He "most loved a blizzard'

An apple orchard in Hollis, N.H.

“He loved winter more than the other seasons, loved a  tender snowfall, loved the savage north wind and the blinding light off a frozen lake, loved most a blizzard, which he faced head-on like a bison. He would not admit these things, however, because in his superstition he believed that by revealing desires about sacred subjects, such as weather and seasons, you would likely receive the opposite of what you wanted.’’

-- From The Dogs of March, by Ernest Hebert

From Mr. Hebert's Wikipedia entry: "He is best known for the Darby series, seven novels written between 1979 and 2014, about modern life in a fictional New Hampshire town as it transitions from relative rural poverty to being more upscale, almost suburban.

Bill Koch gets his way

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

Incredibly, the Cape Wind project, first proposed in 2001, has hung on since then, despite being held up by fierce opposition mostly funded and led by Bill Koch, one of the billionaire right-wing Koch Brothers, who have big fossil-fuel investments. Mr. Koch has a big summer place in Osterville, on the south shore of Cape Cod. He didn’t  want to look at  the wind turbines that Energy Management Inc., the Cape Wind developers, has wanted to put on an underwater sand bar  called Horseshoe Shoal in the middle of Nantucket Sound. On a clear day, the wind farm would be visible on the far horizon from Mr. Koch’s estate. But he’s rarely in Osterville. He has other houses. Still, like most members of the American plutocracy, he’s used to getting his way wherever he is.

Despite seemingly  endless obstacles, Energy Management Inc. has continued to make the $88,000 annual federal lease payments on the offshore tract and the Feds recently decided to let the enterprise maintain its long-term lease of the 46-square-mile area. But someone connected with EMI called me Friday to say that the company has decided to give up.  They’re worn out by the fight.

Too bad. The site, considering its geology, electric-grid proximity, nearby population density and in some other ways, might have been the best place for a big electricity-generating facility on the East Coast.

The lease would have been valid through 2041!

Chance and choice in a yellow wood

"Arch, North Carolina'' (photo), by Boston area photographer Russell  duPont.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.''

--The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

Contrary to what many people think, this very famous poem doesn't mean that the "I'' took the road that worked out best, the one that took the narrator to a good place. Rather it's about chance and choice, about one damn thing coming after another. Frost called it a "tricky'' poem.

Sarah Anderson: Building a movement against immoral tax legislation

Via OtherWords.org

If you’re expecting a gift card from your boss as an end-of-year bonus, enjoy it this year because you probably won’t get one in 2018.

The Senate tax bill would ban such rewards. Why? Because Republican lawmakers are determined to prevent ordinary workers from pocketing a $25 or $50 gift card without reporting it as taxable income.

Meanwhile, these same politicians are planning to dole out billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very wealthiest Americans.

For example, they’re planning to gut or entirely eliminate the estate tax, a curb on extreme wealth concentration that currently applies only to fortunes worth more than $11 million per couple.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley explained the reasoning: “Not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Republicans are using this prejudice against working people to justify a massive giveaway to wealthy political donors. While giving the rich and big corporations huge tax breaks, the Republican tax plan would raise taxes on 87 million middle-class families, throw 13 million people off health insurance, and cut Medicare by $400 billion.

This moral abomination is already igniting a firestorm across the country. Over the past two weeks, protests have erupted at 50 universities and in least 100 cities, while nearly 50 people have been arrested on Capitol Hill.

And whether or not President Trump achieves his goal of signing this tax deal into law by the end of the year, this fight is just beginning.

On Dec. 4, prominent faith leaders announced plans for one of the largest waves of civil disobedience in U.S. history. Dubbed the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival,” this effort will mark the 50th anniversary of a similar initiative in 1968 that was undercut by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

The campaign co-chairs, the Rev. Liz Theoharis and the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, are determined to pick up the baton from King and other 1960s leaders. They’ve called the Republican tax plan “an act of gross violence against America’s poor.” But this is just one of the motivations.

“We are witnessing an emboldened attack on the poor and an exacerbation of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and the war economy that demands a response,” Rev. Barber said.

A new Institute for Policy Studies report I edited reveals that conditions in each of these areas have worsened since 1968 by many measures.

It documents the increased number of Americans below the poverty line, the acceleration of economic inequality, and the emergence of new forms of voter suppression and mass incarceration that further entrench systemic racism.

It also highlights the growing imbalance in government spending on the military relative to social programs, and the intensification of racial and income disparities in access to clean air and water.

Starting next spring, the Poor People’s Campaign aims to bring tens of thousands of poor and disenfranchised people, clergy, and other moral leaders to rallies at statehouses in at least 25 states, leading up to a major demonstration at the U.S. Capitol on June 21.

While Republicans may succeed in scoring a short-term win for the political donor class, their tax plan is sparking a new moral movement that will lift up the millions of Americans living in poverty and build power for transformational change.

Sarah Anderson is a co-editor of Inequality.org and the editor of the new Institute for Policy Studies report auditing America 50 years after the Poor People’s Campaign.

