He only looks tormented

"Tucson' (graphite charcoal and pencil on paper), by Robert Beauchamp (1923-1995), in the show "Robert Beauchamp: Four Decades of Works on Paper,'' at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Jan. 25-March 28. The show, says the gallery, traces his career from his early days in  New York to his death, "highlighting a vast array of inventive drawing techniques, a never ending deep engagement with the figure, along with imaginative combinations of personal symbols and narration.''

New England and the American elm

Lafayette Street, Salem, Mass., about a century ago. This is an example of the cathedral effects created by plantings of the American elm,   once common in New England.

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

The Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm, by Thomas Campanella, a city planner, is a fascinating look at how elm trees were planted and nurtured in American towns and cities to bring together nature and human systems. They have great height,  their crowns have a wide fountain shape, and their leaves are small, which lets through a lot of sunlight to dapple the ground below. So wide are their crowns that long rows of elms on both sides of a street create a Gothic cathedral effect. No wonder that there are so many Elm Streets in New England and in the Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest states.

The author says that Charles Dickens was very enthusiastic about elms when he visited New Haven, “Elm City,’’ in 1842. Dickens wrote that the trees “bring about a sort of compromise between town and country.’’

Sadly, Dutch Elm disease killed most of these beautiful trees in the 20th Century. But forestry experts have been developing more disease-resistant elms in the past few years. We’re hoping that these elegant trees can make a big comeback and again grace many streets, parks and commons.

My strongest memory of them is from the mid-50’s, when Memorial Day marchers in uniform walked at generally stately paces below their new leaves. Most of those trees were gone in the next decade.

To hear Mr. Campanella discuss his book, please hit this link:

http://archive.ttbook.org/listen/22356Fopem,

Worcester people of color, 1897-1917

From "Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard,'' at the Worcester Art Museum, through Feb. 25. Mr. Bullard took pictures of people of African-American and Native-American descent  in Worcester in 1897-1917.

Conn. gun crackdown seems to work

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

After a lunatic young gunman murdered 20 first graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, Nutmeg State legislators in  2013 broadened the definition of “assault rifle’’ and the sale of gun magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds. State law also requires a permit to buy any gun or ammunition. And Connecticut has a registry of weapon offenders and a universal background check system.

Ron Piniciaro, executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, told WNPR that the state had 53 homicides with guns in 2016, way down from the 92 before the new law took effect.  But then, southern New England has long had among the lowest gun-death rates in America.

Interestingly, reports WNPR, gun sales are still rising in the state. But Mike Lawlor, Connecticut’s undersecretary for criminal-justice policy and planning, says the rigorous permitting process keeps down the violence.

There have been variants of the Connecticut legislation promoted in Congress but as long as the National Rifle Association, which acts as chief lobbyist for the gun-manufacturing industry, holds sway there, don’t expect anything. Polls suggest that most Americans want tougher gun laws, but that counts for little on Capitol Hill!

Gun-control advocates lack the lobbying and campaign-contribution money of the weapons industry and, whatever the opinion polls show, gun lovers vote more intensely than do gun-control folks. And the gun lobby and its servants in Congress and the White House are far more politically ruthless than are gun-control people. For that matter, on a range of issues from health care to taxes to the environment, the majority of the public seems to favor slightly left-of-center positions, if national opinion polls mean much. But they vote at considerably lower percentages than do people on the right. They get the government they deserve.

'Welcome to Lee, Maine'

See Welcome to Lee, Maine, a beautiful movie about a small Maine town and what happened when a far-away war hit home hard. To see the movie trailer, please hit this link.

'Wants it to be winter'

"Fifty  brief summers, fifty northeastern

winters have close to petrified the frames

once carefully recessed and rigged with pulleys, though the ropes have frayed,

the weights like clappers dropped inside the walls.

They're called "eight over twelves,'' my guillotine windows,

that slam themselves on spring,

and the wooden spoons that prompt them up belly like yew bows,

and the empty shampoo bottles woo,  and the knives, hair brushes,

shoe trees, books, and jewelry boxes,

all will be ruined soon.

Ring the house that wants it to be winter,

a house for wintering, warn the spirits that they'll lose a hand,

a tail sailing in and out of the bell tower.''

-- From "Guillotine Windows,'' by Deborah Digges

They can teach you something

Work by Deirdre Barrett in her show "Exhibition of Digital Dream Art,'' at Darwin's Ltd.,  Cambridge, Mass., through Jan. 15. Ms. Barrett, a Harvard professor, psychologist, writer and artist, is primarily known for her research on dreams, on which she has published several books.
This exhibit is produced by Cambridge Art Association (CAA) as part of their Satellite Spaces program. CAA exhibits art and offers educational opportunities to facilitate communication among artists, art enthusiasts and collectors.

