Vox clamantis in deserto
‘The ups and downs’
From Midge Battelle’s show “Love Letter to a Dream, at the Provincetown Art Museum and Museum, through Oct. 25.
The gallery says:
“Midge’s works are meditations on the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs, the sadness and wonders of life. The Grid, The Blue, The Silver, the Pale and sometimes the Saints. Her work is Healing, as is the spending of time with her. The photographs, the Cyanotypes, the prints and the paintings all work together to express Midge’s view of the world.’’
Llewellyn King: The sad decline in creative swearing
Term such as queer can be reappropriated by the people they are directed against, as in this demonstration in Washington.
—Photo by Ted Eytan
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Mark Twain wrote an essay on the decay in the art of lying. His conclusion was that you had better have a damn good memory.
Oscar Wilde wrote an essay — in the form of a philosophical dialogue — on the same subject, but he was trying to prove that art didn’t need to be based on the real world.
I have the temerity to offer this: the decay in the art of swearing.
As a boy, I read in Richard Dana’s book Two Years Before the Mast that the captain could swear for minutes without repeating himself. Ever since, I have been fascinated by swearing and those who maintain it as — dare I say it — an art form.
At the heart of the decline is the lack of respect for the f-word. In its day, it was the capstone, shocking and bound to offend. Ergo, it had to be used sparingly and calculatedly.
Now it is everywhere, in movies, in BBC television shows, and has been heard in the Congress and from the lips of the president of the United States. Shame.
If this keeps up, the f-word will be no more upsetting than bloody, which was a true shocker when George Bernard Shaw used it his 1913 play Pygmalion, but is now no more shocking than any other adjective.
Bugger is another word that has become inoffensive. Once a shocker with kiloton-explosive quality, it has been defused.
Here are some great swearers I have known and who kept alive the creative art of profanity.
Stockard Channing has an exquisite command of the language and with, as you would expect from one of our great actresses, impeccable timing.
Decades ago, she and I were both guests at The Ashram, an exclusive health resort in California. I have fond memories of the two of us trying to jog down the beach in Malibu while she let loose with a powerful and profane description of some of Hollywood’s executives. Invigorating.
Ben Bradlee, the legendary executive editor of The Washington Post, knew how to use the f-word as a tool of editorial management. He dropped it straight and true like the blade of a guillotine on any stupid idea or meandering argument.
I saw this happen with deadly effect when, in an editorial conference (a daily event in newspapers), the coterie of assistant managing editors was getting overly excited about the struggle of a Post reporter in the Middle East. Bradlee listened, then declared, “F-word, this sounds like a story about how we didn’t get the story.” Quite so.
James Schlesinger, the great public servant who in turn was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, director of the CIA, secretary of defense and secretary of energy, liked to shock in formal situations. He used to use his command of profanity to bring pompous discussions down to earth.
Once I was visiting with him at the CIA, and we were shooting the breeze as we did often, when his aide came in and said, “Sir, the admiral has been waiting a long time to see you.”
Schlesinger signaled to me to stay put. “It’s good for [strong expletive] admirals to wait.”
That was in the early days of his tenure at the agency, and clearly he wanted word to get around that he was the absolute authority at Langley – and he was anywhere he held office. Awesome.
The master of what I think of as narrative swearing was my friend Guy Hawtin, a distinguished journalist with the Financial Times and the New York Post, who abandoned the wicked ways of journalism for the Episcopal priesthood.
Hawtin, who resembled the actor Peter Ustinov, could put English words together any time, anywhere, but his memorable tirade of swearing and invective happened to be in the hallowed ground of New York’s Algonquin Hotel. The perfect set.
Our lunch wasn’t intended as a reprise of the famous Algonquin Round Table of the 1930s, though we were seated at a round table. Our mutual friends David Fishlock, the FT’s science editor, and John McCaughey, a former FT subeditor, were also there.
The FT editor had dismissed Hawtin, leaving considerable bad blood. When Fishlock suggested that the editor was doing a good job, Hawtin launched into a brilliantly sustained angry monologue — the finest display of serial swearing this connoisseur had ever heard before or since.
Sitting by himself in a corner was the real, older, Peter Ustinov. He raised a hand with his thumb and index finger making a circle. Approval.