Chris Powell: At UConn the fascism of political correctness

Everyone except, apparently, the administration of the University of Connecticut could see coming what happened in a lecture hall there last week. The script is a cliche and UConn let itself be stereotyped by it.

First the College Republicans plotted a provocation, inviting a hyperbolic young "conservative" agitator to speak to them on campus. He obligingly selected a topic calculated to prompt indignation from the university's Stalinist left -- "It's OK to Be White" -- recognizing that the Stalinists would protest and try to obstruct his presentation, thereby giving him his 15 minutes of fame.

Having at least noticed similar confrontations and disruptions at other institutions of "higher education," UConn stationed police officers in the lecture hall. But the university failed to caution people planning to attend that disruptions would not be permitted.

The Stalinists dutifully packed the hall and discovered that disruptions were permitted. As soon as the speaker began his remarks, the Stalinists chanted and shouted to prevent him from being heard. If he advocated any oppression, journalistic reports did not note it. For amid the disruption he could hardly get started. He had provoked the fascist reaction he was meant to provoke -- and then it got better.

One of the Stalinists -- not a student but a state employee from Quinnebaug Valley Community College -- walked up to the podium, swiped some of the speaker's papers, and walked away, prompting the speaker to chase after her and grab her around the neck to recover his papers. 

The police who couldn't be bothered to remove the disrupters or protect the podium broke up the tussle and arrested the speaker but not the woman who swiped his papers. Having achieved martyrdom, the speaker was thrilled.

Whereupon university President Susan Herbst, Connecticut state government's million-dollar woman, issued a hand-wringing statement lamenting the affair without actually taking sides against the Stalinists, who, after all, seem to constitute a majority of the university's faculty and students, as they do at most universities lately.

Maybe the incident will raise two issues in court: whether it is legal to try to prevent someone from stealing your stuff, and whether it is legal to steal someone's stuff when he is preaching "hate" and thereby causing you "pain," the rationale claimed by the Stalinists.

Who is to decide when speech becomes "hate" and causes impermissible pain? Of course that is to be decided by the people who don't like what is being said. They claim the power to trump the First Amendment, which almost a century ago Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. understood to protect "the principle of free thought -- not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate."

A century ago free thought and speech were principles of the political left, especially in academia, but not anymore, now that the political left has gained control of it. 

Connecticut hardly needs its flagship university to coddle the fascism of political correctness. If the university cannot defend free thought and speech and instead will stand by helplessly as the political extremes spoil for violence, Connecticut can save a lot of money by forgoing public "higher education" entirely and instead trying to teach manners and the First Amendment in the primary schools. 

That's where people already are supposed to learn to ignore those who make faces at you, thus declining to give nobodies the attention they crave.


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

 

Mass. regulators oppose Partners takeover of Mass. Eye and Ear

Mass. Eye and Ear, on the Charles River, Boston.

From Cambridge Management Group Inc. (cmg625.com).:

Partners HealthCare and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital are challenging the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission’s finding  that Partners’ acquisition of the specialty hospital would significantly raise costs for consumers.

The panel concluded that said the purchase would boost prices for Mass. Eye and Ear’s services, increasing spending by $20.8 million to $61.2 million a year. And it said that the costs would be felt in higher health-insurance premiums.

But Partners, the Greater Boston health system behemoth, and Mass. Eye and Ear, in a formal response to those assertions, said the commission overstated potential cost increases and underestimated  Mass. Eye and Ear’s financial problems.

To read a Boston Globe article on this, please hit this link.

Conceptual sculpture

Work by Waldo Evan Jespersen, in his show "Stretched,'' at Boston Sculptor Gallery, Dec. 14-Jan. 28.

The gallery says: "Driven by formalism and problem solving, Jespersen's work represents the distillation of a thought pushed through the filters of reality and compromise. Often engineered to push the boundaries of materials and processes, as well as his own ability, Jespersen's sculptures are surprisingly elegant, whimsical, and deceptively simple in their purity of form. The process spurs an endless playful battle between the juxtaposition of a simple concept and complex construction.''

'Before the merciless grid'

"Predating the merciless grid that seized Manhattan and possessed the vast Midwest, New England towns have at their center an irregular heart of open grass, vestige of the Puritan common, holding, perhaps, a village pump, a weathered monument, a surviving elm. In Rowley {Mass.}, a vacant triangle beside Route 1A that a December narrows becomes suddenly alive with whirling dervishes of Christmas lights….''

By the late John Updike from his essay "Common Land,'' in Arthur Griffin's New England: The Four Seasons

In the Bay State, trying to disable handicapped-parking fraud

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

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has signed a bill to crack down on people who misuse disability credentials to get handicapped parking spaces. Rhode Island officials would do well to order the same sort of crackdown.

We sometimes see people who seem in  very good physical condition using handicapped parking placards in order to park in spaces very close to where they’re shopping, seeing physicians and so on.

