Good enough weather for burials

"February is a suitable month for dying.  Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long." 

--  Anna Quindlen

Actually, a few early-spring flowers have been appearinglately and for long stretches this winter (so far) the days have evoked March or even April. Some afternoons have even produced a kind of sweet  spring melancholy.

Ms. Quindlen (who lives north of New York City) might have noted that while February might suggest death, it's usually a bad time in the Northeast to try to bury anyone because of the frozen ground. (The movie Manchester-by-the-Sea made light of this.)

The weather this winter, however, has often been boffo for burials, although many have been put off to April because of regional tradition.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Llewellyn King: Mr. Bannon, this is journalists' tough and essential mission

-- Photo by Kai Mork

At a news conference.

No, Steve Bannon,  counselor to President Trump, the news media are not the opposition. Nor are they a monolithic structure acting at the behest of some unseen hand, in conspiratorial unison. {Editor's note: Reminder: Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Mr. Bannon's former employer Breitbart News and many, many other   large and small  news and opinion media outlets that the right-wing Mr. Bannon favors are part of "the media''. }

I am of the media and have been for 60 years  -- in fact from long before it was known collectively and misleadingly  as a blob called "the media''.

We are an irregular army, an array of misfits, disciplined by deadlines and little else. We eat irregularly, are sustained on coffee and, at times, something stronger. We love what we do and we do it in the face of shifting threats, from death on the front lines of war, to the excesses of media owners and the difficulty of making a living at it. We do the same job and do our best, whether it is for the smallest newspaper, newsletter or some great news outlet, such as The Washington Post or a TV network. John Steinbeck once said, “No one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.” So do we.

My friend Dan Raviv, of CBS News, once summed up what it is about — during another one of these periods when journalism was under attack — by explaining his own motivation, “I like to find out what’s going on and tell people.”

Why, then, are the media seen as monolithic, conspiratorial and of one mind? I will suggest it is because of an immutable law of the work that is beyond explanation, but is indestructible and essential: news judgment. It is to journalism what perfect pitch is to musicians. You have it or you do not; and while it can be cultivated, it cannot be inculcated.

In play, it makes us look collaborative: Journalists appear to belong to some secret order, such as the Freemasons. Whether we are from the smallest outlet to the mighty networks, if we are reporters, we will tend to pick the same things from a speech or an event. As an example, different newspapers will find the same news in the Sunday news shows and report it their Monday editions.

That is why when Kellyanne Conway uttered the words “alternative facts,” in an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, we pounced. We did so not because we are of one mind, but because the enormity of such a concept demanded our attention. No conspiracy, no political agenda, no common purpose beyond the news, just  Conway's extraordinary concept that facts are fungible, somehow legitimately subject to manipulation for political purpose. That is news. Big news.

Conway has complained that none of the other things she said in that interview were headlined. If she feels that way, clearly, she does not grasp the import of her own words; it was not the messengers, it was the message.

Why are so many journalists considered to be ''liberal''?

I am not sure  that so many  are liberal, but if I concede the point, consider this: We see the soft underbelly of society, whether we are covering refugees or police courts. People come to us seeking redress for real grievances and, mostly, all we can do is sympathize. If you have seen children dying of starvation or families sleeping on the street, you are unlikely to be worrying about the property rights of the rich. What you see conditions you.

I interviewed my first refugees in 1956. They were escaping the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. That and later having seen thousands of refugees in Jordan, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey, has indelibly informed me; those images are etched into my being.

When  President Trump suspended the trickle of Syrian refugees we are taking into the United States. It seemed again to be the powerful denying the humanity of the weak, most pitiable.

History is not to be denied and facts are just that. Journalism shows us the world out there, not the world in a leafy suburb. If knowing something of the pain of the world and wishing for justice is liberal, then indict and convict us.

Surprisingly, we are not very political. Congress is stuffed with lawyers, not journalists. We do not, in general, run for office.

Remember, Steve, if you know anything about the world, science or even politics, you learned a lot of it from journalists. We are the messengers, but we do not write the message.

Our essential job is to keep a wary eye on authority: Here’s looking at you, Steve

Llewellyn King, executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, is a long-time publisher, editor, columnist and international business consultant.

Work in progress

Silver gelatin print picture from Susan Alport's show "Exactly What I Want'' at the Kingston Gallery, Boston, March 1-April 2.

The show shows the process of creating art by displaying work in development. The gallery says: "Through traditional silver gelatin photographic prints, enlarged images and contact sheets, Ms. Alport shows the  path as she explores various combinations of image and text.''

Jill Richardson: Trump, the EPA and chaos

Via OtherWords.org

As Donald Trump was sworn in, my inbox filled up with concerns about the future of the Environmental Protection Agency. Allegedly, scientists were being censored. References to climate change were being erased.

But all that was just a warm-up act.

Before we could really act on the EPA, down came Constitution-shredding executive orders against refugees and Muslim immigrants.

The problem, for those of us who care about due process and the rule of law, is that it’s impossible to put out one fire before the next one begins — or to even keep track of everything.

For instance, as lawyers worked to ensure that Iraqis who’d put their lives in danger working for the U.S. weren’t deported back to Iraq, Trump removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence from his National Security Council.

In their place, he installed the controversial white supremacist Steve Bannon (who’s stated that his goal is to “destroy the state”) and his own chief of staff, Reince Priebus.

With so much going on, some speculate that Trump is trying to create chaos, so Americans are too distracted to uncover and resist what he’s really doing.

On the environmental front, some believe that Trump is holding back on his plans until he can succeed in getting his pick for EPA administrator confirmed by the Senate. That nominee, Scott Pruitt, is a climate skeptic with several pending lawsuits against the agency he’s been picked to lead.

If that’s the case, we should re-examine what’s occurred with regard to the environment since inauguration, in preparation for what’s to come. Some changes were part of the normal change of power in Washington, whereas others were not.

For instance, any mention of climate change was wiped from the White House website.

This is in part because the entire website turns over with each new administration, removing all of the old speeches and press releases of the outgoing president. However, Trump’s new energy page presents a reality in which climate change doesn’t exist.

Moreover, the new administration froze all Obama-era regulations that hadn’t yet been finalized. In itself, this is actually a standard action new presidents take. However, the Trump administration went further than all previous presidents, also halting all EPA grants and contracts.

Another standard practice is to stop agencies from putting out press releases before the new administration has time to get its feet wet.

