You with the stars in your eyes

Staring into nuclear physics in Little Compton, R.I.

-- Photo by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

'Lightly hold' the beloved places

Mt. Monadnock, as seen from Peterboro, N.H.

 "I don't wish for the red house back, not really, yet in a way, I wish for everything back that ever was, everything that once seemed like forever and yet has vanished . . . Standing here on an empty hilltop in New Hampshire, as a bulldozer slowly pushes the debris of a small red house into a neat pile, I allow, just for a moment, the past to push hard against the walls of my heart. Being alive, it seems, means learning to bear the weight of the passing of all things. It means finding a way to lightly hold all the places we've loved and left anyway, all the moments and days and years that have already been lived and lost to memory, even as we live on in the here and now, knowing full well that this moment, too, is already gone. It means, always, allowing for the hard truth of endings. It means, too, keeping faith in beginnings."

-- From Katrina Kenison, a Peterboro, N.H.-based writer. The famous MacDowell Colony artists' retreat is in Peterboro.

It's a tough cleanup job

-- Photo by Robert Lawton

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Regarding the rather tropical-style  overnight storm we had on Oct. 29-30:

Do the radio talk-show and other complainants about lost electricity realize how difficult it is to clean up after any big storm, especially when summery (up to then) weather has left most leaves on the trees and so especially vulnerable to being blown over or losing big branches?

Unlike in much of the developed world, we in New England don’t usually bury our electric lines underground in heavily wooded areas. Further, in perhaps another sign of America’s crummy infrastructure maintenance,  some electric utilities don’t do a very good job cutting back branches that could easily come down on wires even in relatively mild storms.  

They should step up inspection and trimming operations,  especially in the summer, before tropical storm and snowstorm/ice storm seasons.  And state and municipal agencies could do more to monitor locations where trees pose the worst threats to lines, alert the utilities and in some cases do the trimming themselves. But in anti-tax America, how much are citizens willing to pay the added costs that this might entail? This takes more manpower.

Perhaps the storm will boost solar-panel installations.  It should. There are several ways in which you can obtain electric autonomy from the likes of National Grid and Eversource by installing a photovoltaic system. The most reliable system is one connected to batteries, which will provide you electricity (for a while) even at night.

Please hit this link for pithy descriptions of your solar options to avoid what happened to so many people in New England as a result of the Oct 29-Oct. 30 tempest:

https://www.livestrong.com/article/149056-do-solar-panels-work-during-a-power-outage/

By the way, I heard a National Grid spokesman (a brutal job after a storm) say on the usual whineathon WPRO radio talk show that the storm was more intense than predicted. No, it wasn’t! The National Weather Service was remarkably accurate about the storm’s timing and intensity.

As for whether the cleanup was slower in Rhode Island than in  Massachusetts and Connecticut: Maybe, but I heard the same sort of complaints from talk-show callers in those states about slow repair work there as I did from Rhode Islanders about power restoration in the Ocean State. This storm hit a very wide area. It would be nice to get some solid state-by-state comparisons of repair-work speed. Anyway, when you’re cold, your appliances don’t work and you can’t recharge your cellphone (“I have a cellphone, therefore I am’’) patience fades fast.

Tim Faulkner: Future looks bright for New England offshore windpower

Via ecoRI.org

The future looks promising for the local and regional offshore wind business. Three recent reports project up to 36,000 new jobs and 8,000 megawatts of offshore wind power between New Jersey and Maine by 2030.

Released by the Clean Energy States Alliance, a coalition of state energy agencies, the reports examine and aggregate information about offshore locations, state policies, interconnection infrastructure, and job potential.

The main findings identify 109 different occupations and electricity output for nearly 4 million homes. By comparison, Rhode Island has 462,000 housing units and Massachusetts 2.7 million.

Of the the seven states in the reports, Massachusetts has the greatest resources for offshore wind energy, with 82,704 megawatts of potential power. Maine is next with 56,503 megawatts, but currently has no wind projects proposed. Rhode Island has 8,364 megawatts of wind potential. Rhode Island and Massachusetts share a federally designated wind-lease area south of Martha’s Vineyard.

The reports are part of a regional effort to promote renewable-energy planning called A Roadmap for Multi-State Cooperation on Offshore Wind Development. They were partially funded by a U.S Department of Energy grant of $592,683 given to the New York State Energy Research Development Authority. The reports were also done for the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, and the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources (OER).