The Boston Globe reported that the new law, which increases the authority of the Registry of Motor Vehicles to investigate fraudulent applications for handicapped placards, was enacted after a 2016 report from the state inspector general found that people were misusing placards  in every Boston neighborhood that was watched.

“’The use of disability parking placards should be reserved for our most vulnerable residents,’ Baker said. Obviously.

The issue reminds me that the demand for handicapped parking will presumably continue to surge with the aging of the population.  But will self-driving cars cool that demand as auto-autos pick up and drop off people exactly where they want to be?

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

And then there are those “therapy animals,’’ mostly dogs, with owners with invisible health problems.

Jim Hightower: A mass murderer's love song to Trump

Via OthertWords.org

We’ve had a great relationship,” exulted a giddy Donald Trump, following his two-day schmoozefest in Manila with the thuggish Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte, who calls himself a “toughie,” brags that he’s personally killed many people and likes to compare himself to Hitler. He’s been on a murderous rampage since his election last year.

In the name of eliminating the drug trade, Duterte has unleashed a massive military assault across the country, not merely targeting dealers, but also anyone alleged to even use drugs. His onslaught is a human rights atrocity, with untold thousands being executed in what are antiseptically termed “extra judicial killings” — that is, murders.

Yet the present president of the United States says Duterte is his new buddy. Trump stressed in their official discussions that the Philippine president can count on him and the U.S. (which includes you and me) to be a friend. And, as a friend, Trump didn’t bother his authoritarian buddy with any unpleasant talk about those rampant human rights abuses.

Instead, the Duterte-Trump get-together was one of mutual praise and even affection. Indeed, Trump was delighted when Duterte impulsively grabbed the microphone at a gala state dinner and serenaded Trump with a love ballad, crooning: “You are the love I’ve been waiting for.”

In fact, Duterte had earlier demonstrated that love when he named Jose Antonio to be his trade representative to our country. Antonio, a Philippine real estate mogul, happens to be a partner with our president in the luxurious new Trump Tower, now under construction in Manila. Cozy, huh?

Hugging up Duterte might be good business for Trump, but it’s a sorry deal for our national interest — and it’s an insult to our people’s support of human rights.

Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also the editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. 

From fossil fuel to wind

The now-dead Brayton Point Power Station in a recent winter.

A Missouri-based company, Commercial Development Co., plans to buy the now closed and once heavily polluting fossil-fuel-powered Brayton Point Power Station, in Somerset, Mass., and may turn the 307-acre site into a center for windpower. How fitting.

 “Multiple factors attracted us to this site. Of greatest interest was the potential for renewable energy development,” said Randall Jostes, the company’s  CEO. The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center sees very breezy Brayton Point as a possible site for an industrial wind port.

Some of us will feel a pang  when the two huge and eerie cooling towers at Brayton Point, looming on the south side  of Route 195, are torn down. A lot of people have thought that the facility was nuclear.

So get in your cave

"Cave Bears,'' by C.C. White, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.

David Warsh: Discovering an octopus of their own

G. Frederick Keller's "The Curse of California,'' which appeared in The Wasp on Aug. 19, 1882, is the likely origin of the depiction of the Southern Pacific Railroad monopoly as an octopus.

SOMERVILLE, Mass.

Last  week, when the tax bill and Michael Flynn’s plea deal dominated the news, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson came under increased pressure from the White House to resign. Might that story be almost as important as the others?

The question to ask is, why did the former Exxon CEO take the job? The 65-year-old Texan has grandchildren and well over $50 million in the bank. The secretary and I are not pals, but I think I understand. He did it because he was an Eagle Scout, and because his old hunting buddy, former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, told him  that he thought it would be worth the struggle.

Struggle it has been.  The diplomatic press corps has been all over Tillerson for months, accusing him of wrecking, or unravellng, or dismantling the State Department by reorganizing it in an effort to comply with the 31 percent budget cut ordered by Trump.

Tillerson replies that the department’s $55 billion budget was at an all-time high under the Obama administration. He is seeking to impose an 8 percent cut among the agency’s 35,000 employees.  His aim, he says, is to make a somewhat smaller department function much as it did under his friend Baker, in the George H. W. Bush administration.  No doubt the human costs of careers derailed have been significant; the extent to which the department’s mission had been impaired will be an open question for many years.

Meanwhile, Tillerson has disagreed with the president on nearly every important foreign-policy question: the Paris Climate Accord, the Transpacific Partnership, the pursuit of a diplomatic track with North Korea, the Saudi campaign against Qatar, maintenance of a strong line against Russia in Ukraine. He hasn’t denied calling the president, not just a moron, but a crude slang term for a four-star moron, the highest rank of moron that there is.

Public life has few afflictions more annoying than a specialist press corps whose favorite sources have been spurned. If there were any doubt that outrage has overwhelmed reason at the editorial board of The New York Times, its story "Help Wanted: Top Diplomat'' should resolve it. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, said to be the front-runner to replace him, is “potentially every bit as inimical to the national interest” as is Tillerson, according to the Times.  Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is very much a member of the president’s inner circle. As Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky wrote yesterday in Politico, Rex Tillerson Isn’t the Problem – It’s Trump.