That said, the Trump administration has indicated it might muzzle its environmental scientists, threatening to subject their work to a case-by-case review by political appointees before their findings can be made public. That isn’t normal.

Initially, rumor had it that the EPA would remove its climate change website. This hasn’t occurred yet, but some believe it’s because Trump wants to hold back until he can get Pruitt, a longtime friend of the fossil fuel industry, confirmed.

Meanwhile, Trump has taken steps to reinstate both of the nation’s most controversial oil pipelines, the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Of course, with the Tweeter in Chief now in charge, some of the most interesting developments occurred on Twitter. When Badlands National Park tweeted data about climate change, their tweets were soon removed.

Shortly thereafter, “rogue” government twitter accounts appeared, purporting to give citizens the truth from our federal agencies.

In short, if this is the warm-up, what’s to come is scary.

The “environment” is an abstract concept, but it’s the air we breathe and the water we drink. We all must work to stay informed. Don’t get distracted by chaos when it’s used to cover up even more destructive harm to our nation and the planet it lives on.

Jill Richardson is a columnist for OtherWords.org and the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.

Chris Powell: Supreme Court is now almost entirely political

The contention over Supreme Court nominations like President Trump's of Judge Neil Gorsuch and President Obama's of Judge Merrick Garland has become so bitter because decades ago political liberals began using the court as a super-legislature and political conservatives could not resist the urge to follow suit. Maybe now the country can acknowledge at last that the Supreme Court is no longer a court at all -- that, as newspaper columnist Finley Peter Dunne's fictional Irish bartender, Martin J. Dooley, opined more than a century ago, "The Supreme Court follows the election returns."

If liberals are in power, the court somehow discovers that the Constitution requires enactment of every liberal nostrum, and if conservatives are in power, the court requires every important legal question to be answered favorably to conservatives. Connecticut's two U.S. senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both liberal Democrats, confirmed as much this week upon Gorsuch's nomination, both expressing skepticism if not quite outright opposition, though not one question yet had been put to the nominee. It is enough that Gorsuch is considered a conservative.

"I want a mainstream judge, not an ideological partisan," Murphy said, and Blumenthal echoed him, as if they too aren’t ideological partisans and wouldn’t settle for a nominee who was a flaming liberal like themselves. Similarly, of course, when President Obama, a liberal Democrat, nominated liberal judges, conservative Republicans bleated about wanting "mainstream" nominees even as they would have been delighted with flaming conservative nominees.

Democratic senators are incensed about Gorsuch's nomination because they feel that the Republican majority in the Senate stole the current vacancy on the court from President Obama, refusing to consider Garland and maintaining the vacancy for most of a year until the presidential election changed control of the White House.

This was indeed crude politics, but appointments to high federal office are actually the Senate's own; the president's power is limited to nomination. Besides, Democratic senators this week played their own crude politics, refusing to attend committee meetings so they could stall some of the president’s Cabinet nominees. As for the legal and political issue believed to underlie the struggle over Gorsuch's nomination -- abortion -- it was the political left that wanted to constitutionalize it with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, in 1973, rather than leave the issue as a legislative prerogative of the states.

Since the country remains divided on abortion, no one should be surprised if the political reversal in Washington prompts attempts to de-constitutionalize the issue, especially since even some legal scholars who favor abortion rights acknowledge that the Roe decision was bad law.

But in the ideological hatefulness that dominates politics today, anyone who tries to make fair distinctions risks getting lynched by one side or the other.

xxx

Not everything in Connecticut is crumbling. Bradley International Airport, in Windsor Locks, is steadily improving, and the other day Gov Dan. Malloy and the Connecticut Airport Authority announced that another airline will join Bradley's stable. The airline, Spirit, a no-frills carrier, will fly from Bradley to Orlando, Fla., once a day starting in April, and, starting in June, once a day to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Spirit also will offer spring and summer flights from Bradley to Myrtle Beach, S.C., four days a week starting in April. The airport authority will extend $400,000 to the airline in promotional expenses and fee waivers, not a big bribe. Now all state government has to do is figure out how to get Spirit's Connecticut passengers to come back from down south.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
 

Aren't we all

"Fragments'' (oil on canvas), by Mirela Kiloviv, at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, through Feb. 26.

Ian Morrison: Sacred Heart University buying Boston-based GE's former headquarters in Conn.

Part of the former GE complex in Fairfield.

Sacred Heart University (SHU) has purchased General Electric’s (GE’s) former global headquarters site in Fairfield, Conn. This 66-acre parcel will become an extension of SHU’s nearby main campus, as well as its Stamford Graduate Center. The acquisition is a strategic and practical move for the university, which has needed room to expand several existing programs and campus facilities, in conjunction with new building and renovation work.

The GE site, which SHU will call its West Campus, includes 550,000 square feet of existing building space for current and future use and 800 above-ground and underground parking spaces. The West Campus is expected to attract more than 250 new students and expand faculty and facilities staffing requirements by at least 50 people.

The relocation of GE’s corporate headquarters to Boston was seen as a significant blow to Fairfield’s economy and to the state. GE was Fairfield’s largest taxpayer, and many of its executives and staff resided locally. Not all of the GE employees who worked in Fairfield were forced to move, though; several hundred transferred to the company’s facilities in nearby Norwalk, Conn. Still, GE's departure left a void in support for local nonprofit organizations.

In announcing its reasons for leaving, GE cited the lack of innovation and incubation opportunities in Connecticut and noted the presence of dozens of colleges and universities in the Greater Boston area that, combined with access to a skilled pipeline of new workers and supportive industries, made the Boston area more attractive for long-term future growth. Additionally, with so many employees working from home and remote locations, GE had outgrown the need for such a large physical campus.

Ironically—given GE’s stated reasons for exiting the state—SHU will use the property as an “innovation campus.” This will include housing for the university’s recently announced School of Computing (computer engineering, computer gaming and cybersecurity) and new programs in the STEM fields, including health and life sciences, science and technology.

The School of Computing will house two graduate programs—a master’s in computer science and information technology and a master’s in cybersecurity. It also will offer undergraduate programs in computer science, information technology, game design and development and computer engineering. SHU’s game-design and development program has been lauded by The Princeton Review.

The University will move elements of its Jack Welch College of Business (WCOB) to the new campus, including its new hospitality management program that will make use of facilities both at the GE site and at SHU’s recently acquired Great River Golf Club in Milford, Conn. This expansion is particularly timely, as expenditures in the rapidly growing global hospitality industry are estimated at approximately $3.5 trillion annually.