Our politicians aren’t adding to the art. They should have their mouths’ washed out with soap — my mother’s remedy for potty-mouth.
Llewellyn King, based in Rhode Island, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com.
Brief flaming days
“October” (oil), by Willard Metcalf, (1858-1925). He was dubbed the visual equivalent of “poet laureate of the New England hills.’’
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
— “October,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The future of the storied Maine Coast
Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future captures the memorable voices of Mainers in a rapidly changing world. These include oyster farmers and other aquaculturalists, fishermen, marine biologists and other scientists, and community leaders who are navigating dramatic changes along and off Maine’s iconic coast. Presenting deep geological, climatological, and human history, in-depth interviews, and other research, the book shows the challenges and opportunities as rising seas caused by global warming, along with sometimes controversial shoreline development, are reshaping ways of life along The Pine Tree State’s storied coast. The vivid changes include shifting fisheries, new industries and markets and the technology that pushes them.
The problems, opportunities, and adaptations in Maine carry lessons for coastal communities around the world. These are global issues described locally through the stories of Mainers on the frontlines. A powerful and timely portrait, Rising Tides is both a warning and an inspiration. It displays the dangers posed by change while also serving as a testament to the ingenuity and determination required not only in Maine but on coasts everywhere.
Shaking hands over the body
The ultimate Boston Irish politician — James Michael Curley (1874-1958), who as “The Hub’s’’ legendary mayor spent a lot of time quietly campaigning at wakes. Read the novel The Last Hurrah, which is based on him.
“This tailgate is a Time – which is what Massachusetts politicians throw whenever they must once again run for office….A Time is usually a fund-raising dinner, but it can be a fund-raising lunch, a fund-raising trip to the ballpark, or yes, a fund-raising wake, where, very likely, Jumbo Jr. will be shaking hands over the departed Jumbo Sr. preparatory to a run for the Governor’s Council.’’
-- Charles P. Pierce (born 1953) is a Boston area-based American sportswriter, political blogger, liberal pundit, author, and game show panelist.
‘Holistic way of seeing and being’
“Politics of Eternity”| (glass, collage, acrylic, steel), by Dustin Yellin, in his show at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn., through March 28.
The museum says:
“Brooklyn-based artist Dustin Yellin (American, b. 1975) is internationally recognized for his captivating sculptures, which feature found images and painted passages compressed between dozens of panes of laminated glass. With their monumental scale and minute details, Yellin’s intricate and varied landscapes guide viewers on a journey of personal and cultural discovery. Close looking reveals references to humankind’s treasures (rare minerals, ancient artifacts, masterpieces of art history); its detritus (nuclear waste, rusting cars, decommissioned infrastructure); and its speculative future (jet packs, rockets, colonies on Mars). Through this expansive visual language, the artist blurs the boundaries between art, history, and science, proposing an integrated, holistic way of seeing and being.’’
Between realism and idealization
“Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon” (1926), cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, of April 24, 1926, in the show “Norman Rockwell: The Human Touch,’’at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., Nov. 14-May 31.
The museum says
“As a Time magazine reporter observed in 1943, Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) ‘constantly achieves that compromise between a love of realism and the tendency to idealize, which is one of the most deeply ingrained characteristics of the American people.’ His art has long been defined by a hopeful and admiring view of humanity. Throughout his career, he sought to capture the warmth and complexities of people’s fleeting interactions with one another― narratives shaped as much by observations and affection for his subjects as by their shared emotions and experiences.’’
Joëlle Rollo-Koster: A golden Vatican PR tool
Golden Rose by Giuseppe and Pietro Paolo Spagna. Rome, around 1818/19. Kept today in the Imperial Treasury in Hofburg Imperial Palace, in Vienna.
From The Conversation, except for picture above.
KINGSTON, R.I.
Almost every ceremonial object or ornament of the medieval papal monarchy has disappeared or lost its original purpose. Yet one survives: the golden rose.
On Sept. 26, 2026, during Pope Leo XIV’s visit to France, he traveled to Lourdes, home to one of the world’s most famous shrines to the Virgin Mary. After praying, Leo presented a golden rose to Our Lady of Lourdes – the fifth time he has dedicated a rose to a Marian shrine or image.