The president, it is often said, doesn’t like to fire people.  He prefers to humiliate them until they quit. My guess is that Tillerson won’t make it easy for him.  The clamor of the diplomatic press notwithstanding, actually dismissing Tillerson might cost the president dearly in many quarters – Congress, for example, or the Pentagon – as did firing FBI director James Comey. It is conceivable that, despite the ruckus, Tillerson stays.

William Allen White, turn-of-the-20th-Century Kansas newspaper editor and Progressive sage, wrote in 1905, “It is funny how we all found the octopus.” He was talking about the giant business and money trusts, whose significance he had dismissed only a decade before, in the heat of a populist onslaught.

In a similar way, those in the "mainstream media'' who doubted the existence of a “deep state” a few months ago, mainly for the sinister connotations of the term, may soon be discovering an octopus of their own. An American Establishment exists, attenuated but still powerful. Like the roster of firms that compose the once-dominant Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Establishment’s uppermost ranks have changed a great deal over the years. Broader indices have come  into play. But, in the words of another  wordsmith, Mark Twain, reports of its death have been exaggerated.

So far the Establishment has caused President Trump to appoint a series of moderates to top jobs, of whom Tillerson and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly are the foremost. Who knows what happens if those bonds give way.

David Warsh is a long-time economic historian and political and financial columnist. He is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this first ran.

Mount Mystery

'Untitled." (oil paint and wood), by Matt Chinian, in the "Back Story'' show at Periphery Space Gallery, Providence, Dec. 9-23.

Disappearing souls to count

"I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening

To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house

Of one room and one window and one door,

The only dwelling in a waste cut over

A hundred square miles round it in the mountains:

And that not dwelt in now by men or women.

(It never had been dwelt in, though, by women,

So what is this I make a sorrow of?)

I came as census-taker to the waste

To count the people in it and found none,

None in the hundred miles, none in the house,

Where I came last with some hope, but not much,

After hours' overlooking from the cliffs

An emptiness flayed to the very stone.

I found no people that dared show themselves,

None not in hiding from the outward eye.

The time was autumn, but how anyone

could tell the time of year when every tree

That could have dropped a leaf was down itself

And nothing but the stump of it was left

Now bringing out its rings in sugar of pitch;

And every tree up stood a rotting trunk

Without a single leaf to spend on autumn,

Or branch to whistle after what was spent.

Perhaps the wind the more without the help

Of breathing trees said something of the time

Of year or day the way it swung a door

Forever off the latch, as if rude men

Passed in and slammed it shut each one behind him

For the next one to open for himself.

I counted nine I had no right to count

(But this was dreamy unofficial counting)

Before I made the tenth across the threshold.

Where was my supper? Where was anyone's?

No lamp was lit. Nothing was on the table.

The stove was cold—the stove was off the chimney—

And down by one side where it lacked a leg.

The people that had loudly passed the door

Were people to the ear but not the eye.

They were not on the table with their elbows.

They were not sleeping in the shelves of bunks.

I saw no men there and no bones of men there.

I armed myself against such bones as might be

With the pitch-blackened stub of an ax-handle

I picked up off the straw-dust-covered floor.

Not bones, but the ill-fitted window rattled.

The door was still because I held it shut

While I thought what to do that could be done—

About the house—about the people not there.

This house in one year fallen to decay

Filled me with no less sorrow than the houses

Fallen to ruin in ten thousand years

Where Asia wedges Africa from Europe.

Nothing was left to do that I could see

Unless to find that there was no one there

And declare to the cliffs too far for echo,

'The place is desert, and let whoso lurks

In silence, if in this he is aggrieved,

Break silence now or be forever silent.

Let him say why it should not be declared so.'

The melancholy of having to count souls

Where they grow fewer and fewer every year

Is extreme where they shrink to none at all.

It must be I want life to go on living.''

-- "The Census Taker,''  by Robert Frost, set in New Hampshire.

'As if evening found us young'

I

"Only this evening I saw again low in the sky
The evening star, at the beginning of winter, the star
That in spring will crown every western horizon,
Again… as if it came back, as if life came back,
Not in a later son, a different daughter, another place,
But as if evening found us young, still young,
Still walking in a present of our own.
 
II

It was like sudden time in a world without time,
This world, this place, the street in which I was,
Without time: as that which is not has no time,
Is not, or is of what there was, is full
Of the silence before the armies, armies without
Either trumpets or drums, the commanders mute, the arms
On the ground, fixed fast in a profound defeat.''
 
-- From ''Martial Cadenza,'' by Wallace Stevens

Term limits look better and better in Connecticut

The lame ducks depicted in this Clifford K. Berryman cartoon are defeated Democrats heading to the White House hoping to secure political appointments from  President Woodrow Wilson.

Columnist Jim Cameron in the Stamford Advocate has curtly written off  Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy: “Our governor is a lame duck. Because he’s announced he’s not running for re-election, he has the political clout of a used teabag. And even though he’s our state’s leader for another 11 months, nobody cares about him or his ideas any longer.”