“As host to the nation's very first offshore wind farm, currently generating 30 megawatts off the southern coast of Block Island, we see these reports as key to laying the foundation for this growing industry,” OER administrator Carol Grant said. “The states in the region have individually taken important steps to advance offshore wind. The release of the new reports exemplifies how the states are also working together to advance offshore wind deployment and supply-chain development.”

Report one, the Northeast Offshore Wind Regional Market Characterization, looks at federal lease opportunities, state policies, regional energy needs, existing electricity generation and planned retirements, and transmission capacity through 2030.

Report two, U.S. Job Creation in Offshore Wind, looks at job potential. The majority of jobs are in project development and management, supply and installation of electrical substations and subsea cable, wind farm operation and maintenance, and possibly some in manufacturing.

Report three, U.S. Jones Act Compliant Offshore Wind Turbine Installation Vessel Study, examines the federal rule that requires all vessels transporting cargo between domestic ports to be built in the United States. The report concludes that the budding offshore wind industry would need a turbine installation vessel and a feeder barge. Shipyards have already been sent information on cost estimates. The installation vessel would cost about $222 million and some $87 million for the feeder barge.

Webinars on the reports are scheduled to held Nov. 20 and Dec. 7.

Tim Faulkner is on the staff of ecoRI News (ecori.org).

Peter Certo: On tax 'reform,' GOP in Congress reports to campaign donors, not the general public

Via OtherWords.org

Sometimes I have to remind myself that people in “real America” with “real jobs” don’t while away their mortal hours reading about politics. But God help me, if you’ve suffered through any coverage of the Republican tax plan, you’ve probably heard three things.

First, it’ll dramatically slash taxes on corporations and billionaires, raise them for nearly a third of us in the middle class, and blow a $1.5 trillion hole in the deficit.

Second, it’s unpopular. Less than a third of Americans support it, Reuters reports. That’s worse than Trump’s own approval rating, which remains mired in the 30s.

And third, the Republicans who control Congress believe it simply must pass.

In fact, this third point sets the tenor for the entire debate. “Republicans are desperate to rack up a legislative win after a series of embarrassing failures,” TIME observes. “If tax reform doesn’t pass, many in the party fear an all-out revolt in 2018.”

“All of us realize that if we fail on taxes, that’s the end of the Republican Party’s governing majority in 2018,” South Carolina Republican  Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News recently. In fact, “that’s probably the end of the Republican Party as we know it.”

If the tax giveaway doesn’t pass, adds Utah Republican  Sen. Mike Lee, “We might as well pack up our tent and go home.”

The thing is, that doesn’t make any sense. Gallup polls have shown over and over that most Americans think rich people and corporations should pay more, not less. Even a majority of Republican voters worry about what this wealth grab will do to the deficit.

If they were looking for a win, then, Republicans would be running against their own plan. So what gives?

Well, New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Collins recently offered a clue: “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.'” Ah!

Many voters in Collins’ high-tax district will likely pay more, since the GOP wants to end federal deductions for state and local taxes. But it doesn’t have a lick to do with voters. It has everything to do with the affluent donors who bankroll GOP campaigns.

A similar dynamic played out in the healthcare debate. GOP leaders trotted out plan after plan that would eliminate coverage for anywhere from 20 to 24 million Americans — plans that never topped the low 20s in public support.

But those plans would have reduced taxes on the wealthy. So they had to pass.

“Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who has been deeply involved in health policy for years, told reporters back home that he could count 10 reasons the new health proposal should not reach the floor,” the New York Times reported back in September, “but that Republicans needed to press ahead regardless.”

When those bills met their righteous demise, elite GOP fundraising took a huge dive. Senate Republicans lost $2 million in planned contributions alone, The Hill noted this summer. Fundraising in those months fell some $5 million below where it had been in the spring.

So there it is, team: Follow the money. It’s no wonder Princeton researchers found a few years ago that rich people matter to Congress, but ordinary folks generally don’t. That’s probably why many of us prefer to tune it out entirely.

It’s also exactly why we do have to pay attention. Especially in those rare moments when members admit exactly what’s going on.

Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of OtherWords.org. 

Pocasset plant life

"Grass in Little Bay, Pocasset, Cape Cod'' (limited edition aluminarte metal print), by Bobby Baker.