The ornate rose Leo offered to Lourdes is not that different from its medieval iterations. The oldest surviving rose is now at the Musée de Cluny in Paris and dates from the early 1300s. Both are golden, with several branches and buds.
Pope Leo XIV offered a golden rose in Lourdes as part of a four-day trip to France.
Yet who receives the roses, and why, has changed dramatically.
As a medieval historian researching the papacy, I frequently find mentions of the roses. They are ubiquitous in medieval chronicles – most of all, in papal accounting registers. The history of the roses’ beneficiaries reflects the history of the papacy and how its influence has shifted over the centuries.
Roots of tradition
Most medieval roses were made of gold and silver, adorned with precious stones such as sapphires and rubies. One of the buds formed a small receptacle that held some musk and balsam, rare and expensive fragrances.
The Vatican Apostolic Archives have preserved the accounting registers that itemized many of the roses’ costs. On average, they weighed 11-16 ounces of precious metal and cost the equivalent of 10 years of a laborer’s annual wage.
The golden rose first appeared during the papacy of Leo IX. On April 18, 1049, the pope exempted a nunnery in Alsace – now in Sainte-Croix-en-Plaine, France – from the legal authority and supervision of the local bishop. In return, the head of the nunnery was required to offer the pope a golden rose of some 2 ounces, or of equivalent value. At the time, roses were often used to symbolize a feudal pledge: the submission of a vassal to a lord.
Within a couple of generations, the gift had changed direction: The pope now granted a rose. The first clearly documented case took place in 1096, when Urban II, touring France and preaching the First Crusade, granted it to Fulk of Anjou to reward him for his willingness to participate.
A 13th-century illustration of a pope bestowing a golden rose on Laetare Sunday. Musée de Cluny via Wikimedia Commons
From the 11th C
entury on, the pope offered a rose once a year, on Laetare Sunday: the fourth Sunday of Lent, the period before Easter when many Catholics commit to some form of penance. According to ceremonial books called “ordines,” the pope held the rose during the worship service, preached about its symbolism, and presented it to a recipient.
On that Sunday, gifting the rose reminded believers that while Lent was difficult, beauty and joy would emerge from it. The day was also a feast in honor of the recipient – typically the prefect of Rome, who supervised the city’s jurisdictions and police.
Diplomatic tool
Eventually, the decision about who should receive the honor rested solely with the pope. Still, it was always bestowed upon those who wielded power: the prefect of Rome, emperors, kings, military leaders and defenders of Christian lands. Receiving the rose was a public acknowledgment that the recipient – usually a warrior – stood beside the pope in protecting the church.
In 1148, for example, Pope Eugene III offered it to the king of Leon and Castile, Alfonso VII. A century later, Pope Innocent IV gave it to Raymond Berenger, count of Provence. In both cases the pope rewarded the fight against Muslims, whom the Vatican saw as “infidels” or heretics.
The Avignon papacy of the 14th Century, a period when several popes resided in what is now southern France, accelerated this evolution. Away from Rome, and in the absence of a Roman prefect, the rose’s role as a negotiating tool intensified.
By the 14th Century, the ceremony had grown even more elaborate. According to ceremonial books, the pope carried the rose in procession, while its beneficiary held the reins of his horse and kissed the pope’s feet – a gesture of submission.
Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in a procession with a golden rose in a 15th-century illustration. Chronik des Constanzer Concils by Ulrich von Richental/New York Public Library
Warriors, women – and shrines
Historians can estimate how many people received the rose based on evidence available in the Vatican’s accounting registers and other historical records. Over the years, more and more began to be presented to women, and then to shrines. This change shows the history of the papacy – and of its communication strategy. Simply put, the evolution of the rose followed the evolution of papal power itself.
The first few centuries of the rose were a period of conquests and Catholic expansionism, when conversion often came through war. With very few exceptions, roses were offered to commend male medieval rulers, often ones who had militarily defended Catholicism.
The early modern period saw the birth of the Protestant Reformation and many religious conflicts. Popes looked for support from the era’s powerful women rulers, such as Catherine de’ Medici, who played a crucial role during France’s wars of religion between Protestants and Catholics. From the 16th century onward, roses were often given to women like her: empresses, queens and the wives of high dignitaries.