Malloy’s lieutenant governor, Nancy Wyman, has decided she would rather be spending time with her family than running for governor, which would necessarily entail a hearty defense of Malloy’s ruinous policies.

After two terms making Connecticut great again, Malloy himself has decided to take a hike.

Atty. Gen. George Jepsen, whose time in office was spent avoiding media notoriety -- unlike his predecessor,  Dick Blumenthal, for whom fawning media attention was the River Styx in which he bathed frequently – has called it a day after two terms as Connecticut’s AG. And no, the former chairman of the State Democratic Party has no plans to run for governor. Both Blumenthal and former Atty. Gen. Joe Lieberman used the AG’s office as springboard to a U.S. Senate sinecure.    

Mayor of Hartford Luke Bronin, once Malloy’s chief counsel, having said he would need a couple of terms in office to turn the U.S.S. Hartford around, has rushed into the vacuum created by Malloy’s departure.  Connecticut’s capital is taking on water. Only a few weeks ago, Bronin was palavering with lawyers about a bankruptcy declaration, and if he now feels the governor’s office is a politically safe haven compared to the mayoralty of Hartford, he’s one bright cookie. Most lawyers are not dummies. despite the usual bad rap on the comic circuit. Question: What do you call a lawyer with an I. Q. of 50? Answer: Your honor.

An open Democrat gubernatorial field has yanked Ned Lamont from the shadows. Lamont, a cable millionaire and great-grandson of a late chairman of J.P. Morgan & Co. Thomas Lamont, successfully challenged then U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in a Democrat primary; he then lost to Lieberman, who successfully defended his seat as an independent in a general election. “Lamont spent $26 million of his cable television fortune on his run for the Senate and for governor,” Neil Vigdor of CTPostreminds us, and Lamont was, of course, supported by former U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker, who is still recovering from his 1988 loss to Lieberman.

“I just care about whether I think I can make a difference and get this state back on track,” Lamont said. “We’ve got so many amazing assets. We’re just not making the best out of our potential.” Lamont indicated that he would decide by January whether he would throw his hat into the gubernatorial ring. By that time, the floor on both sides of the political barracks will be littered with hats.

These bow-outs of Malloy, Wyman and Jepsen have kicked the doors open on an election that promises to be alarmingly interesting. If anyone wants to know how term limits might introduce into Connecticut’s sclerotic political system the verve and energy of a new day, they have only to look about them. Had term limits been in force midway between Dick Blumenthal’s agonizingly long 20-year term as the state’s attorney general he might have been a U.S. senator or possibly governor more than 10 years earlier; for it is not true that term limits would end political careers. They would simply move the pieces on the political chessboard toward different political functions. PAC committees, easily captured by incumbents, would have to decide, upon a governor or a senator leaving his post, who they might want to corrupt in the future; in the absence of a healthy turn-over in various offices, corruption has become routine, predictable and automatic. Term limits would invigorate political parties, and awaken all the nerve tingling juices of reporters during election cycles.

This is precisely what is happening right now that three prominent officeholders have decided in effect to term limit themselves.

Jepsen’s political career has been well rounded: In 2018, he will have put in eight years as attorney general. But Jepsen also served in the State House for  four years and the State Senate for 12 years. He served as chairman of the  state Democratic Party for two years. These terms in different political offices approximate term limit spans. Jepsen circulated himself through a now sclerotic political system, and no one is complaining that the state Senate, for example, has been irreparably damaged because Jepsen did not spend as much time there as Blumenthal had in the attorney general’s office.

Had term limits been in operation for the last few election cycles, no one in the Democratic Party would be wincing at the prospect that a Bridgeport mayor who spent years in prison for corruption might become the next governor of Connecticut. The gubernatorial field on the Democratic side would now be crowded with recirculated Democrats, some of whom just might be able to pull Connecticut out of its progressive mire by its former moderate and pragmatic bootstraps.

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

'Like living on an actual ship'

"Northeaster' (on the Maine Coast), by Winslow Homer.

“Say the words ‘New England,’ and one person will think of a white church spire and a village green; another will see a covered  bridge or the Vermont hills in autumn; and still another will conjure up a farm along the Connecticut River. For me, the words evoke the sounds and smells of the sea, and the storms and fogs that make life along the New England coast a good deal like living on an actual ship, subject to the whims of the weather.’’

Nathaniel Benchley, in “The Sea,’’ in New England: The Four Seasons.

Expanding the urban forest

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Some other happy news about public-private partnerships came in Nicholas Boke’s charming Nov. 8 ecoRI News article headlined “Community Togetherness: Planting an Urban Forest’’.

It’s about the highly successful Providence Neighborhood Planting Program (PNPP), which is charged with maintaining and expanding the city’s “urban forest.’’ My family has fond memories of the tree planting in a related program in front of our house 25 years ago. The sapling then was about 5 feet high. Now it’s over 20 feet high and has turned into a very popular and lush abode for various bird species.