-- Copyright Bobby Baker Fine Art Photography

'Friendly in the dark chill'

A Leonid meteor.

"The sky is streaked with them
burning hole in black space --
like fireworks, someone says
all friendly in the dark chill
of Newcomb Hollow in November,
friends known only by voices.''
 

-- From "Leonids Over Us,'' by Marge Piercy, who is referring to the Leonids meteor shower.  Newcomb Hollow is in Wellfleet, on Outer Cape Cod.

Is it time to tear down some expressways, or bury them?

Boston's Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway (near the water in the foreground) now covers what had been the infamous surface  version of the Central Artery, aka "The Distressway.''

-- Photo by Hellogreenway

A recent Sunday New York Times Style section (why the Style section?!) ran a story headlined “Exit the Expressway” (the headline has since been updated) about cities looking at tearing down some of those huge highways that were plowed through cities and parks in the construction heyday of the Interstate Highway System and states’ new-road projects.

In many towns and cities these highways rent the urban fabric, cutting off neighborhoods from each other even as they encouraged suburban sprawl. The Times’s story focuses on the Scajaquada (!) Expressway, aka New York State Route 198, in Buffalo. Its construction in the early ‘60s tore the lovely Delaware Park in half. Similar stuff happened in other cities during the orgasmic phase of the Automobile Age.

Now there’s a plan to convert at least part of the expressway into a lower-speed boulevard.  It recalls proposals to turn the infamous 6/10 Connector in Providence into a boulevard.

Removing expressways has worked elsewhere, perhaps most successfully with downtown San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway, whose removal helped reenergize the city’s waterfront and led to a real-estate boom in the area.

Of course, another way to help repair the damage done to cities, and especially downtowns, by expressways is to put them underground, as was done with Boston’s infamous Central Artery in the Big Dig.  The Central Artery’s roof is now a park. Unfortunately there’s far from enough money to a do a similar project with Route 95 in Providence, which creates a fearsome barrier through the middle of the city. But we can dream….

But what does seem likely is that changes in lifestyles, economics and environmental considerations will prevent a recurrence of the expressway- building boom of the ‘50s through the ‘70s. For one thing, we have a much stronger appreciation now of the need to preserve neighborhoods and to reduce our dependence on cars. Further, young people especially (say 35 and under) drive less than their parents and many of them much prefer cityscapes to suburbia; indeed they're turning parts of suburbia into places that look like walkable cities.

To read The Times’s article, please hit this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/style/the-end-of-freeways.html

First light

"York Harbor, Coast of Maine'' (1877), by Martin Johnson Heade.

"Later, as I was getting dressed, I'd watch the early sunlight white-washing the houses across the harbor; America's first light falls on Maine each morning, and a clear and lovely light it is.''

-- The late Charles Kuralt, the CBS News journalist.

Invasive species and surveillance

From Ed Andrews's show "Invasive Species,'' at Boston Sculptors Gallery, Nov. 8 through Nov. 10. The gallery says:  "Monumental arboreal structures support rice paper cocoons that seem to breathe in and out, while small bug-like drones buzz overhead, appearing to monitor the movement of unsuspecting viewers. The effect is at once visually seductive, poetic and deeply disconcerting.''

The gallery says that  Andrews's family lost 12 American Elms that shaded their home because of the invasive Dutch Elm disease, which came from Europe. "Today he manages 35 acres of woodland {in Glocester, R.I.} --an extension of his studio and a laboratory for his art practice--where he does his best to contain non-native plants and insects that threaten the eco-system, including an ongoing personal battle with the invasive European Gypsy Moth. These experiences inform Andrews's work, paired with his expressive commentary on the spread of the security and surveillance industry, which like invasive species, can potentially damage the environment, and pose a threat to our shared human economy and well-being.''

"Like a crisp oak leaf'

“'Sweater weather,”' you said.
And I am swept like a crisp oak leaf
into a duvet and down dream,
where the pillows do not speak
of the warm, the moments large and small
when I nestle near you,
demanding that arms dress me
to close kept comfort.''

— from “Sweater Weather” by Lisa Shields

Chris Powell: Immigration exceeds assimilation

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 20 percent of this country's population now speaks at home a language other than English, up 34 percent since 1990. This indicates that immigration is exceeding the country's ability to assimilate immigrants into its culture. 