The SHU hospitality major addresses food and service management, lodging operations, beverage management, human resources, tourism and revenue, and pricing and data analytics. The WCOB also requires students in its hospitality management program to complete internships and has developed collaborative relationships with hotels, restaurants and related service partners. Of note, the new campus site includes a hospitality wing that contains a hotel with 28 guest rooms, conference rooms, fitness centers and a medical facility.

The university also plans to move its College of Education and business office to the site, eliminating the need to rent space elsewhere. Additionally, the purchase will allow the university to pursue partnerships with local healthcare providers, offering clinical opportunities for students in SHU's colleges of Health Professions and Nursing.

SHU’s growing community of teachers, staff, students, their parents and visitors already spend close to $56 million in the regional economy. Additional new spending is estimated at $27 million to $33 million annually. But having a local college or university also brings many additional benefits beyond economics.

Institutions of higher learning support new-business development, collaboration and incubation across a range of sciences, business and the arts that will continue serving as a beacon to current and prospective employers, manufacturers and residents. Additionally, other vocations benefit from the presence of a local college, as demand rises sharply for restaurant workers, construction crews and other less-skilled jobs.

As an example of support for regional business and organizational growth, Sacred Heart already works with a variety of Connecticut cities, towns and organizations sharing expertise and resources. SHU’s Center for Not-for-Profit Organizations, offered through the WCOB, has conducted more than 200 local projects for close to 100 regional clients. Founded 14 years ago, the center has provided strategic planning, competitive analyses, feasibility studies and marketing planning for businesses, health organizations, art associations and museums.

The university intends to provide incubator space that would allow students, in conjunction with investors and area businesses, to develop their creative ideas for new products and programs. Overall, SHU’s move to this new campus directly speaks to new-business incubation and the need for an active pipeline of skilled workers—exactly the types of innovation large corporate employers—GE included—have been clamoring for to meet the needs of today’s rapidly evolving economies.

With the purchase by SHU, Fairfield should receive payments from the state’s PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) program, which compensates Connecticut towns and cities for tax revenue they do not collect from nonprofit entities such as colleges, universities and hospitals. Those dollars are based on formulas established by the Connecticut Legislature and, in part, determined by tax revenue collected statewide. Future PILOT-related reimbursement revenue from SHU also will include growth at several local facilities now being renovated for classes, administration and housing.

Colleges and universities play a critical role shoring up the infrastructure and long-term viability of the communities and regions they call home, explained SHU President John J. Petillo. This, he pointed out, includes new manufacturing jobs and creative collaborations that help meet employer and community needs in fields like science, engineering, public education and health services.

These important economic growth stimulants are now at risk as public funding and financial aid for private colleges and universities continues to decrease. To remain competitive and successful, institutions of higher learning must continue aligning themselves and their programs with emerging industries and evolving employer, nonprofit and organizational requirements.

Sacred Heart’s purchase of the former GE headquarters property to expand its business, technology, hospitality and human services programs directly reflects this commitment to continued growth and future needs.

“This is a transformational moment in the history of Sacred Heart University, and for Connecticut,” Petillo said. “With this property, SHU has a unique opportunity to expand its contributions to education, research, healthcare and the community. SHU is vested in the success of our students and in the continued success and prosperity of the region. We are happy to be contributing toward our state’s economic growth and proud to be a continuing catalyst for the future generations of employees, residents and business owners.”

Ira Morrison is a writer and communication consultant. He has worked as a communication manager for several Fortune 500 companies and was an adjunct professor at the University of Hartford School of Communication. This piece started at the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe,org)

Josh Fitzhugh: Let's pour some cooling reason, please, on the Trump immigration-order hysteria

 I have discovered over a lifetime of living that in a general discussion of a heated topic it is best to let the firebrands speak first and when the emotion has died down, try to raise some sensible facts in a calm voice. That frequently helps resolve the discussion.

 I think that we are at this same place in the uproar/hysteria/chaos over President Trump’s immigration orders of recent days.

 So let’s reiterate some facts.

One. President Trump won the election. He did not receive a majority of the votes cast but he did receive what I will call an “electoral majority,” i.e., a majority of the votes in enough states to become president under our Constitution.  (In my opinion some of the recent protests are less about his post-election policies and more about his victory at the polls.)

Two. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that Trump has moved to restrict immigration, at least temporarily. Controlling our borders was the centerpiece of his campaign. More particularly he said he wanted to tighten the “vetting process” for people entering the country legally from some countries, and to stop the influx of people into the country illegally. The vetting process is already quite rigorous, though made more difficult when refugees come from countries in chaos, like Syria.

Three. Legal immigration to this country (i.e., immigration with the permission of the United States) is at the highest level in 23 years. According to the Pew Research Center, we admitted 85,000 immigrants last fiscal year. Nearly half were Muslims. The Obama administration was on schedule to admit 110,000 people this fiscal year.

Four. Congress has given the president enormous discretion to determine who should be admitted to this country. In fact this is the very same discretion that  President Obama cited as authority for not deporting the children of immigrants who came here illegally.  The courts historically have been extremely reluctant to second-guess the president’s authority, although they have said that Congress could by law restrict it.

Five.  Although Trump in the campaign talked of banning Muslim immigrants, the executive order he signed does not do that. It temporarily restricts immigration from seven, mostly Muslim countries that were already on an Obama watch list, and permanently bans immigration from Syria, another mostly Muslim country.  Many mostly Muslim countries continue to send immigrants to America. To say, as the New York  Times has repeatedly said in editorials, that the order “bans Muslims” is a flagrant misrepresentation that only incites religious intolerance.

Six.  The Trump White House is still getting organized. Many officials have not been confirmed by the Congress and others have not been appointed. The executive order involving immigrants contained some mistakes (extending the ban to those with green cards, for example; not making exceptions for Iraqis who have materially assisted our troops is another) that reflect the inexperience of a new American administration. Time should cure this problem.

 Seven. Those seeking entrance into the United States have no constitutional rights. They are not American citizens nor residents of this country. While it may be “un-American” to bar a foreigner based on their belief in a religion that is not contrary to our Constitution, it is not in violation of that Constitution nor, I believe, a violation of any of our laws.

Eight. While the president’s actions have certainly sent a big “unwelcome” sign over our borders, and have probably disrupted the plans of thousands if not tens of thousands of people across the globe, relatively few people were directly detained or sent home by the order, under a few hundred, I believe. Courts are sorting out some individual cases, as they should.  Ironically, although Trump vowed to pursue “America First” in his inaugural, his family business is very international.