The PNPP is a joint venture of the private Mary Elizabeth Sharpe Providence Neighborhood Planting Program Fund, the city’s Parks Department and local residents, who get lessons from the program in how to plant and nurture the trees. It’s enlightened self-interest: Trees help clean the air, reduce heating bills in the winter and air-conditioning bills in the summer and their beauty raises real-estate values.

City Forester Doug Still told Mr. Boke that the program plants  a total of about 500 trees a year in 25 neighborhoods while the city directly plants another 200. For more information, please hit this link for information about the program:

http://pnpp.org/

To read the ecoRI news piece, please hit this link:

https://www.ecori.org/green-groups/2017/11/8/community-togetherness-planting-planning-an-urban-forest

Linda F. Nathan: When grit isn't enough

Everyone knows money is important. For those privileged to have enough of it, money is not an obstacle for living a decent life or for college access. My husband and I frequently say,

Money isn’t everything,” but only the freedom of having money allows us to say such a thing. We didn’t want our own children restricted in their college choices. Of course, we hoped that they would consider attending Tufts University, where my husband is a professor, so that, if admitted, they would be eligible for tuition remission. But we didn’t want to limit their explorations or plans. Many of my friends will espouse similar statements: “We will take out loans if we have to” or, “I’ll be working to pay this tuition off for another 20 years.” Many of our friends began a college fund when their children were born. I know of many families who enlist the help of a grandparent to pay for a grandchild’s tuition. So, for the children of the “haves,” the cost of college is a consideration, perhaps, but it doesn’t predetermine the future.

However, within the urban public school arena where I have worked for four decades, the assumption that “money isn’t everything” is patently false. We hope our students will receive adequate scholarships or federal loans. We urge students to go to state colleges and universities where tuition might be more affordable. We counsel kids against taking on too much debt. But no matter what approach we take, cost is a huge obstacle in accessing quality higher education.

A recent study reports that state funding for higher education has fallen by 18% since 2008. Money, or the lack of it, can easily determine the kind of future a young person will have. Some families have the good fortune to assume that no matter the monetary demands, college is accessible. But that is just not true if you are poor or don’t have the social or cultural capital to navigate the system of higher education. The data are incontrovertible: Elite colleges and flagship universities enroll more students from the top 1% of the income distribution than from the bottom half.

Kevin remembers being encouraged to dream big about college. He knew he was talented. He had excellent grades in both visual arts and academics. “We had heard since we came here [to Boston Arts Academy] as freshmen, even in freshman orientation, that we could all go to college. It was part of the curriculum.” Kevin recalls the intensity of senior year with his peers. Classes revolved around writing college essays and preparing portfolios as well as practicing for interviews. “‘Where are you applying? Is your portfolio finished?’ That’s all we talked about. Everyone was going to go somewhere.” In this case, the assumption was, there is a college for everyone.

Kevin received a full scholarship to the nearby Massachusetts College of Art and Design, a four-year, public arts college, but he desperately wanted what he called the “full college experience” of going away from home and being around a diverse mix of kids. “I’d been doing art so intensely for four years in high school. I just wanted to see what else was out there.” So instead of going to MassArt, where he had a full scholarship, he went to another state school: the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he would need financial aid. Pell grants wouldn’t cover the cost of in-state tuition with room and board. Kevin qualifying for financial aid, and he understood that he would have to repay some loans when he graduated.

During freshman and sophomore year, Kevin had a great adviser who made sure that he did all his financial-aid paperwork on time. But junior year, he was assigned a new advisor in his major. That advisor didn’t know Kevin well, and he wasn’t as methodical about checking in with Kevin about issues such as aid deadlines. Kevin recalls when his life began to unravel. “I was so busy at the end of sophomore year. I was working for Unity House [for students of color], and I was performing and deejaying all over to earn money for books and everything. I was also working 30 hours a week in the cafeteria. Of course, I had a full load of classes too.”

When he returned in September of his junior year, he discovered he didn’t have housing. “Alarm bells should have gone off. I should have realized right away something was wrong. But I just thought it was a housing thing and it would work out. Lots of my friends had had housing issues. So I stayed on a friend’s couch for September, waiting for housing to come through. That wasn’t so unusual with my friends. But when I went to the housing office to find out when I’d get a room, they just laughed and said I wasn’t even enrolled. There was a hold on my account. I was so confused. How could that be? I was like big man on campus. Everyone knew me and loved me. I was involved in everything. Why would I have a hold?” Too late, Kevin realized that he had neglected to apply for financial aid for his junior year.

It was already mid-October and he was too embarrassed to tell his mother that he actually wasn’t a student. “She just wouldn’t have understood. She had sacrificed her whole life for me to get here.” He stayed involved with all his college activities. He kept his on-campus job and even kept going to classes, but slowly things began to catch up with him, and he realized that now he had all this debt and he didn’t know what to do. He dropped out of college and worked two jobs trying to pay off some of the loans, but he couldn’t make much of a dent in the debt he was accumulating while also paying for rent and food. “The debt just went higher and higher with the interest. At some point I think I realized that I owed $42,000 and there was literally no way I could be paying that off and live.”