Another indication was the recent  terrorist attack in New York, where an immigrant from Uzbekistan is reported to have shouted “God is great” in Arabic after driving a truck over a score of people, killing eight and injuring many more.

A  recent rally in Hartford  in support of an illegal immigrant whose deportation order is close to being enforced also suggested that immigration is out of control. That's because the crowd chanted, "Undocumented! Unafraid!" 

Of course, illegal immigrants are afraid. But to pretend that they are not afraid is to suggest that no immigration law should be enforced and that the country should have no borders. That would be the end of the country, and if illegal immigrants want that to seem to be their objective, they will encourage more deportations.

xxx

Bridgeport, most of whose students graduate from high school without ever mastering English and math, many of them getting diplomas though they are functionally illiterate, has decided to make them take a course in African-American studies, Caribbean and Latin American studies, or "Perspectives on Race."

"It is going to make a great deal of difference to our children and families," the vice chairwoman of the city's Board of Education, Sauda Baraka, told the Connecticut Post. "It will really help us with the learning process. Cultural competency has been shown to change the direction of young people and make them more interested in learning."

Connecticut can only hope so, since if anything done in public schools substantially improves the motivation of the disadvantaged, neglected and fatherless children of the cities, it does not seem to have been attempted yet.

Of course, to some extent the new courses represent political pandering, since Bridgeport's students and their parents are overwhelmingly from racial and ethnic minorities, about half Hispanic and a third black. But political tampering in education isn't peculiar to the city. A couple of decades ago a law was passed to require the state Education Department to prepare and offer to local schools curriculums in not just African-American and Puerto Rican history but also the Irish potato famine, since some politically influential people of Irish descent still carried a grudge about it.

The sad thing is that if the education of poor city kids was ever likely, and if education elsewhere in Connecticut was ever more serious (student performance in most towns isn't so much better than in Bridgeport), the histories of the country's minority groups would be crucial additions for students of  all backgrounds. (The Asians should be included too, even though they don't whine as much politically.)

For inevitably the teaching of history has been skewed toward the ethnic majority, even though what most redeems the country is its heroic if uneven trudge toward democracy, equality and inclusion.

Will Bridgeport teach the history of racial and ethnic minorities as more cause for perpetual grievance, resentment, and dependence -- that is, teach it as mere political pandering? 

Or will this history be taught as cause for inspiration, achievement, and respect for those whose sacrifice and persistence amid adversity made the country better not just for their own groups but for everyone else too -- made it, indeed, the hope of the world?

xxx

The state's biggest teacher union, the Connecticut Education Association, is back on television with a 30-second commercial asserting that "well-resourced public schools and dedicated teachers unlock our children's potential."

This treacle may invite viewers to recall the engraving on the statue of college founder Emil Faber in the movie Animal House: "Knowledge is good."

But apparently the CEA wants viewers to construe it to mean that even as Connecticut's economic and demographic decline worsens and sacrifices begin to be extracted throughout government, including sacrifices from the most innocent needy, teacher unions should be given whatever they want -- for the sake of the children, of course.

Yes, teachers and knowledge are good, but their price has to be weighed like everything else and it's possible even for them to cost too much, no matter how much political influence the union exerts in every town and how much advertising it can afford.

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

Wild swings

Acrylic painting from the show "Calm/Chaos: Work by Aja Johnson,'' at Chandler Gallery, Cambridge, Mass., through Dec. 1. Ms. Johnson says her works convey a "desire for communication, catharsis or release.''

Passing ghosts

''Falling Autumn Leaves'' (oil), by Vincent van Gogh.

Listen. . .

With faint dry sound, 

Like steps of passing ghosts, 

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees 

And fall.

-- "November Night,'' by Adelaide Crapsey

Misreading 'The Last Hurrah'?

James Michael Curley in 1922, during his second term as mayor.

"The misreading of The Last Hurrah (Edwin O'Connor's novel loosely based on the career of the late Boston Mayor  James Michael Curley  (1874-1958)-- "The Rascal King''} came with certain costs. The book's acceptance as an authentic account of Boston's political culture helped steer attention away from critical aspects of the city's history....{T}he eagerness with which so many Americans embraced The Last Hurrah as a celebration of machine politics helped obscure the range of civic activism that circulated in ethnic America. Working-class  immigrants and the politicians who represented them developed their own reform visions, often in opposition to party bosses...We risk dehumanizing ethnics when we assume that their politics amounted to little more than an exchange of votes for services, however personal the help may have been.''