Maybe go back to Europe?

The Pilgrim Monument, in Provincetown. The Pilgrims landed near this spot in 1620.

"They thought they had come to their port that day,

  But not yet was their journey done;

And they drifted away from Provincetown Bay

  In the fireless light of the sun.

With rain and sleet were the tall masts iced,       

  And gloomy and chill was the air;

But they looked from the crystal sails to Christ,

  And they came to a harbor fair.

        The white hills silent lay,—

      For there were no ancient bells to ring,       

      No priests to chant, no choirs to sing,

      No chapel of baron, or lord, or king,

        That gray, cold winter day.

The snow came down on the vacant seas,

  And white on the lone rocks lay;        

But rang the axe ’mong the evergreen trees,

  And followed the Sabbath day.

Then rose the sun in a crimson haze,

  And the workmen said at dawn:

“Shall our axes swing on this day of days,        

  When the Lord of life was born?”

        The white hills silent lay,—

      For there were no ancient bells to ring,

      No priests to chant, no choirs to sing,

      No chapel of baron, or lord, or king,        

        That gray, cold Christmas Day.

“The old towns’ bells we seem to hear:

  They are ringing sweet on the Dee;

They are ringing sweet on the Harlem Meer,

  And sweet on the Zuyder Zee.        

The pines are frosted with snow and sleet.

  Shall we our axes wield,

When the chimes at Lincoln are ringing sweet,

  And the bells of Austerfield?”

        The air was cold and gray,—        

      And there were no ancient bells to ring,

      No priests to chant, no choirs to sing,

      No chapel of baron, or lord, or king,

        That gray, cold Christmas Day.

Then the master said: “Your axes wield,        

  Remember ye Malabarre Bay;

And the covenant there with the Lord ye sealed;

  Let your axes ring to-day.

You may talk of the old towns’ bells to-night,

  When your work for the Lord is done,        45

And your boats return, and the shallop’s light

  Shall follow the light of the sun.

        The sky is cold and gray,—

      And here are no ancient bells to ring,

      No priests to chant, no choirs to sing,        

      No chapel of baron, or lord, or king,

        This gray, cold Christmas Day.

“If Christ was born on Christmas Day,

  And the day by Him is blest,

Then low at His feet the evergreens lay,        

  And cradle His church in the West.

Immanuel waits at the temple gates

  Of the nation to-day ye found,

And the Lord delights in no formal rites;

  To-day let your axes sound!”        

        The sky was cold and gray,—

      And there were no ancient bells to ring,

      No priests to chant, no choirs to sing,

      No chapel of baron, or lord, or king,

        That gray, cold Christmas day.       

Their axes rang through the evergreen trees,

  Like the bells on the Thames and Tay;

And they cheerily sung by the windy seas,

  And they thought of Malabarre Bay.

On the lonely heights of Burial Hill        

  The old Precisioners sleep;

But did ever men with a nobler will

  A holier Christmas keep

        When the sky was cold and gray,—

      And there were no ancient bells to ring,     

      No priests to chant, no choirs to sing,

      No chapel of baron, or lord, or king,

        That gray, cold Christmas Day?''

"The First Christmas in New England,'' by Hezekiah Butterworth (1839-1905)

200 years to enlightenment

"Examination of a Witch'' (1853,) by T. H. Matteson, inspired by the Salem trials.

"By 1892, enlightenment had progressed to the point where the Salem {witch} trials were simply an embarrassing blot on the history of New England. They were a part of the past that was best forgotten: a reminder of how far the human race had come in two centuries.''

-- Historian Edmund Morgan
 

Saving Harvard from exclusivity?

The front of the Porcellian Club, long considered the most exclusive of Harvard's "final clubs.''

So much for freedom of association. Harvard has approved a rule barring students who are members of single-sex clubs (basically meaning fraternities, sororities and “final clubs”) from leading officially approved campus organizations or serving as captains of Harvard sports teams. Further, the school won’t recommend such students for such major scholarships as the Rhodes. Nanny State goes to college. Social engineering 101.

Tim Faulkner: The lessons of the long Cape Wind saga

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Cape Wind may be gone, but it’s still fresh on the minds of attendees and speakers at a two-day southern New England wind energy conference hosted by the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

Bill White, senior director of wind development for the Massachusetts state agency that advances renewable energy, said the demise of Cape Wind was a personal disappointment, but the 16-year saga offered several teachable moments for the offshore wind industry.

Those lessons, White said, include building further offshore, presumably away from popular recreation and fishing areas such as Nantucket Sound. To speed up permitting, environmental studies should be completed and regulations addressed earlier in the application process, he added.