Nine. Many Americans believe that continuing the Obama immigration policies will increase terrorist attacks in our country. Some of our recent mass shootings were conducted by Muslim Americans who had been radicalized overseas. It is unclear whether restricting immigration will reduce the threat of domestic terrorism, and many diplomats overseas think that restricting immigration may in fact increase terrorism. A recent poll showed that 49 percent of Americans support Trump’s executive order.

Ten. The immigration situation across the globe is a mess, and is likely to get worse.  Fighting and political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa have put millions of people on the move to try and save their families. Europe is at the breaking point in its efforts to accommodate refugees. Climate change and population growth are likely to make this trend worse over the coming century. The world needs to find a better way to handle the rising tide of refugees by addressing the problem at its source.

Now I’m sure that others could cite other facts that might lead to other conclusions, but for me these facts lead to this: The president is entitled to some time to carry out the promises of his winning campaign; that a pause in immigration policy is supported by at least half of all Americans; that the effectiveness of the Trump policies in reducing the threat of domestic terrorism is hard to determine; that the courts will protect the interests of those wrongly affected by American policies; and that Congress may if it wishes restrict the discretion of the President in this area.

One final thought, which is opinion, not fact.  It is pretty clear to me that the world will not advance if countries pull back inside their borders. Young people in particular want an international world. At the same time, many Americans are nervous about this internationalism and the economic and social consequences that come with it, and their candidate won the White House. In the long run of American history this appears to be a time when the people want a reset of our foreign engagement before continuing the march toward a single, multicultural nation and world.

John (‘’Josh’’) H. Fitzhugh is a Vermont farmer, retired insurance executive, lawyer and former journalist. He served as chief counsel to two Vermont  governors – Richard Snelling, a Republican, and Howard Dean, a Democrat.

Of pomposity and insecurity

The Ocean House.

Excerpted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com

One of the more entertaining recent stories in New England was Richard C. Morais’s denunciation in the Dec. 20 Barron’s of the service at the pretentious Ocean House, in the Watch Hill section of Westerly. Mr. Morais approvingly quotes Penta Travels as calling it “America’s Most Overrated Hotel’’. 

But first it should be noted that the $147 million rebuilding of the 19th Century resort hotel with the money and close direction of Wall Street mogul Charles (“Chuck’’) Royce (of Greenwich, Conn., natch) was done beautifully, albeit with furnishings with the sort of faux aristocratic/WASP imagery promoted by that brander extraordinaire Ralph Lauren (ne Lifshitz and born in the Bronx – a delightfully American life  story). The hotel is heavy on model boats and Chinese vases. It employs some locals (in addition to its cheap labor from abroad) and is a major source of revenue to some local businesses.

Anyway,  Mr. Morais and his wife had a generally unpleasant stay in what Travel + Leisure magazine  in 2014 had called the No. 1 resort in the  continental U.S.!

Mr. Morais’s tale of occasionally incompetent and arrogant service sounded pretty accurate to me,  at least based on a couple of meals we had there (one of them blessedly paid for by somebody else). In any event, the pomposity of service at the hotel is likely to be best tolerated by the sort of insecure customers who, among other things, want to feign not having to worry about money in a joint pitched to the rich and the wanna-look rich. Some are the same sort of people who stay in the tacky but expensive hotels, and buy the branded made-in-Asia junk, on which the con man Donald Trump puts his name.

Mr. Morais wrote:

“That night in the formal dining room, as at the spa {which also involved bad service}, we were handed menus without prices, as if we were faint-hearted Victorian women who couldn’t possibly handle seeing how much things cost. Again I was irritated. Then our obsequious waitress demanded to know our dessert choice before we had even started the meal, somehow under the impression we were on a simple Italian pensione meal plan. Our dinner, when it came—local oysters, halibut—was tasty enough, at $293 with a modest half-bottle of wine.

“But each course was introduced by ludicrously long and pretentious descriptions. Worse still, my wife and I tried to have a serious discussion over dinner, but the waiters interrupted us every few minutes, asking if everything was to our satisfaction. After the fifth or sixth such request, my wife whispered that it felt as if we had to reassure them of their job security.’’ Reign of terror at the Ocean House? Staff fearful of being shipped back to Sri Lanka or Mexico or Slovenia?

If the rumors about Hillary and Bill Clinton buying a place in Watch Hill turn out to be true,  maybe they can re-establish their frayed populist credentials by championing the rights of low-paid summer-resort workers. The Clintons have apparently stayed in the Ocean House and bought some books in Westerly’s Savoy Bookshop and Café on their visit after the election. One rumor had it that they were looking at real estate to buy.

I’m glad that Mr. Royce has pumped a lot of money into the Westerly area.  And  in his piece Mr. Morais  sometime sounded rather pompously privileged himself.  However, in the same piece, he did have nice words about the Castle Hill Inn, Newport – very expensive,  but not in the stratosphere with the Ocean House.

xxx

Now that the most corrupt and sociopathic person ever to inhabit the White House is in charge, will  there be a reaction against his gaudy sleaze, as there was in the ‘30s in reaction to the Gatsby-like excesses of the ‘20s?  Will it again become fashionable again, even for the new rich, to show less exhibitionism, more selflessness and more low-key civic-mindedness? Probably not: America’s decline into civic decay, celebrity culture and willful ignorance seems unstoppable, lubricated by cable TV and “social’’ media, which turns out to be pretty anti-social.

Another big question, of course, is whether Mr. Trump’s protectionism will lead to the sort of trade war that helped intensify and lengthen the Great Depression after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930. It will be fun to watch a Congress run by the Republicans rubber-stamp the protectionism even though the GOP has long prided itself as backing free trade. In the end, the configurations of political power and the associated spoils will trump (or Trump) principle.

Some economists have estimated that Smoot-Hawley and retaliatory tariffs by America's trading partners helped reduce U.S. exports and imports by more than half during the Depression, helping to drive American unemployment to 25 percent by March 1933.  History doesn’t repeat itself, but as Mr. Twain said, “there are rhythms’’ in it.

In partial defense of February

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar.

~- Joseph Wood Krutch

This is one of the once-renown essayist's most famous lines. But we don't entirely agree with him. The brighter mornings and the faster melting of ice and snow, compared to January, in this shortest month make February suitable for hope. A mild February day can produce a brief moment of ecstasy.
 

'Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom' 60 years later

Untitled photo by Lee Friedlander in the show "Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom,'' at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, through July 9.

The Yale University Art Gallery is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom with photographs by artist Lee Friedlander. 

''Let Us March On'' celebrates the thousands of activists who united in front of the Lincoln Memorial on May 17, 1957, the third anniversary of the Supreme Court decision  in Brown v. Board of Education, which  officially banned racial segregation in schools. But such segregation continued well into the '60s and beyond.

Mr. Friedlander, only 22 at the time, took pictures of such prominent figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson and Rosa Parks and many other demonstrators and participants.

''Let Us March On'' features high-quality gelatin prints and displays the frustration about racial injustice and demand for equality still present today. Addressing such issues as racial violence and inequality, among other topics, Mr. Friedlander's photos offer a remembrance of America's past and an inspiration for today.
 

James P. Freeman: Now it's U2 vs. the Trump regime

Suit and tie comes up to me
His face red
Like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colours of a royal flush
And he’s peeling off those dollar bills

— “Bullet the Blue Sky,” 1987

U2’s angry, angst-driven anthem was meant to be a stinging political commentary on President Ronald Reagan’s ‘80s foreign policy, and the band’s seminal work, The Joshua Tree, was, by extension, an explorative essay about Americana, with Nevada’s desert plain serving as its cinematic lyrical leitmotif.

But today, still infatuated with America as an idea, U2 has substituted Donald Trump for Ronald Reagan, and the inspiration for the band’s newly announced tour, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the album, is really an elaborate ruse of anti-Trumpism, not a trip through the wires of celebratory nostalgia.

Fans should be prepared.

The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 (stopping in Greater Boston at Gillette Stadium on June 25) seems steeped in sentimentalism — with the band even having re-created a photo based upon the iconic album cover — given the original recording’s massive popularity and youthful idealism. But guitarist The Edge, in a recent Rolling Stone interview, provides fair warning and the reasoning behind this surprise tour:  “The election [happened] and suddenly the world changed … The Trump election. It’s like a pendulum has suddenly just taken a huge swing in the other direction.”

Meaning, evidently, the wrong direction.

He further explained that “things have kind of come full circle, if you want. That record was written in the mid-‘80s, during the Reagan-Thatcher era of British and U.S. politics. It was a period when there was a lot of unrest. Thatcher was in the throes of trying to put down the miners’ strike; there was all kinds of shenanigans going on in Central America. It feels like we’re right back there in a way.”

And The Edge added that while this tour is “not really about nostalgia,” the songs “have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn’t have three years ago, four years ago.” That was under President Obama’s America of “safe-spaces” and universal health care. (The band played at a pre-inaugural concert in Washington, D.C., eight years ago, heralding his election.) Trump’s America, by contrast, is now a dangerous netherworld, as U2 sees it.

Two U2 shows in 2016 offer a kinetic prelude to shows coming this spring.

Last fall, before the election, performances at the iHeartRadio Music Festival and Dreamforce, in Las Vegas and San Francisco, respectively, were infused with vitriolic rants about Trump and the kind of degenerated America one should expect under his leadership.

During the song “Desire” at the iHeart show, with a video backdrop of Trump speaking, Bono asks those in attendance, “Are you ready to gamble the American Dream?” And if they were to vote for Trump they would, he admonished, lose “everything.”

James P. Freeman, an occasional contributor, is a writer and in financial services. This piece first ran in The New Boston Post.

Robert Whitcomb: The rise and fall of the New England-born HoJo's empire

After Howard Johnson got into (over-expanded?) national  catering in addition to its famous orange-roofed restaurants and ice-cream shops. Later, it became a major hotel chain. Somehow "Idlewild'' sounds more romantic than John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Flavors of Mid-Century

A History of Howard Johnson’s

How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon

By Anthony Mitchell Sammarco

(American Palate,  157 pp., $19.99)

The rise and fall of  the Howard Johnson Company says a lot about American society and business from the 1920s on.

It was quite a ride, some of which I was familiar with before reading Mr. Sammarco’s chaotic and seemingly unedited history of the famous chain of restaurants and, later, motels, too. Howard Deering Johnson started his company in Wollaston, a section of Quincy, Mass., close to my hometown, Cohasset. And the Howard Johnson Company bought a rival ice-cream parlor chain, Dutchland Farms (with windmills – high kitsch!), owned by friends of my father, in the late ‘30s. As the shoe companies in the area folded, the locals felt proud about having another local enterprise grow into a national powerhouse.

Mr. Sammarco’s book is rife with repetitions, confusion (there’s lots of quoted stuff but you often don’t know who’s being quoted) and almost nonstop breathless copy about the company’s “delicious foods and ice cream’’ (ice cream perhaps not considered a food?), including ‘’clams so fresh and delicious that they were called ‘Tendersweet’ clams.’’ Then there such mysteries as the chain’s “ceramic broiled steaks, chops, chicken and lobster.’’

There also many side trips with extraneous information that has little or, in some cases, nothing to do with the main history. And yet, the monomaniacal Mr. Johnson and the company he created are so interesting that you keep reading Mr. Sammarco’s boyishly enthusiastic ramblings. And the many old pictures are delightful, if randomly placed. And, praise be to God, there’s an index!

Mr. Sammarco got the main point right about the long success of “The Wonderful World of 28 Flavors’’ and its importance in American business history: “Standardization of quality, preparation and portion control ensured uniformity throughout the orange-roof restaurant chain.’’ People like Ray Kroc, of McDonald’s, said they learned a lot from Howard Johnson.

Even as the company went national, the emphasis on ice cream (always a huge favorite in New England) and such regional specialties as fried clams and Yankee pot roast, and, at many HoJo restaurants, pseudo-Colonial Revival architecture, reminded many around America of the company’s regional roots. Fried clams,  that very New England heart-attack enabler, may have been the chain’s most famous food after ice cream.

I remember well the heyday of HoJo’s, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when the restaurants, with their famous “28 Flavors’’ signs were all over America. Almost all of them were expertly situated and promoted, on or near major roads and with strong signage. It wasn’t an exciting place to go (except for small children drawn to the ice cream), but it was comfortingly predictable for travelers, weary or otherwise.

Mr. Johnson came to understand  early on that the automobile would profoundly change Americans’ dining  and lodging habits.

He  started out by buying  a Wollaston drugstore in 1925 and, recognizing the profit potential from New Englanders’ love of ice cream, experimented with many new flavors, all using more butterfat than most ice cream makers did. They were hits with patrons of the store’s soda fountain. The desire to pay off the debts from his late father’s cigar business  helped drive his work ethic.