-- James J. Connolly, in his article "The Last Hurrah and Pluralist Vision of American Politics,'' in the book Boston's Histories: Essays in Honor of {historian} Thomas H. O'Connor.

Editor's Note: Curley, however corrupt, had superb political talents, including a capacious memory. My paternal grandfather, who helped run a shoe company in Brockton, met and chatted with Curley at an event in the late '20s. He next ran into the pol in 1952. Curley greeted him by name (Henry) and asked him how Margaret, my grandmother, was. 

-- Robert Whitcomb

I miss magazines

-- Photo by Rudiger Muller

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

I love print magazines.  The way you turn the pages like a book. That the quality  national magazines have fine contextual writing,  superb photography and other illustration and spiffy design.  (Indeed, the position of art director is very important in most magazines.) The way that they’re much more portable and neater than a broadsheet newspaper. And that you look at them  with reflected light makes it easier to read long articles in them than reading such text on a screen. Like a book.

The four-color photography, strong design  and expensive slick paper have been particularly important in maintaining the popularity of upscale specialty magazines such as  for fashion and travel – the major reason that some of those magazines continue to thrive. Ads look their best in such formats.

As a kid I used to look forward to the arrival late each week of a slew of magazines --- Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, The Saturday Evening Post, Business Week, the National Geographic and even for a few years the Illustrated London News (which still ran black and white photos showing the damage done by Nazi bombers in London). These magazines were a joy to peruse.

New England has had more than a few regional magazines, such as the still prosperous Yankee and Down East magazines, but many have folded, such as the very interesting and attractive New England Monthly magazine published in 1984-1990.

When working in New York  as an editor at The Wall Street Journal, I wrote for various magazines, usually travel stories but also how-to pieces and spot news, for extra money. While the monthly magazines understandably have relatively leisurely, if far from stress-free production schedules, the weeklies, particularly such news magazines as Life, Look, Time, Newsweek and Business Week, had high-pressure and even bizarre schedules. The first two days of the week were rather relaxed in their high-rise, high-tension headquarters, but the pressure built as the late-Friday deadlines approached. Editors and writers would put in 12-hour-days or more on Thursdays and Fridays.

Once the magazine was “put to bed,’’ after many cigarettes and much coffee had been consumed, there was a very unhealthy, if joyous habit of descending on midtown Manhattan bars to get hammered.

My late friend Harry Anderson, a high-level editor at Newsweek, used to tell me that the staff there did about 75 percent of the  week’s work in the last 12 hours before the magazine (or “book’’ as the magazine staffs call it). He died in his forties of a heart attack.

Of course, magazines are fading fast. Google, Facebook, et al., gobble much of the advertising revenue; news can be published instantly on the Internet, and media publishers decide that they don’t want to spend money on paper and physical distribution of their products. So the number of  national magazines is falling and virtually all of the surviving ones are much thinner than they used to be.

Some are becoming just Web sites and famous editors, such as  the famed Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter  as well as the editors of Time, Elle, and Glamour, have recently been leaving their jobs, not wanting to preside over their publications’ accelerated decline. And Jann Wenner will sell his controlling stake in the often interesting if often irresponsible Rolling Stone.:

Still, it’s hard to think of  a more pleasant reading experience than that offered by a good magazine. Let us hope that some of the best will survive, like recreational sailboats after steam ships and the internal-combustion machine came in. But magazines will  increasingly be boutique operations and they’ll be harder to find, as I discovered the other week at Books on the Square, in Providence, which has taken away its magazine rack. Very sad.

To read a  recent New York Times article on the fading away of magazines, please hit this link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/business/media/the-not-so-glossy-future-of-magazines.html

'Coastal strongholds' against rising seas

Salt marsh along Long Island Sound in Connecticut.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

A new study conducted by The Nature Conservancy helps identify “coastal strongholds” — areas that because of their unique topographies, elevations and landforms give threatened habitats in Rhode Island a chance to escape rising sea levels and continue to provide vital services to people and wildlife.