That shift accelerated in the 18th and 19th centuries, when most roses were gifted to Catholic women of high standing. From 1790 to 1893 not a single man received the rose.
This was a period of revolutions and secularization, when the church could not depend on the military leadership of a king, duke or the nobility. Again, queens and empresses dominated the beneficiaries. With the rose, popes could flatter and honor the wives of important rulers, who in turn could pressure their spouses if needed. Eugénie, empress of the French and wife of Napoleon III, received it in 1856 for her piety and philanthropy.
Charlotte, the grand duchess of Luxembourg, received a rose in 1956. Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
The 20th and 21st centuries saw a total abandonment of gifting the rose to humans. Instead, popes have presented them to shrines and basilicas, typically ones dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The last person given a rose was Charlotte, grand duchess of Luxembourg, who received one in 1956 for her piety and courage during World War II.
1,000 years of change
Today, Leo XIV continues the tradition. Devotion to Mary remains central to Catholic identity in an age when political authority no longer carries the same religious weight. Gifting the roses to holy shrines, images or basilicas separates them from any suggestion of political and religious alliance or favoritism.
The history of the golden rose reveals the shift of papal priorities from political alliance-building to devotional symbolism. What was once a diplomatic gift addressed to earthly power is now offered to Marian shrines: the roses embody faith itself. The recipients changed because the church’s relationship to power changed.
I see the rose as a perfect example of the Catholic Church’s deep understanding and adaptation to its time and its gift for reinvention. Few institutions have managed to keep a medieval ceremony alive for nearly a millennium while completely transforming its meaning. The golden rose is the papacy’s oldest public relations tool.
Joëlle Rollo-Koster is professor emerita of medieval history at the University of Rhode Island. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Accepting cold feet
“Maine Coast Winter 1909” (oil on canvas), by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul in the state of Maine.”
― Marilynne Robinson (born 1943), from her novel Gilead
xxx
“Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals.’’
— Paul Theroux (1941), American travel writer, novelist and essayist
‘Remaking the land’
“Totem #1 (primal places)’’ (acrylic, oil on birch panel), by Molly Dickinson, in her show “Of Longing and Loss,’’ at the Jamestown (R.I.) Arts Center, Nov. 20-Jan 9.
She has asked:
“Do we find beauty in nature, or only after we have reshaped the landscape to our own purposes? Perhaps impossible to answer, as little of these lands have escaped the imprint of human activity. I paint my pieces directly, quickly, so that one feels my hand, my marks, remaking the land, too.’’
‘Humor and hope’
“Noggin,’’ in Kathleen Schneider’s show “Taken to Heart,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, Oct. 16-Jan. 23.
The gallery says:
“Through the methodical, time-intensive processes of dyeing, sewing, printing, and assembling, Kathleen Schneider creates sculpture, textiles, and prints that are labors of love, reflecting on our ever-changing world. Inspired by daily life, poetry, and treasured books, her work explores the relationship between personal experience and larger social and political histories. Using vibrant colors and shadows cast by the work, the artist investigates how humor and hope can exist alongside uncertainty and struggle, inviting viewers to consider how the current political landscape impacts our lives and communities. Schneider gives emotions, speech, and activism physical form, showing how personal reflection can become collective action.’’
Chris Powell: When the state is too hard on ex-cons
—Photo by Rainerzufall1234
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut coddles many criminals. Someone may be convicted of a half-dozen or more offenses in separate incidents over a period of years and still not be locked up at all, much less be deemed incorrigible and locked up for good.
Despite all the prattling done by the state's liberal politicians about guns, at last count most gun-crime charges were being plea-bargained away in favor of guilty pleas to such charges as robbery and assault, crimes that are mistakenly considered more serious. If gun crimes were prosecuted more vigorously, there probably would be much less gun crime.
But the other week a report from the Connecticut Mirror demonstrated how state law is inflicting unnecessary cruelty on former offenders and even punishing them for rehabilitating themselves.
The report highlighted the case of a North Branford couple, Tracy and Billy DeSenti, who had done serious prison time, the woman for drug offenses, the man for assault and larceny. Upon their release they met in a program for former offenders and married married. They supported each other, stayed out of trouble, got jobs, bought and renovated a house, and showed that troublesome people sometimes can rehabilitate themselves.