He responded to the popularity of his “28 Flavors’’ of ice cream by expanding his operation to summer ice cream stands along streets at the region’s urban beaches as the number of people with cars to get there was rapidly increasing.

Then, in 1929, he opened his first real  full-service restaurant, in downtown Quincy. Eugene O’Neill gave him a boost:  The censors in Boston (remember ‘’banned in Boston’’?) prohibited his play Strange Interlude from being shown in the city.  So it was moved to the Quincy Theater, right across the street from Mr. Johnson’s new establishment, which thrived from the business from the playgoers, many of whom told their friends how good the food was (at least compared to the contemporary bland New England “cuisine’’ of the time).

The Depression hit Mr. Johnson’s new creation hard. But the workaholic came up with a scheme to expand anyway. In 1935, he arranged a franchise relationship with a friend/businessman at a busy (especially in the summer, of course) intersection in Orleans on Cape Cod.

Under this arrangement, the Howard Johnson Company would let a franchisee use the by now well-known Howard Johnson’s name,  buy all (highly standardized) food and other supplies from a central HoJo’s commissary and adhere to Mr. Johnson’s “Bible’’ on how the final food preparation and table and counter services would be done.

Mr. Johnson insisted on uniformity: “When you get the same kind of {Howard Johnson’s} sundae in New York that you get in Florida, you are more likely to buy one in Maine,’’   he said.

While franchises were not unknown at the time, it was Howard Johnson who established it in the restaurant business, along with aspects of what would come to be called “fast food’’ – stuff to take out,  as well as brisk counter service, albeit not nearly as fast as in today’s computerized fast-food establishments.

After tough times during World War II because of rationing, Mr. Johnson’s empire grew rapidly into hundreds of company-owned restaurants and franchises. And starting in the mid-‘50s, the company got into the “motor lodge’’ (AKA motel) business.

Perhaps no businessman understood the business opportunities associated with Americans’ love affair with (and mandatory reliance on) driving as well as did Howard Johnson. As the Interstate Highway System got going in the late ‘50s, the company’s growth accelerated. As Time magazine said in 1960:

“The travel-weary U.S. motorist has been conditioned to think of food—and a chance to let the kids out of the car—when he spots a roof of bright orange tile along the highway. This ‘landmark for hungry Americans’ is the trademark of Howard Deering Johnson, a onetime cigar salesman who has become a part of Americana (teenagers call his places "HoJos") by catering to the common denominator of U.S. taste and haste.’’

Mr. Sammarco writes that the chain “served a traveling public with fine food.’’ I’d call it “reliable’’ food.

When the company went public, in 1961, Mr.  Sammarco writes, “it consisted of 605 Howard Johnson’s restaurants (265 operated by the company and 340 by licensees {franchisees},  10 Red Coach Grill {more upscale} company-owned restaurants and 88 Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodges, all of them franchisees.’’

By 1975,  the empire included more than 1,000 owned and franchised restaurants,  over 500 motor lodges, vending and turnpike operations and a massive manufacturing and distribution system.  

The orange roofs and blue shutters of the chain, along with the predictable and safe  food, seemed to have become a permanent fixture of the American road.

The ‘50s and ‘60s were the heyday of the American nuclear family. The extended families of earlier generations – lots of uncles, aunts and cousins living close by – were  in steep decline but illegitimacy was not yet in ascendency and intact families, with a married mother and father, and often a lot of kids, dominated domestic life in times that were becoming increasingly prosperous.

Thusthe “family restaurant’’ approach taken by Howard Johnson (who was married four times!) was in a fertile field. Take the kids to HoJo’s! No unpleasant surprises there.

But things started to get a bit strange in patches, too. The company, in the Mad Men period of the early ‘60s, hired two French chefs – Pierre Franey and Jacques Pepin – to help develop new meals, and, also wandering far from its roots, got Dior to design new uniforms for HoJo waitresses! Were these fire bells in the night that the company was losing focus?

By 1975,  the empire included more than 1,000 owned and franchised restaurants,  over 500 motor lodges, vending and turnpike operations and a massive manufacturing and distribution system, including frozen food.  

Clouds were gathering. New competitors, most famously McDonald’s and Burger King, were pressing to dominate the downscale side of the restaurant business. And while more affluent folks still tended to want a somewhat leisurely sit-down meal, especially in the evening, many other people wanted more speed -- both takeout and in-house service --and lower prices. I suspect that’s in part because growing work pressures, shrinking inflation-adjusted average incomes and the influx of many women into the workforce meant that there was less time and less income for more traditional restaurant meals for many Americans. And the richer folks found HoJo’s boring: It was too standardized.

You also have to wonder whether the expansion of the company into the motel business seriously weakened the company’s focus and undermined its brand identification amongst the public even as so many competing restaurant chains were entering the market.

Meanwhile, quality was slipping. Howard D. Johnson retired as president in 1959, with his son, taking over. Because of his fear of debt, the elder Mr. Johnson had tended to keep too tight a lid on certain expenses, especially the number of employees and their pay. So many of his establishments were understaffed, causing slow service, and things got worse under his son.

Even before his retirement as president, the elder Mr. Johnson started to spend less time making spot visits to his restaurants to check on the quality of the food and service, which gradually declined in his later years, even as he spent more time in places like Manhattan’s Stork Club. (That may have pleased his employees: Mr. Johnson was a large and fierce-looking man.)

His smooth and preppy son, Howard B. Johnson, was also obsessed with cutting costs, and spent too little time checking on quality and keeping up with demographic and other changes in American life that would help or hurt a restaurant chain. Rather than working out of Wollaston, the official headquarters, he operated from an office in Manhattan. He was not an operations guy like his father.

Mr. Sammarco usefully quotes Brian Miller, writing in the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education:

“The fall of the Howard Johnson’s brand {in the ‘70s} was faster than it took to build. When the reins of the company were passed down from father to son, the son appeared to quickly lose control over the direction of the company. Without the persona of his father inhis corner, the younger Johnson was leading a company that lacked a vision.’’ Well, that’s not quite right. The younger Mr. Johnson had quite a few successful years at the helm but he did lack a unified longterm vision.

That HoJo’s  had become a public company also probably undermined its long-term prospects. The younger Johnson wanted to keep the stock price as high as possible but this meant avoiding needed but costly improvements and innovations. Given the choice between working for a closely held company (assuming  that the owner/owners were halfway civilized) and apublicly held one, I’d choose the former any time: The former is more likely to take the long view and reinvest.