The 280-page study also offers land managers and agencies a tool to gather comprehensive data, such as water quality, important wildlife areas, sediment and soil nitrogen levels, that can be used to develop targeted conservation plans that will have the greatest chance of protecting coasts and communities against sea-level rise.

Among the strongholds identified in the Ocean State are Prudence Island and the salt marshes along the Palmer River between Barrington and Warren based on the undeveloped lands that surround them. The report notes that even these areas are threatened.

With sea levels projected to rise as much as six feet by the next century, many coastal habitats — tidal marshes, sandy beaches, and seagrass beds — could disappear under rising waters.

But scientists say these “strongholds” provide escape routes that allow threatened habitats to migrate inland and survive sea-level rise. The authors of the study, however, warn that manmade development and pollution could cut off these escape routes and lead to habitats being drowned out of existence.

“This study illustrates the vulnerability of coastal wetlands and the need to conserve and restore them,” said John Torgan, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island. “It also demonstrates the need to continue to implement nature-based solutions at all Rhode Island marshes that are highly vulnerable to sea-level rise because they don’t have room to migrate inland.”

During the past 18 months, the Conservancy and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have raised the elevation of 40 acres of marsh at the John H. Chafee and Sachuest Point National Wildlife refuges. In July, the Conservancy received a $1 million Coastal Resilience grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to increase the use of nature-based infrastructure for flood protection in New England. The Conservancy plans to hire a regional coastal-resilience specialist and implement a large-scale restoration project in each of the five coastal New England states.

The coastal strongholds research is supported by federal funding for Hurricane Sandy recovery, in response to a need identified by a coalition of states, federal agencies and other conservation organizations for information to help land managers and communities make strategic decisions to help coastal systems and communities adapt to changing conditions.

Healthy coastal habitats, such as sand dunes and tidal marshes, can shield communities from storm surges while also providing feeding and nursing grounds for wildlife. Sandy beaches serve as breeding grounds for rare species while supporting local tourism economies. Salt marshes rival forests in carbon storage and provide habitat for one of the East Coast’s rarest birds: the saltmarsh sparrow.

The Atlantic Coast Joint Venture — a partnership of federal, regional, state and local agencies and organizations — is already planning to use the tool to identify priority habitat for the saltmarsh sparrow and two other species, black rail and American black duck, that depend on salt-marsh habitat by looking for parcels in migration corridors that may be eligible for funding through Natural Resources Conservation Service programs to support conservation on working lands.

“If these important habitats disappear, it will have severe impacts on our economy, our environment and the health of our communities,” Torgan said. “Sea-level rise is happening now. We must take conservation action now to ensure these coastal habitats that provide so many services to both people and nature don’t disappear forever.”

The study analyzed landforms, elevations, nitrogen and sediment inputs, manmade development and other characteristics of 11,000 coastal sites from Maine to Virginia. Areas with open spaces, low-lying landscapes, good freshwater flow, low nitrogen, and diverse shorelines with many inlets provided habitats the greatest chance to migrate and take root inland. Conversely, areas with steep cliffs or high elevations will block migration, and too much nitrogen can disrupt root development. Manmade structures such as seawalls or buildings can also cut off escape routes.

The study was funded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The Palmer River (oil), by Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901).

America's avenues of freedom and anomie

Photo by Larry Rumpler in his show through Nov. 8 at the Providence Art Club.

Don Pesci: The legacy of two autocratic governors

“He deserves a going-out a lot more glorious than the one that the Democrats handed him,” former Connecticut Gov. and Sen. Lowell Weicker said of Gov. Dannel Malloy, who had been disinvited to budget talks between legislative Democrats and Republicans. “The legislature dumped him,” Weicker added. “I don’t think that necessarily stands to the glory of the Democratic legislators.”

Birds of a feather flock together.

There is little difference in governing style between Weicker and departing lame-duck Governor Malloy. Both are autocratic and manipulative; both relied heavily on tax increases to fill budget deficit holes; and both claim not to be guided by popularity polls, lofty governors transcending the grubby hoi-polloi. Both were highly unpopular as governors, Weicker because he muscled an income tax through the General Assembly, and Malloy as the author of both the largest and the second largest tax increases in state history. The tax hike in the current budget – which, for the first time throughout the Malloy administration, bears Republican fingerprints -- is a, relatively speaking, modest $1 billion.