Kevin didn’t want to acknowledge that his dreams of a college degree had vanished. He was working 40 hours a week cooking in a diner and also making money on the weekends performing and deejaying, but he still couldn’t see how he’d ever be able to return to school.

He knows that he should have been responsible for understanding when and how to reapply for financial aid, but he also recognizes the role that his first adviser had played in helping him keep track of the paperwork. “I shouldn’t have relied on my advisor, but, you know, if you don’t grow up knowing all about financial aid and the deadlines, and you don’t have a parent to remind you, it’s really important that someone at college can help with that. I’m not the only one who missed deadlines. Sometimes I think colleges should be measured on how many students actually graduate rather than how many enroll. And if a lot drop out, like what happened to me, maybe tuition and loans should be even less. Why isn’t the college held responsible at all?”

I’m intrigued by Kevin’s last comment. Why, indeed, don’t we hold colleges responsible for graduation rates? And how are graduation rates tied to money? There is a direct correlation between the ability to access financial aid and graduation rates. At UMass–Dartmouth, graduation rates are under 50%. How much of that attrition is due to the fact that money is an obstacle for too many students? I don’t think this disappointing graduation rate means that UMass Dartmouth is a bad school. Many of my Boston Arts Academy students who have gone there, whether or not they have graduated, have spoken in positive terms about their classes and the education they received. Even though many students commute, Arts Academy graduates have found that UMass Dartmouth has a strong community of color, but offers few programs that adequately help first-generation students, especially with respect to financing. There are no required meetings for these students. There are no regular check-ins. Kevin was lucky to be assigned such an attentive advisor his first few semesters. But luck should not be the reason students graduate or not.

My students desperately want to believe what we have taught them: They can go to college. Money isn’t everything. They will get scholarships. They can even take out loans. Kevin and so many students like him realize too late that money, in fact, is everything. They also realize that making one small mistake means the difference between securing a future that they dreamed of in high school and a future that may not be better than their parents’. Money, white privilege and the ethos of meritocracy have created extraordinary barriers for too many. We have created a two-tiered system that seems to have no end in sight.

Again, relative privilege ensures this will not happen with my own children. I have been able to help them with college and even graduate school. My son, a medical school student, will be able to make a choice about whether he wants to become a primary care physician and he will not have to enter a more lucrative specialty field just to pay back loans. This kind of freedom shouldn’t be available only to the affluent.

Could we imagine a more holistic conversation between higher education leaders, high school principals, guidance counselors, nonprofit leaders and funders—both private and governmental—about the kind of supports necessary to ensure that money is not an obstacle for success in college? Students across the country are engaging in protests about the tiny numbers of students of color attending many of our private and more elite colleges. These Black Lives Matter protests are laudable. They harken back to the student movement of the 1960s. But I fear that the students are missing the point by focusing solely on the percentages of students admitted. Colleges must also be accountable for graduating those students they accept. The real question is how all institutions of higher education can ensure that the Kevins of this country are afforded access to finishing college and earning a degree. If we believe that college access for poor and working-class youth and adults is an important vehicle for democracy to continue to regenerate itself, the entire nation must commit to changing our policies so that money does not continue to be an obstacle.

When my book came out and I had the opportunity to be interviewed on the radio and in the press. Some of my alumni heard me or read the interviews. I received a stunning email from one of them: “Thank you, Ms. Nathan, for giving voice to what I ‘ve been feeling all these years. I have felt like such a failure for my inability to finish college. I have been paying off those loans forever. There just hasn’t been a way back to school. I know I’m smarter than the job I have now, but without loan forgiveness, this is my life now.”

Another, Laura, told me that she could have been Kevin if it hadn’t been for an administrator on campus who intervened and made sure that she got housing after helping her get rid of the “hold” on her account. Laura had missed an email about needing to waive health insurance and so she was locked out of housing or enrolling in the next semester classes. The administrator wasn’t just any administrator, but a vice president. “They had to listen to her at the housing and enrollment offices.” But these issues of missing an email shouldn’t create such potentially devastating situations for students and yet they are all too common.

I have been asked: What can be done? What are the steps forward for creating better outcomes?

I write about many of the ways high schools could be strengthened to provide more support for their students. However, I am convinced that higher education institutions have a responsibility to find solutions to alleviate the financial constraints for low-income students, first-generation students and students of color. Here are my suggestions:

Release of transcripts. All college leaders could agree to release transcripts for courses that students already paid for. In this way, students would be able to hold on to some of the credits they had earned and not forfeit everything. In Kevin’s case, this would mean that he would have two years toward his college degree. I can already hear the protests from many higher education circles about how this enables young people. However, I can imagine a system where credits are released and then students are required to pay a little back each year over a period of time. But, holding all credits back ensures that the student will NEVER be able to return to college unless, like another of my alumni, they literally hit the jackpot and win the lottery. When I have asked college administrators about the rationale for not releasing credits already paid for, they return to the issue of students still owing money. They seem unable to separate money paid and money owed.