But when the man died and the house passed to his wife, state government determined that his estate owed the state $233,000 as repayment for the cost of his incarceration.
Shocking as this was to the widow, Connecticut has enforced such a law for many years. The widow could discharge her late husband's debt only by selling the house and taking an apartment whose rent was higher than her former mortgage payment.
The law is fair to a certain extent -- the extent involving financial windfalls. After imposing serious costs on society, former offenders shouldn't get rich through no substantial efforts of their own. They should be required to cover the cost of their imprisonment if they come into big money via things like lottery winnings, lawsuit settlements, damage awards, major inheritances, and such.
In a case that may raise similar issues, a man who had done prison time in Connecticut and was the father of a young girl who was murdered, apparently by family members, is suing the state Department of Children and Families on behalf of his daughter's estate, even though he had abandoned the girl and her mother long before the murder. If the estate wins a lot of money, he might have to repay the state for his prison costs but still get rich in the name of the daughter he abandoned.
But the house owned by the North Branford woman and her late husband was not the product of a windfall. It was something they earned honestly through years together. While the house can be construed as an inheritance for the surviving spouse, it came to her only at the cost of her husband's life.
Each year state government recovers about $3.3 million in incarceration costs from hundreds of former prisoners. It's a substantial amount that shouldn't be foregone lightly.
But few former prisoners have substantial assets and so most aren't billed. Most former prisoners struggle to re-establish themselves in life, and the more they are ground down by circumstances, the less incentive they have to live honestly and not return to crime. Indeed, prison is usually a profound punishment long after a prisoner's release, and most former prisoners do return to crime within a few years.
Upon their release most prisoners are unaware of their liability to repay the state for their incarceration if they ever succeed financially, and if, in fairness, the Correction Department started warning them about it upon their release, they might sense a millstone around their neck and lose enthusiasm for staying out of trouble. The state would be telling them: We'll never let you succeed financially through your own efforts.
So the General Assembly should reconsider the incarceration costs repayment law. The law should continue to apply to true windfalls, but what former prisoners earn by their own efforts and commitment to rehabilitation should be exempted.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years\ (CPowell@cox.net)
Stupidity will keep you from going insane
Print of the McLean Asylum in 1853, then in Somerville, Mass. It moved to Belmont, Mass., in 1894. Founded in 1811, the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital remains among the world’s most important private mental hospitals, encompassing extensive treatment and research.
"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894), Boston-based physician, poet, professor and polymath
Awed by seasonal change
“Menagerie’’ (colored pencils on bond), by Linda Klein, in her show “A Walk in the Park,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Nov. 4-20.
The artist says:
“For many years, I have walked the trails and paths in the parks around Framingham and Sudbury, {Mass.} and I have had the experience of watching nature change over the seasons.
During those walks I have seen a tightly curled green stalk unfurl into a showy green fan. I have seen moss slowly grow over a dead log creating a soft carpet for insects to make their homes. Trees move from the wind often swaying above my head, and their movements create sounds: creaking or swishing, bird calls, bees buzzing, insects digging or flitting.
As the seasons change, the greens begin to fade into shades of ochre, rust and brown. The leaves slowly float down from the trees or drop their needles to gather on the paths.
But during winter the sounds are quiet, almost absent except for the occasional bird flitting from tree to tree or the scuttle of some small animal looking for food.
I love this time. I am awed by its beauty and humbled by its very existence.
More from the sewer of scams that is the Internet
Beware invoices you might get in your email from “Geek Squad.’’ They are probably yet another criminal con.
I found this warning from the Federal Trade Commission:
· The Bait: You get an email or text with a fake invoice claiming a $200 to $500 auto-renewal charge for "Total Tech Support" or "Secure Guard".
· The Urgency: It claims your account will be billed unless you call a phone number within 24 to 48 hours.
· The Trap: If you call, the fake support agent offers a refund, asks for remote access to your computer, and manipulates your bank screen to steal your money.
And watch this show about international scammers.
What to do with those defunct colleges’ campuses? How about schools for real ‘seniors’?