Following his sole term as governor, Weicker declined to run for re-election. After two terms in office, Malloy, disapproval rating 68 percent, has declined to allow over-taxed Nutmeggers to vote against him in a ratifying election. Democrats during upcoming campaigns will be measuring the distance between themselves and Malloy in miles rather than feet.

The absence of an income tax, a levy mightily resisted by such moderate Democrat governors  as Ella Grasso, made Connecticut a haven for companies and wealthy residents like Weicker, an heir to the Squibb pharmaceutical fortune. After 1991, the year Weicker pushed an income tax through a dubious General Assembly, companies, perhaps anticipating massive tax and spending increases, sheltered their assets, reduced production, and battened down the hatches, awaiting a national rising tide that would lift all their boats. It never came. Republican Governors John Rowland and Jodi Rell offered ineffective resistance to a resurgent, progressive General Assembly. The recession malingered and recovery was pushed far into the future.

Economic advances during the as yet brief Trump administration – the stock market has increased by $5.2 trillion, about half the national debt  that Barack Obama left the Trump administration – point backwards to an anemic progressive regime. Current unemployment is the lowest in 16 years, and President Trump, sometimes a prisoner of his own hyperbole, likely is not overpromising by much when he says “if Congress gives us the massive tax cuts and reform I am asking for, those numbers will grow by leaps and bounds.”

The income tax had been falsely sold to the legislature as a revenue stabilizer.  Not true – the income tax is more volatile than relatively stable sales or consumption taxes. Since 1980, income-tax revenue in Connecticut has increased a whopping 28 percent, yet the state continues to suffer from repetitive deficits. That is because income taxes are more susceptible to wild swings during market cycles. In the income-tax period, state expenditures rose 138 percent, while income grew only 86 percent between 1980 and 2016.

This volatility has primed reckless spending. Income-tax revenue has decreased in Connecticut during cyclical downturns while spending has increased, creating repetitive deficits.  The spending imperative and the disinclination to cut spending long-term and permanently leads to other dislocations: the sweeping of so-called lockboxes and dedicated funds; the cowardice of legislators who, heavily dependent on union support for re-election, continue to charge the future to pay for unsupportable union salaries and pensions; municipalities hooked on state patronage; and the flight of businesses to less rapacious states – only part of the economic evils let loose when the General Assembly opened the lid to Weicker’s income tax.

In the Greek myth, when Pandora, warned not to so, opened the jar given to her as a gift from the gods, all the imprisoned evils of the world flew out, hope alone remaining in its very bottom.

Hope springs eternal.

This year, the General Assembly produced a fusion product after a Republican budget had been adopted by astonished legislators. The latest budget iteration bears unmistakable Republican fingerprints but is, never-the-less, a Democrat product. Republicans hadn’t the numbers in the General Assembly to deny Democrats substantial tax increases. They did successfully insert a Constitutional spending cap provision that had been a sweetener in Weicker’s initial 1991 income tax proposal; the cap, state Atty. Gen. General George Jepsen ruled several months ago, was never operative because the legislature had failed to provide requisite definitions. The current budget provides the definitions, engaging the cap. Republicans were also successful in capping bonding. A provision that requires legislative assent for additional dollars provided to unions in negotiations with the governor restores minimal legislative authority over budgets. Republicans dropped a measure in their own approved budget, vetoed by Malloy, that would have, if adopted, changed from contract to statute the process by which unions, in collaboration with governors, establish salaries and benefits. Connecticut is among only four states that surrender legislative authority over budgets to union negotiations with compliant governors.

Budgets shape the future; so do political campaigns. Two questions will be decided in the upcoming 2018 campaign: 1) What will the future bring, more of the same or beneficial change, and 2) Do Republicans know how to campaign?

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based essayist.

Llewellyn King's Notebook: Theater as it should be: fish and chips in New England; weather myth

Photos by Linda Gasparello

Cabaret Cast at the Arctic Playhouse: Seated left to right, Rachel Hanauer, Jeff Blanchette, Angela Jajko, Jessica Gates and Bob Logan (forefront).

Theater should be readily accessible, affordable and good. For me, the ideal theater experience has always been to pop off to the theater at the last moment and get an affordable seat.

There was a time when you could do that in London and New York. But theater-going has become an expensive chore, both in the West End and on Broadway: Buy exorbitant tickets far in advance, drive, park and get a bill for the evening which can run to over $500 for two.