Success Offices. Colleges could commit to robust Success Offices with clear and continuous communication to students about deadlines and upcoming opportunities. The goal of these offices would be to ensure college completion of enrolled students. Imagine if during the regular orientation, students had the chance to work with trained personnel about financial aid deadlines, what you can choose to waive (like health insurance) and myriad other issues that crop up constantly for which many students are unprepared. Imagine if these offices were staffed with students who understand the invisible web that can trap low-income students too easily. Since finishing my book, I’ve learned about an organization called Persistence Plus that sends text messages to students asking them where they are planning on studying since finals are coming up, or whether they have checked in at the tutoring center. I’m intrigued by these online applications, and impressed with the positive data reported by the organization. Nevertheless, I argue in my book, that while individual effort is clearly important in college success, we should not let colleges off the hook. They too have a responsibility to help students persist and graduate.

Additional orientation sessions for first-generation students. As countless students told me, “the Success Office can only do so much.” My alumni explained that people in the financial aid office, student accounts, health … “all those places where we have to interact, also need to know that their job is to help us and not prevent us from graduating.” I was told over and over again that these offices need to hold regular and required meetings for their students—and that these offices and individuals need to communicate with one another.

Professional development in supporting low-income population. Colleges could collaborate on professional development focused on working with first-gen students for all employees who work in student accounts, financial aid and other areas. In addition to having good accounting skills, these employees could benefit from broad training in how to support low-income students in their college going years, including sensitivity training around poverty and immigration status. (An alum just called to tell me that the financial aid person on her campus as recently as last month referred to “illegal aliens” instead of undocumented students, or students without official papers. Terms such as “illegal alien” are actually hurtful to my students.)

Rethinking accountability for success in rating colleges. All colleges and universities should be required to publish data that reports graduate rates by “subgroups.” (“Subgroups” is the term used by the state to define non-white students, special education students, or students in poverty.) All pre-K-12 public schools’ test scores are reported annually in the newspaper and by the Massachusetts state Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education using such “subgroups.” Why is it that higher education institutions are not obligated to play by the same rules? A professor friend of mine at a four-year “second tier” private college tells me her president doesn’t want to release the scores of graduation rates for African-American students because they are so abysmal. This lack of transparency renders the crisis difficult to analyze and address.

Debt forgiveness. Higher education institutions could lobby the federal government so that loan forgiveness programs are widely adopted. Student debt continues to be one of the most serious ways in which low-income young people are trapped. Just recently, a Boston Globe article headlined, “Debt load hits black students hardest,” noted that “African-American students who started college in 2003-04 typically owed 113 percent of their student loan 12 years later. … By contrast white borrowers had paid down their debt and owed only 65 percent of the original amount, and Hispanic borrowers had knocked down their debt to 83 percent of the initial loan.”

Rethinking the role of Accuplacer tests in community colleges. It is clear to me that these tests are serving a harmful role in the advancement of young people. I would like to see community colleges eliminate them and use GPA, recommendations and transcripts for placement. In so doing, students can take “co-requisite” work alongside their college-level classes.

More investment in community colleges. As I have noted in my book, per-pupil expenditures in Massachusetts are abysmal. It is difficult to provide the necessary supports to the myriad students who attend community college. I would like to see community colleges offering more online, self-paced courses with more extensive supports for students than currently offered. I would also like to see financial aid cover developmental courses.

Competency-based college degrees. In my book, I discuss a program that College for America at Southern New Hampshire University is working on with Match Inc., the Boston-based public charter school. I think these programs need more analysis on outcomes for participants; otherwise, I fear that we are developing a two-tiered system. College for America programs began with a focus on providing bachelor degrees for employees at companies like Panera Bread, who wanted to move up in the ranks. But I am not convinced about the quality or depth of the coursework as compared with more traditional four-year degrees. Nevertheless, I would be intrigued by a pilot program that allows careful analysis of how students do in a non-time-based or credit-based system as compared with a more traditional one. For some students, I believe the results will be strong. Currently, I’m supporting a former colleague to matriculate and gain his bachelor’s degree after working for 30 years in the performing arts field. I believe that he makes a strong candidate for a competency-based degree.

If we implement some of these suggestions, we may have better chances of graduating students like Kevin. As Kevin reminded me, “We are sort of like the America dream. We are what this country is made from. And if we don’t make it, I can’t help but wonder if the whole country will make it.”

I couldn’t agree more. And looking at the current tax bills before Congress, I cynically wonder if we want more Kevins to graduate from college.

Linda F. Nathan is executive director of the Center for Artistry and Scholarship and teaches at Harvard University and University of Massachusetts, Boston. She was the founding Headmaster of Boston Arts Academy. This piece includes excerpts from her recent book, When Grit Isn’t Enough: A High School Principal Examines How Poverty and Inequality Thwart the College-for-All Promise (Beacon Press, 2017). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.