The Dakin House dorm at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass. Hampshire is the best known of defunct or soon-to-be-defunct small New England liberal-arts colleges. It’s closing at the end of its current semester.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal 24.com
Some small New England colleges are treasures, while some seem superfluous, and a few have been close to scams. In any case, the region’s small liberal-arts colleges have been closing at an accelerating rate in the past few years. Blame changing demographics, especially the decline in the number of college-age students; the steep price of higher education; Zoom, and the rise of artificial intelligence (whose effects already include a decline in thinking, let alone critical thinking, among students). AI, Zoom and even Google undermine -- for some people -- the perceived usefulness of being physically present on a campus. Then there are other technological “advances” with good and bad effects.
One of the most, er, exciting things about artificial intelligence is how easy it makes it for malign forces to lie, to erase the space between truth and falsehood.
Some have noted that as the Internet has been killing newspapers (which might be considered educational), it has also been killing colleges. Anyway, at least 10 New England colleges have closed (or are about to close – e.g., most famously Hampshire College) since 2020.
One way to help keep some of these smaller colleges open is for them to save them money by having multiple colleges merge some of their administrative functions and costs (such as purchasing) and to cross-market. That could include letting students cross-register and try different college campuses in different semesters, by means of a central coordinating organization, such as The New England Board of Higher Education. Appeal to students’ curiosity and adventurousness. For example, some might want to be in a city one semester and in the country another, or, more importantly, want out courses not available at their home campuses. But promote New England colleges as a general brand.
Think regionally!
Look at what the University of Vermont, while not a small liberal-arts college, is doing. To boost enrollment, starting next year UVM will be offering plus-35 percent tuition breaks to students from other New England states in 31 majors.
Other states in the region are doing similar things. Read about the New England Board of Higher Education’s Tuition Break program.
For that matter, members of such organizations as the Twelve College Consortium (linking better known and financed schools in the Northeast) have for decades pooled resources by encouraging cross-registration and promoting each others’ special strengths.
With intense competition for students from colleges and universities in the rest of the United States, some with fast-growing populations, olde New England’s colleges and universities, in the region that virtually invented American higher education, must collaborate much more.
Of course, small financially wrought colleges will continue to close, and in some places that could help address the region’s serious lack of housing affordable for low-and-middle-income people. Convert dorms and other college buildings into rental and/or owned housing. The lack of housing has increasingly hampered New England’s economy, though the region remains the nation’s richest, to no small degree because it’s the most educated and all-in-all the most honestly and competently governed, whatever the corruption that pops up in some localities.
College-campus-to-housing conversations are starting to happen around New England. Consider, for example, that a local community housing-development group is moving to buy the campus, in Craftsbury, Vt., of Sterling College, which closed this year.
Also, as I’ve written here before, another good way to address the housing shortage, and therefore high costs, is to encourage the use of prefabricated and modular construction, which is cheaper, and faster to put up, than traditional housing construction. And it can be quite attractive.
Or maybe parts of some of these closed campuses could be converted for use as public K-12 schools.
I got a suggestion from my friend Dr. Edward Iannuccilli asking if some of those closed colleges might be good venues for elderly people to take courses while staying in these “defunct’’ campuses’ dorms. While the demographic of college-age young people is shrinking, that of old people is surging!
Dr. Iannuccilli, a well known author, best known as a memoirist, as well as distinguished physician and former health-care executive, noted:
“I've attended and given several presentations, including Circle of Scholars, the Learning Connection, and Lifelong Learning.
“They are always well attended by engaged, enthusiastic senior citizens.’’
Maybe turn some of these campuses into colleges for senior citizens, where some people might even get late-in-life degrees. More productive than taking a cruise.
Trump won’t like this
On Buzzards Bay: The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, in New Bedford, Mass., which is next to Dartmouth.
A slightly edited report by The New England Council
UMass Dartmouth has received $730,090 from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) to expand offshore wind workforce development and advance research supporting responsible industry growth. The funding is part of $4.2 million announced by the Healey-Driscoll administration for offshore wind workforce and research projects across Massachusetts.