Not so where I live -- just down the street from the amazing Arctic Playhouse, which is to theater what food trucks are to restaurants: accessible, affordable and good.

The Arctic Playhouse is by any measure an anomaly. It just shouldn’t be. Arctic is a distressed hamlet in West Warwick, R.I. Once, it was prosperous shopping area near working textile mills. Now it has fallen on hard times, having lost its retailing base to shopping centers. Washington Street, its main street, has boarded-up shops and a pervasive sense of decay.

But Arctic has live theater at the Arctic Playhouse: a very modest but nonetheless effective theater space where, for under $15, you can see what is often a damn good show. The theater, by the way, will be moving to a larger space on the same street.

I write this in the warm glow of having just seen such a show with my wife: “I Love ... What's His Name?” As its subtitle says, it's a cabaret about confusion in love in the 21st century.

We were dubious, but we really like the spirit and intimacy of our neighborhood theater and its energetic impresarios, Jim Belanger and David Vieira.

So we ate a light supper and drove a few minutes to be enchanted by a clever review, well-executed by a topnotch cast, including co-creators Rachel Hanauer and Jeff Blanchette, Angela Jajko, Jessica Gates and supported with industrial-lifting, as it were, from pianist Bob Logan.

The cabaret featured a series of ballads and patter songs -- some by musical greats, like Tim Rice and Stephen Sondheim -- about dating. Very modern, too: Cell phones play a big part in a show that is funny, tuneful and rip-roaring good entertainment.

I've always said you don’t need a palace to put on a good show, just good players. It’s about the play and the players, as Shakespeare said in “Hamlet,” not the venue. Arctic proves that, production after production. Local fun in a clubby atmosphere with free cookies, decaf coffee and popcorn, and a full, cash bar.

Give my regards to Broadway, but you won’t be seeing me in many a day.

Arctic Impresarios: David Vieira (left) and Jim Belanger

Fish and chips

Rightly, you think the national dish of Britain is fish and chips. Well, maybe not anymore.

It is increasingly hard to find fish and chips in Britain and Ireland. Not impossible, but harder than it was when there was a fish-and-chip shop, known as a chippie, almost on every corner.

The other shocking thing is that the fish and chips in the chippies, when you find them, are likely to be squeezed in with other fast food —hamburgers, sausages and even lasagna.

What you are more likely to find in every town or village is an Indian or Pakistani restaurant. In fact, I've read it argued that the national dish of England is no longer fish and chips, but curry and rice.

But I'm delighted to report that some of the best fish and chips to have crossed my plate in a long time are to be found in New England, particularly in Rhode Island. Almost every restaurant and bar has very good fish and chips. Excellent, in fact, but missing that standard of the British Isles version: mushy peas. You don’t have to have them with your battered cod in the U.K., but you’d be missing the full experience if you don’t.

Mushy peas are, as they sound, peas cooked to produce a mush. Sounds disgusting, eh? Well, they’re delicious.

Why, I wonder, with so much excellent haddock around, is there no smoked haddock to be had? Finnan haddie is just not on sale among the wonders of the sea in every supermarket. The Brits like to eat it at breakfast, and the French serve it as a main course. My wife, Linda Gasparello, who grew up in Hingham, Mass., says finnan haddie and cod cakes were regular offerings on South Shore menus.

Very good too. Ladies and gentlemen, start your smokers.

xxx

The Myth of the Frozen North

We moved to Rhode Island from the Washington, D.C., area five years ago and we still shuttle back and forth with some regularity. It is hard to be a journalist and not be drawn into the Washington maelstrom.

We sing the praises of Rhode Island as loudly as operatic stars. We go on about its great food, wonderful beaches, fabulous architecture and nice people.

But people in Washington, and elsewhere in the country, believe that we live in igloos, kept warm at night by a five-dog team of huskies. They believe the cold dominates our lives and that we drive Humvees to get through the snow.

It’s not an argument we have been able to win. But the fact is the climate in most of New England is much better than the climate down in the nation’s capital, where the summers are insufferably hot and humid and the winters can be as cold as they are in Providence. There is less snow there, but everything ceases up when it does snow —usually a big one every year.

The pathological fear of cold keeps people away and living in worse climates. Pass the grog.

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, as well as a longtime publisher, columnist and international business consultant.