetts Bay.
Unpatriotic to lie under it?
Quilt, probably made in Philadelphia, circa 1870 (red, white, blue, beige, printed on solid calico and white cotton), in the show “Keeping Alive the Remembrance: Commemorating America’s Founding, 1776-1876,’’ at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
The gallery explains:
“Drawn from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, this focused installation commemorates the nation’s 250th anniversary. The works on display, all made between 1776 and 1876, reveal how artists working in different art forms preserved a sense of vital connection to the founding during the country’s first century. By recording portraits and illustrating key events, artists shaped the American visual imagination in ways that still resonate today.’’
A New England ghost town
Remains of a building foundation in Hanton City.
Excerpted and slightly edited from an article in ecoRI News
(Read about other New England ghost towns.)
“Clues are weathered from centuries of rain, snow, ice, heat, and humidity, but not terribly difficult to find if you enjoy hiking. Scattered throughout the woods behind Fidelity Investment’s corporate office park off Douglas Pike in Smithfield, R.I., are traces of an old school, a small cemetery, cellar holes, abandoned wells, remnants of an old quarry, a threshing rock, and a maze of stone walls all slowly being reabsorbed by the wild.
“Hanton City, which holds the remains of a Colonial-era village or hamlet, fits the ghost town description quite nicely, which is one reason why it’s also known as ‘Ghost City’ and ‘Haunted City.’ The community was deserted long ago, and has been uninhabited ever since, at least by humans.
“The village is fairly spread out, with some structures being a quarter-mile to a half-mile away from each other. The Hanton City Trail provides access to the long-ago community. The village is off the former ox-cart road, on both sides, and land ownership is today a mix of privately owned (Fidelity and vague limited liability companies), conservation land (Audubon Society of Rhode Island and the Smithfield Land Trust), and publicly owned.’’
Igor Volsky: Tax billionaires more to help save democracy
“The Worship of Mammon” (1909), by Evelyn De Morgan.
Mansion in Greenwich, Conn., a town long known for hyper-rich residents.
1I0I1I0I1I0 photo
Via OtherWords.org
Google co-founder Sergey Brin is spending $57 million to defeat a proposed billionaire tax in California. “I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union,” he explained. “I don’t want California to end up in the same place.”
Months before it collapsed, my family and I also fled the Soviet Union. But that experience led me to support both the 5 percent tax on California billionaires and a national wealth tax. We need to reduce the power that billionaires like Brin have over our economy and democracy.
There’s nothing “Soviet” about a small, one-time tax on billionaires to offset cuts to healthcare and education in Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” — cuts that are already impacting hospitals and emergency rooms nationwide.
The tax does not nationalize industry, abolish private property, or send dissidents to gulags. To intentionally conflate it with the Soviet system insults the memory of the people who actually suffered under it.
What I learned watching the Soviet Union crumble is that societies fall apart when a tiny elite captures political and economic power, walls itself off from ordinary life, and uses that power to entrench its own privilege. The USSR didn’t fall because it taxed the ultra-wealthy. It fell because a tiny group of insiders rigged every system imaginable to protect their own status.
Historians and critics have a name for the Soviet ruling class: the nomenklatura. It consisted of a network of roughly 3 million people, less than 1.5 percent of the population, who held the commanding heights of the Party, the ministries, the state enterprises, and the security services.
They enjoyed their own stores, their own hospitals, and their own rules — which fostered deep resentment among the Soviet population. When the system finally cracked, that resentment was one major reason.
Now look around the United States in 2026.
Approximately 300,000 households with over $50 million in wealth (the top 0.1 percent of the population) are sitting on $40 trillion. That’s more than the national debt and several times what the federal government spent last year.
The fact that Brin can drop $57 million to kill a ballot measure he doesn’t like and barely notice the expense (this represents less than 0.1 percent of the money he made in 2025 alone) only underscores the scope of the crisis. He can fly a candidate for governor on a private jet to his Lake Tahoe home and decide, over dinner, whether to bless the campaign with a $1 million check.
And he can mobilize his wealthy friends to spend millions to defeat a tax that most voters support. A March 2026 nationwide survey by Impact Research found that 77 percent of registered voters nationwide support raising taxes on billionaires, including 91 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of independents, and even 65 percent of Republicans.
Majorities believe billionaires have a negative impact on corruption, political division, the cost of housing, the cost of living, the cost of healthcare, and the spread of online misinformation.
Brin is spending millions to avoid a 5 percent tax from a fortune estimated at $273 billion. Should he be subject to the tax, he would still be worth roughly $260 billion. The revenue raised from the proposal would prevent up to 3.4 million Californians from losing their healthcare coverage — and keep hospitals and emergency rooms open for citizens across the state.