Thus the company’s profits and revenues started to slide in the ‘70s, and in 1979, Howard B. Johnson sold the company to Imperial Group Ltd., which in 1985 sold it to Marriott. Various financial permutations and combinations led to rapid shrinkage over the next couple of decades, and as of this writing there is only one Howard Johnson’s restaurant left, in Lake George, New York.

There may never again be a chain of “family restaurants’’  quite like HoJo’s in our much multicultural stew of a country, but that one was created, and provided decent service to all, and joy to some, especially children, is edifying and a soothing memory of mid-century Americana.

Robert Whitcomb is editor of newenglanddiary.com, a columnist for GoLocal24.com,  former finance editor of the International Herald Tribune and former editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal.

Avert your gaze

"Hiding Place (Man in a Hovel)'' (oil on panel), by Craig Hood, in the show "Momentum: Works by the University's Art and Art History Department Faculty,'' at the Museum of Art at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham.

James Dempsey: Scofield Thayer, 'The Dial' and the Modernist revolution

Scofield Thayer

Scholars disagree on when that many-headed phenomenon we call Modernism really took hold. Some quote Virginia Woolf’s famous line, ''On or about December 1910 human character changed.'' Others point to 1922, a Modernist annus mirabilis in which both The Waste Land and Ulysses were published. Others dig back into the 19th Century.

Trying to pin down a movement, or rather, movements as messy and self-contradictory as was Modernism is probably pointless. But there is some value in charting the progress of Modernism through the opening decades of the 20th Century, a century whose cultural landscape it helped heave open.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of a flurry of events, some titanic, some seemingly negligible, some public, some taking place behind the scenes, that constituted or were responses to the “modern” to which artists and writers were reacting and would forever alter our sense of human reality.

The U.S. entered the Great War and so made its presence felt on the world stage, and Russia writhed in the throes of its two revolutions. Poet and war-hero Siegfried Sassoon’s anti-war “A Soldier’s Declaration’’ was read in the British Parliament. E.E. Cummings, like many other young Americans, volunteered in a French ambulance brigade, an experience that he would use in The Enormous Room, a Modernist classic. The Little Review, a daring avant-garde magazine, moved from Chicago to New York City.

Most notably, perhaps, T.S. Eliot published his first collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, shocking, or bemusing, readers with his description of an evening that was “anaesthetized’’.  Less notably, Scofield Thayer moved to New York to begin a career in publishing. In little more than a decade, he would drift back into anonymity, but in the intervening years he would transfuse Modernism into the cultural bloodstream of America.

Thayer launched his own magazine in 1920. It was a reincarnation of The Dial, a financially lame and literarily stodgy journal of politics and book reviews that had once been a bulwark of culture in the Midwest, and before that an outlet for the cheery thoughts of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists.

Few expected him to succeed. He was, after all, a rich boy from a Massachusetts factory town, Worcester, who had come to New York to indulge his dilettantism and put a dent in his sizable inheritance. He had published poetry and helped edit magazines during his school years at Milton Academy and Harvard, but that was just the extent of his experience. His business partner, James Sibley Watson, also the scion of a wealthy family, was similarly untried.

Indeed, many seemed eager to see the magazine fail. “All Thayer has is money,” sneered the short-story writer and novelist Sherwood Anderson. “A pink thread of juvenility runs through it,” wrote Conrad Aiken. T.S. Eliot, though a friend of Thayer’s, was also dismissive. “It is very dull -- just an imitation of The Atlantic Monthly with a few atrocious drawings reproduced,” he wrote. The drawings, all of burlesque characters, were by E.E. Cummings, seven of whose poems were also included in the issue.

And yet for all the private carping, writers and artists clamored to get their work into the pages of the journal. Aiken was published regularly. Eliot and Pound served as foreign correspondents, and would each go on to win the coveted Dial Award of $2,000 (about $24,000 today), as would Anderson.

Thayer and Watson bought the magazine in 1919 and turned it into a showcase for what they believed was the best  visual art and literature of their time.

They succeeded to the extent that the Contents pages of the magazine from that period reads today like a Who’s Who of the  literary greats of the 20th Century. Eliot, Pound, Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Maxim Gork -- all published their work in The Dial. Artists whose work was chosen for reproduction included Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Demuth, LaChaise,  Burchfield, Marin, Schiele and many more.

The magazine saw the first American appearance (usually the first ever appearance) of works that have become touchstones of 20th Century literature—Ezra Pound’s The Cantos and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley; Eliot’s The Waste Land and The Hollow Men; W.B. Yeats’s The Second Coming; E.E. Cummings’s Buffalo Bill; D.H Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer; Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Thayer’s and Watson’s  writers -- as well as the editors they hired, including Gilbert Seldes, Alyse Gregory, Kenneth Burke and Marianne Moore--were truly prescient.

Most of the art reproduced came from Thayer’s own collection, which he built up in a frantic three-year period when he was in France, Germany and Austria, mostly in Vienna, where he was a patient of Sigmund Freud for two years. This stunning collection is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An exhibit of highlights from it, Obsession: Nudes by Schiele, Picasso and Klimt from the Scofield Thayer Collection, will open in the fall of 2018 at the Metropolitan Museum.

Scholars have come to understand the crucial role played by magazines in creating and distributing what has become known as “Modernism,” which was not so much a manifesto as an axis of complex responses to the perceived thrust of modernity.

Of those magazines, The Dial was the most influential. Certainly, there were more radical publications, such as Blast and The Little Review, but these journals were hampered by shortages of funds or of continuity. Blast, for instance, put out by Pound and Wyndham Lewis, had just two issues. The Dial had the luxury of being able to lose money. This, together with the almost religious devotion  that Thayer had to  visual art and literature, ensured its longevity.

Thayer wrote, “If a magazine isn't to be simply a waste of good white paper it ought to print, with some regularity, either such work as would otherwise have to wait years for publication, or such as would not be acceptable elsewhere.”

But the lifespan of little magazines, as these journals came to be known, depended upon their being able to steer clear of such organizations as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which had the power to charge publishers with obscenity. In 1921, for instance, The Little Review was found guilty of obscenity in publishing the “Nautical” section from Ulysses, which has a masturbation scene, which resulted in the novel being essentially banned in the U.S. It was then also a crime to use the mails to distribute obscenity, and the loss of the ability to distribute to subscribers was a de facto death sentence for any magazine. In any event, The Dial, under the steady hands of Thayer and Watson, lasted through the decade—from January 1920 to June, 1929. The sheer longevity of the journal gave it an unequaled influence.