UMass Dartmouth received three awards totaling $730,090: $250,000 to continue its Closing the Experience Gap offshore wind internship program, $280,501 to continue research on the potential effects of offshore wind development on cod spawning grounds in Southern New England, and $199,589 to develop a regional data-collection strategy supporting offshore wind monitoring in the Gulf of Maine. The internship program provides students with paid 200-hour internships at companies and organizations working in offshore wind and related industries. Over the past four years, the program has created nearly 100 internship opportunities for more than 40 students and nearly 20 companies and organizations, with the new funding expected to support about 30 additional internships over the next two years.
“UMass Dartmouth is grateful to the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the MassCEC for this important funding,” said UMass Dartmouth Provost Ramprasad Balasubramanian. “These grants create meaningful opportunities for our students to gain hands-on experience in a growing industry while contributing to work that matters for the Commonwealth. By connecting education, research, and industry, UMass Dartmouth is helping prepare the next generation of talent, strengthen the local and state economy, and advance Massachusetts’ renewable energy strategy.”
William Morgan: Sculpting Melville, boosting Mass. South Coast tourism
This summer a dramatic statue of author Herman Melville was unveiled at the Seamen’s Bethel, across from the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Mass. One wonders if Melville were quite as handsome as his depiction in bronze by Stephanie Rocknak. The author of Moby Dick is rendered dramatically, a windblown figure merged with a whale’s ribs and the ocean’s waves.
There are many seminal novels by major novelists that are indelibly associated with cities, but it might be fair to say that Melville’s tale of Ishmael, Captain Ahab, and the white whale has contributed much to boosting contemporary New Bedford‘s fortunes. With its two whale skeletons and a half-size model of a whaling ship, the Whaling Museum is one of New England’s great treasures, drawing a steady stream of tourists to a spectacular if small area of restored buildings in what some might see as an otherwise tawdry town with limited attractions. Whaling made New Bedford America’s richest city in the mid-19th Century, and the popularity of the great American novel has kept the romance of that past alive.
Most artists have second jobs as teachers, and Rocknak is no exception, except that at Hartwick College, in Upstate New York, she teaches philosophy and cognitive science. Perhaps best known for her narrative, life-size bronze of Edgar Allan Poe in Boston, complete with a raven and papers blowing in the wind, most of her work has been in wood. With the Melville, Rocknak was experimenting with a combination of traditional public statuary and abstraction – mixed metaphors, if you will. And she is mostly successful — the rib and wave connection is awkward at best, but civic monuments are tricky, and far too many run to a kind of Soviet realism, which often comes across as mawkish.
The very nature of public sculpture is conservative, so Rocknak sagely offers acknowledgments to some of very best mentors. Melville’s right hand on the whale’s rib recalls the great Baroque artist’s Bernini’s exceedingly lifelike rendition of Pluto’s hand pressing into the maiden’s thigh in the Abduction of Proserpina. The standing figure of Melville echoes the equally nautical Admiral David Farragut in New York by Augustus St. Gaudens, where the sculptor wisely relegated the water nymphs and waves to the plinth.
For a possible book on the 9/11 memorials, I looked at hundreds of commemorative monuments from all across America. At the end there were fewer than a score of works that qualified as exceptional art. Stephanie Rocknak’s Melville, on the other hand, is a triumphant tribute to the author of Moby Dick.
William Morgan encountered Moby Dick in a course on American literature at Tufts University. A Providence-based architectural historian and photographer, Morgan is the author of American Country Churches and Yankee Modern, among other titles.
But we made it to fall
"Summer of the Dead” (oil on Masonite), by Robert S. Neuman (1926-2015, in the show “Robert S. Neuman: Expressive Roots,’’ at the Elizabeth Moss Gallery, Falmouth, Maine, through Oct. 17.
The gallery says:
“Expressive Roots’’ presents an artist whose curiosity and imagination fused painterly impulse with rigorous draftsmanship. On Maine's own Mount Desert Island, he became a local legend by bartering paintings for a summer home where he grew into a fixture of the island's buzzing art scene. As he reached towards new ways to see the world, unabashed bold color and human vitality became cornerstones of his artistic practice. Neuman struck his own path, never distracted from pursuing his highly personal vision. His life's work represents an unwavering contribution to the continuation of abstraction in American art with curiosity and imagination that continues to inspire new generations of viewers and makers.’’