Both in the former Soviet Union and in the United States today, the walled-off world of extreme wealth breeds its own paranoia — in which any policy aimed at the common good gets misread as a personal attack.
Taxing extreme wealth in order to reduce the influence of a tiny, ultra-rich elite isn’t how democracies fall. It’s how they survive. Across the nation, our leaders must find the courage to do so.
Igor Volsky is the Campaign Director for Tax the Greedy Billionaires.
E Pluribus unum
“Mending: A Tear’’ (cut up and rewoven monoprint and monotypes) by Kate Higley, in the show “NHAA Members’ Exhibition: Creme de la Creme,’’ at Art Center Dover (N.H.)
— Image courtesy Art Center Dover
Art Center Dover says the show “gathers the members of the New Hampshire Art Association into a true medley of art in all different mediums and approaching all different subject matter. From sentimental painterly landscapes to haunting monochromatic pigment prints to whimsical and bright mixed media collages, there really is something for everyone in this exhibition.’’
Fanciful circa 1830 wood engraving of colonists settling Dover, N.H., in 1623.
Cochecho River in Dover with repurposed old mill buildings, from Henry Law Park.
American fatalism
At the Ice Cream Barn, Swansea, Mass. She had a child with her.
— Photo by William Morgan
‘An iniquitous scheme’
Illustration from the posthumously published biography of Chloe Spear, showing her abduction in Africa as a child; Spear was enslaved in Massachusetts from 1761 to until 1783, when slavery was abolished in the commonwealth after court cases.
“I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have."
— Abigail Adams to her husband, Founding Father John Adams, of Massachusetts, in a Sept. 22, 1774 letter
"Yankee mode of selling negroes" in Arkansas Intelligencer, Feb. 3, 1844, quotes from a 1742 Thomas Fleet ad for an enslaved woman. Arkansas, a slave state until its abolition, was part of the Confederacy. Slavery was abolished throughout the U.S. on Dec. 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment went into effect.
Bret R. Shaw: So who shops at farmers markets?
The Boston Public Market houses more than a dozen year-round vendor stalls, and is open seven days a week. Vendors or the indoor market are selected by the operator, the non-profit Boston Public Market Association, and must sell food and other products produced or otherwise originated New England, as well as a limited amount of certain produce that can’t be grown in the six-state region.
From The Conversation (except for picture and caption above.
Bret R. Shaw is a professor of life sciences communication at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
His work tied to this article was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA, award no. 2023-68006-38984).
People who shop at the more than 8,700 farmers markets operating in the U.S. either year-round or seasonally generally fall into six distinct groups. Three of them are more interested in farmers markets than the others. I study local food systems as a strategic communications scholar, and that’s the main takeaway from a study that I conducted with several colleagues.
As we explained in the March 2026 edition of British Food Journal, people who fall into those groups have different levels of interest in farmers markets but also have some things in common. Most people who shop at them are motivated to go because they want healthy, fresh food, they support local farmers and they think going to the farmers market is fun.
This is not a niche activity. An earlier study I worked on found that 81% of U.S. adults said that they shop at a farmers market at least once a year.
For both studies, we pulled survey data from a nationally representative sample of 5,141 U.S. consumers that was conducted Aug. 2-11, 2023. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.
Researchers define farmers markets and local food in different ways. So we asked respondents to simply think of farmers markets as places where they can buy food directly from more than one vendor and where all or most of the items are locally grown, raised or made. We defined local food as being grown in their state or 250 miles or less from their homes.
We determined that about 18% of those surveyed are “highly engaged” farmers market shoppers. They care a lot about food and enjoy buying, preparing and eating fresh food. They are excited about many aspects of farmers markets, which are places where this group shops for a variety of reasons, such as supporting local farmers, buying nutritious, delicious food and connecting with community.
Nearly 65% of these shoppers were women. This group was the most diverse, with 27% of respondents identifying as Hispanic, 20% Black and 4% multiracial. They also had significantly lower average annual household incomes than other groups, averaging US$40,000-$50,000.
We found that another 18% of the people surveyed were “health-focused.” Like the highly engaged shoppers, they make buying and eating healthy food a high priority. However, this group doesn’t enjoy cooking as much. The health-focused group tends to avoid genetically modified foods, as well as convenient options like takeout food, frozen dinners and microwave-ready meals.
About 58% of them were women and their average age was 57, making them the oldest of the groups. Roughly 70% of the health-focused group was white, making it less diverse than the highly engaged group but more diverse than some of the other groups.