Thayer suffered from schizophrenia. Shortly after the middle of the decade, when he was just 37, Thayer suffered a breakdown that took him out of public life. He spent time in various hospitals and institutions and was eventually declared “an insane person.” As time went by, Thayer and his achievement faded into history. He died in 1982 at 92, having outlived most of his friends and contemporaries, all but forgotten.

The Dial didn’t last long without Thayer, and the last issue was brought out in June 1929, at the end of the decade it had come to define. The magazine’s mission had been to bring the best of contemporary arts and letters, including the avant-garde and the experimental, into the mainstream, and it succeeded to such a degree that it more or less put itself out of business. By the time that it closed its doors at 152 West 13th St., in Greenwich Village, the work it had championed--much of which had been earlier ridiculed--had created a new normal. Its poets were showing up in anthologies and its visual artists work was now to be found in galleries and museums. That same year saw the founding of the Museum of Modern Art.

James Dempsey is the author of The Tortured Life of Scofield Thayer (2014) and is currently at work on the exhibition catalog for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fall 2018 show on Thayer’s collection, in New York. He is also Consulting Producer on the film Make It New: Scofield Thayer, The Dial, and Modernism. While researching Thayer, he unearthed a previously unpublished poem of  one of Thayer’s friends, E.E. Cummings. Dempsey has written several books (fiction and nonfiction) and numerous articles for both academic and general audiences. An award-winning journalist (Associated Press and United Press International), he is an instructor in the Humanities and Arts Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he teaches writing and literature. Dempsey is at work on a book about the late Stanley J. Kunitz, United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Look for a better owner of Worcester's Union Station

Worcester’s glorious Union Station should become increasingly important as more and more people seek to use mass transit. But it might  be much better run if owned either by a private entity or by some new public-private entity, such as Amtrak, and not by its current owner, the Worcester Redevelopment Authority. At least the grossly underfunded Amtrak, which has never been more patronized than now, knows the transportation business. And the Northeast Corridor is Amtrak's big money maker.

Certainly the size and location of Worcester and the station’s size and beauty could make it into the nexus of interior southern New England. Consider such splendid company-owned venues for the public as Madison Square Garden.

Out of season

To see snowdrops blooming in January, as they have been doing near our house on a south-facing slope for the past couple of weeks is both heartening and vaguely unsettling.

Yet again, Beth Israel, Lahey trying to merge

From the Cambridge Management Group  (cmg625.com) Web site.

For the fourth time, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Lahey Health say that they plan to merge.

The partnership would create a new parent corporation running the combined systems, of which Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Burlington, Mass.-based Lahey Hospital & Medical Center are the flagships. Under current plans, Kevin Tabb,  M.D., the current CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, would head the combined system.

Boston Business Journal reported:

“The hospitals are also still discussing how this move would impact New England Baptist {Hospital}  and — both of which are part of Beth Israel Deaconess Center’s larger entity CareGroup. New England Baptist announced in 2014 that it would join a clinical partnership with BIDMC, and officials said they would be having discussions with both hospitals to see how they would fit in to a new entity.

“Each hospital would also maintain its existing medical school association — Lahey with Tufts Medical School and BIDMC with Harvard Medical School.

“The deal would combine Beth Israel’s presence in Boston and the South Shore with locations in Burlington, Gloucester, Beverly and Winchester. A merger would also combine behavioral health expertise at Lahey with research and educational expertise from the BIDMC.”

To read more, please hit this link.

2 N.E. healthcare leaders warn of effects of ACA repeal

Adapted from an entry on the Cambridge Management Group (cmg625.com) Web site:

The Republicans’ promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act not only threatens to deprive millions of people of their health insurance; it could drive many hospitals deep into debt and destroy innovative programs created by the ACA aimed at  improving patient care, two New England healthcare leaders say.

Timothy Ferris, M.D., an internist and medical director of the Mass General Physicians Organization, told FierceHealthcare that he worries that the “progress we’ve made over the past five years would be threatened.”

He said that  includes programs through the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) at Massachusetts General Hospital, including experiments with video consultations and home hospitalization.

Dennis Keefe, head of Care New England, in Rhode Island, told NPR that he is concerned about the future for Integra, an ACO that includes primary- care physicians, specialists, urgent-care and after-hour providers, clinics, laboratories and inpatient facilities.

Hospitals and healthcare systems that have spent the last six years trying to create new value-based, patient-centered models as part of the ACA.  And so 120 organizations sent a letter to President  Trump and Vice President Pence urging them to not roll back progress they have made.

To read more, please hit this link.

'Try getting a plumber on Sunday'

Excerpted from Robert Whitcomb's Digital Diary column in GoLocal25.com.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, supported by some other state leaders, wants to let all Rhode Island students regardless of income attend any of the state’s three public colleges tuition-free for two years.  This is a well-meaning initiative but I doubt that it would have much effect on the state’s economy and/or lead to particularly better lives for the graduates.

The cost of the program would be $30 million when it’s fully implemented. The money might be better spent on boosting low-cost or free (to the students, though not the taxpayers) vocational education for such skilled and necessary trades  as nurses, electricians, utility linemen, pipe-fitters, sheet-metal workers, stone masons, welders, plumbers and certain factory jobs, which increasingly involve robotics.

These provide much more job security and higher incomes than most college graduates can expect to get, especially as automation and offshoring keeps gutting many previously well-paying job sectors, including such white-collar professions as law and accounting.

Starting about 30 years ago, politicians started saying that pretty mucheveryone should go to college, despite the fact that for many, perhaps most young people, a college education can be worthless in terms of what they can do  for a living after getting their degrees.

(I went to college myself, but as a future editor and writer on current affairs had, in a sense,  a vocational education myself by majoring in history and taking courses in such topics as Latin, which helped me better understand English. But very, very few people can look forward to careers in paid journalism, whose business model has been blown to smithereens by the Internet.)

There wouldn’t be family means testing for the tuition-free plan, though that would seem fairer. I guess the idea is that by making the program available to all, it would get maximum political support. It recalls how Social Security, since it was created in the 1930s, has been available to all – from pauper to billionaire – as one way to ensure that it wouldn’t be revoked. Good politics.

Anyway, remember Woody Allen's line "Not only is God dead but try getting a plumber on Sunday.''