Finally, about 19% of the respondents were what we called “emerging interest” farmers market shoppers. They value convenience and learning about food. This group was the most likely to see going to the farmers market as a fun activity.
Emerging interest shoppers were nearly evenly split by gender, with 52% women. Their average age was 44 years old, making them the youngest of the groups.
It’s not always a love of radishes that draws shoppers to these stalls. Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
We also identified three groups of consumers who were less interested in farmers markets than the highly engaged, health-focused and emerging interest shoppers, even if some of them do occasionally shop at the markets anyway.
About 16% of farmers market shoppers are people we identified as “convenience” shoppers. They are more likely to eat frozen dinners and buy takeout. They rarely cook meals from scratch using produce and other fresh ingredients.
About 43% of them say they never or rarely shop at a farmers market. Around 59% of them are men and 37% are people of color.
Tashana Small sells mac and cheese ‘cupcakes’ topped with pulled pork, Buffalo chicken tenders and Cajun shrimp at a farmers market on Long Island in 2023. Erica Marcus/Newsday RM via Getty Images
Roughly 17% of these shoppers fall into a “practical” category. They methodically plan their grocery shopping and are among the least interested in farmers markets, with more than half saying that they either rarely or never shop at them.
Practical consumers were close to evenly split by gender; 53% were women. Their income tended to be the highest of the groups, typically in the $60,000-$75,000 range.
We called the 12% of the shoppers in the final group we surveyed “uninvolved.” This group showed very little interest in farmers markets or any other food-related activities. About 3 in 4 rarely or never go to farmers markets. Nearly 70% of uninvolved farmers market shoppers were men and 76% were white.
When someone in the uninvolved group goes to a farmers market, they may be going out of happenstance or because someone in their life wants them to go – not due to any personal interest.
Better than the other way around
“Night Remembering Day’’ (acrylic on canvas), by Cynthia Roberts, in her show “Mango Season,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, June 3-28.
She says:
“In these works, I’m exploring the act of witnessing through emergence and submergence of imagery in color-rich abstract environments. Careful botanical line drawings appear and then step back from the viewer, as more literal depictions step forward. Each painting is an ecosystem where the process of observation creates an interior life; plants appear to remember themselves, their history, their previous state perhaps, and the painter becomes transcriptionist of that immersive world, rather than arbiter.
“Mango season begins in March and runs through June in Costa Rica, where I spend chunks of time each year. I was happily surprised to see the connection to the season. People stop their cars, motorbikes, and walks to collect ripe mangos from a roadside tree. Toucans, parrots, and other birds are drawn to the trees with ripening mangoes to fill themselves. There is an innate magnetism; if you have a mango tree near you, it will be known. The period arcs the transition from dry to rainy season. The mangoes ripen and sweeten in the hot dry air.’’
Cuddle up
Work by Will Kasso Condry in his show “Everything is Everything,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, July 10-Sept. 12
The gallery says:
“Will Kasso Condry brings his distinctive Afro-surrealist style to the BCA Center with ‘Everything is Everything,’ an immersive exhibition of painting and illustration that weaves together parallel journeys of healing and discovery. Condry is the co-founder of Juniper Creative Arts, a Vermont-based Black and Dominican family collective with a mission-driven practice of creating art that celebrates the lives and stories of the African Diaspora. Drawing on imagery and characters from Juniper Creative’s ‘The Afro-Pollinators’ series, Condry layers his personal journey into a mythic framework, using Kelis the Afronaut and other figures to explore memory, ecological reciprocity, and the sacred intelligence of the natural world.’’
Chris Powell: A great candidate in theory but disaster in practice; immigration’s cost
New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart
MANCHESTER, Conn.
In theory Erin Stewart was a great idea for the Republican nomination for governor of Connecticut: not just a woman but a Republican who was elected six times consecutively as mayor of a heavily Democratic city, New Britain. She must have had something going for her.
But in practice as a candidate for governor Stewart has been giddy, superficial, reckless, vulgar, and astonishingly inept politically even as challenging a Democratic incumbent and Connecticut's entrenched Democratic machine requires great political skill just to have a chance.
In recent weeks Stewart has been a disaster.
First she gave an interview in which she claimed to have been offered bribes by many New Britain residents seeking favors from her office, bribes that she didn't accept but never reported. Stewart seems to have thought she was touting her integrity but she actually impugned herself.
Then there were allegations that the Stewart administration's tax collector had mishandled funds and backdated taxpayer checks to let delinquents escape late fees.
Then the Connecticut Mirror disclosed that as Stewart was preparing to leave office she applied to city government for a form of annual pension that didn't exist, a pension she imagined to be worth nearly $40,000 a year. Challenged about this, her explanation was simply: "Why wouldn't I?"
And The Hartford Courant and WTHN-TV8, in New Haven, disclosed that Stewart had used her city government credit card for thousands of dollars of purchases for personal items delivered to her home but misclassified as office expenses, as well as for an expensive membership at the Hartford Club and a $500 birthday dinner. She denied nothing, instead claiming that the purchases were in the city's interest and people were just out to get her.
Even Gov. Ned Lamont couldn't resist noting the irony that, after Republicans highlighted the expense account abuse for which the chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and University system, Terrence Cheng, was removed and given a year of paid leave, Republicans seemed about to nominate their own expense-account cheater for governor.
While the governor himself has not been implicated, corruption, malfeasance, and indifference to failure have been frequent in his administration. Mastery of the many specific examples of this might be the strongest attribute for a challenger to the governor's re-election. Can Connecticut's Republicans really think that Stewart could exploit such examples now without being made ridiculous by her own self-dealing and unaccountability?
Indeed, Stewart's exploitation of her expense account probably would resonate more with the public than state government's longstanding failures with education, child protection, housing, and urban living standards. Those failures are simply taken for granted, the natural order of things. But people do understand when elected officials abuse their office to enrich themselves.
At their state nominating convention this weekend maybe some Republican delegates will figure that the party's chances in the state election in November are so poor, with the Democrats so entrenched in the state and President Trump's national Republican administration so capricious and corrupt, it won't matter if, in nominating Stewart, Connecticut Republicans are seen to condone capriciousness and corruption at the top of their state ticket as well.
Republicans who think that way will be wrong. Win or lose, every election is an opportunity to restore faith in democracy, or diminish it.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION'S COST: Enrollment in Bridgeport's schools has fallen by 700 students over the last year, from 20,000 to 19,300, and much of the decline is attributed to illegal immigrants leaving the city or at least removing their children from school in fear of the Trump administration's enforcement of immigration law.
Whether this is good or bad, Bridgeport spends an average of more than $18,000 per student per year, so the decline in its student population could save nearly $13 million per year, if the money wasn't used just to increase spending elsewhere.
In any case this development invites review of how much the illegal immigration facilitated by state government is costing Connecticut, and how it is never directly appropriated for.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
A threatened way of life
“The Barrett Family, Addison, Maine,’’ in photographer Cheryl Clegg’s show “The Endangered Lobstermen,’’ at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Mass., through May 30.
The gallery explains that:
Clegg was struck by the ‘‘red-listing’’ of Maine lobsters —the classification of the lobsters as endangered. She considered how the classification is “a direct threat to the way of life’’ of The Pine Tree State’s lobstering communities, and so she began to photograph the families in these communities to show the people “at risk of losing their livelihood and way of life, capturing the strength, resilience, and uncertainty of the people behind the industry.’’
Assume nothing
Greensboro, Vt., and Caspian Lake from the southeast as ominous clouds gather. Caspian Lake has long drawn people in the arts and low-key rich people to summer there,
— Photo by Ascended Dreamer
“A genuine New Englander learned by example never to take anything for granted. Once, when I remarked that it was a nice day, my Uncle Henry looked up at the sky, turned in every direction, and seeing there wasn’t a cloud anywhere, took the pipe from his mouth and finally conceded, ‘Well, maybe.’’’
— Lewis Hill (1924-2008) in Fetched-up Yankee (2001). He lived on the family homestead in Greensboro, Vt., where he was a nurseryman.
‘Interrupted’ art
Acrylic on canvas painting by Giorgio Griffa in his show “Paths in the Forest,’’ June 13-Oct. 12 at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
The museum says:
“For almost sixty years, Giorgio Griffa has explored the potential of painting in a practice that is both rigorous and lyrical. Griffa (born in 1936 in Turin, Italy, where he lives and works) paints with diluted acrylics in pastel colors on unstretched, unprimed canvases. These are tacked to the wall for display and folded for storage, a memory of which persists in their creases. Griffa values ‘the intelligence of materials’ and views his paintings as neither representational nor abstract, but as real, material facts.
“‘Impersonal marks that belong to any hand, with thousands of years of memory’ are Griffa’s subject; he follows and blurs the lines of drawing, counting, and writing. Griffa ‘interrupts’ his paintings before they are finished because, ‘in the meantime, life has moved on,’ an idea he credits to Zen Buddhism. Like the artist himself, each work remains vital: ‘Leaving the work incomplete means symbolically omitting that final point, which, like the period at the end of this sentence, fixes it in the past.”’