Cape Wind also established offshore infrastructure that will benefit future projects. It led to construction hubs such as the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal, and laid the groundwork for planning, staging, and construction of turbines and their transmission lines.

“Cape Wind in a way served as a catalyst not just for Massachusetts but in a way for the entire East Coast in educating us to the possibility of offshore wind,” White said.

Smaller is better, Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski said. He noted that the 130-turbine Cape Wind project and other failed offshore wind farms suffered from a process that was pushed by developers rather than by a state-driven model, such as the one Rhode Island embraced for the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm.

Developers, inspired by large European wind projects, relied on analysis from engineers showing the maximum number of turbines that could be built in an offshore zone, Grybowski said. Large projects like Cape Wind and others off the coasts of Delaware, New Jersey and Long Island “were in essence drawn up on a white board in a developer’s office."

"They were engineered," Grybowski said. "An engineer said, ‘I can build this much in this area.’ They were mechanically engineered and financially engineered to those particular project sizes. And those projects failed.”

Grybowski praised Rhode Island’s ocean mapping plan for providing the locations and process for approving offshore wind projects. Through community and stakeholder involvement, the project was reduced from 100 turbines to eight and then five.

“When you are doing something for the first time going for the large size is not necessarily the right way to go, even though it may make financial sense,” Grybowski said.

Building 400 turbines is feasible and already happening in Europe, he said, “but starting small makes a lot of sense when you look at the long term.”

Starting small and moving slowly makes it easier to recover from mistakes that might derail a larger project. Grybowski didn’t mention specific errors, but the Block Island project encountered some safety and construction problems, along with minor public resistance, all of which were fixed or addressed with alternative plans.

Grybowski described the give-and-take as “enlightened self-interest.” He explained that the turbines benefited Block Island by fulfilling its dual goals of ending its reliance on diesel-fuel power, while connecting the island to the mainland power grid. As an inducement, the transmission line included a fiber-optic Internet connection.

“It means ... making the right concessions for the community and the project that maximizes everyone's goals at the end of the day,” Grybowski said.

The experience of building the Block Island Wind Farm set the course for new and much larger offshore wind projects that will be needed as the country transitions away from fossil fuels. Electrification of the transportation sector and advances in battery storage are escalating the demand for renewable energy and offshore wind is the most practical source of utility-scale power to meet that energy need, according to Grybowski.

Fake news

Science was the focus of the two-day conference (Dec. 11 and 12), with sessions on marine mammals, fish and fisheries, birds, and bats. Grybowski urged scientists to do more to promote their research. Climate-change deniers, Grybowski said, were given legitimacy because scientists didn't adequately “engage in that public conversation.”

“When there was pushback, fake news on the other side, the science community, they were comfortable with kind of putting their studies together," he said. “They weren’t really comfortable engaging in a real way out with people on the other side in the community. So I ask you to do that."

Grybowski pointed to news stories that circulated a dubious claim that noise from the Block Island Wind Farm killed a humpback whale that washed ashore on Jamestown earlier this year.

“When that sort of thing happens, it would be really great to have some researchers who were willing to step up and actually get engaged in that conversation and provide facts and help people make clear judgements about what is and what isn’t happening,” Grybowski said.

Tim Faulkner writes for ecoRI News.

Mark Luskus: Corporate interests use stolen identities to flood Internet with fake comments

Via OtherWords.org

My identity was stolen this year. The perpetrator didn’t open credit cards in my name or gain access to my finances. Instead, they used my name to submit a comment to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in support of repealing net neutrality rules.

Those rules, enacted in 2015, declared the internet to be a free and open place. They prevent Internet service providers, or ISPs, like Comcast and AT&T from restricting access to any Web sites — either permanently or to charge you more money to access them.

Imagine your water company charging you more for the water that comes out of your shower than the water that comes out of your sink. Or imagine not being allowed to use your shower at all, even though you pay a water bill.

That’s what net neutrality rules protect consumers from when it comes to the internet.

But Ajit Pai, the current FCC chairman and a former  very high-level lawyer for Verizon, and his Republican colleagues on the commission has voted to repeal net neutrality. To do this, he had to solicit public to comment on the matter.

In the past, this has resulted in millions of pro-net neutrality comments — which makes sense, because most Americans support it. But this time, an unusual number of anti-net neutrality comments showed up.

Why? Because of the 22 million comments received, half or more of them appear to be fake, likely posted by bots or special interest organizations attempting to sway the FCC’s opinion. When I checked the FCC’s Web site, I learned that one of those fake comments used my own name and address.

Someone had stolen my identity to advocate for a position that I didn’t agree with.

Several people and organizations, including the New York attorney general, have petitioned the FCC for information on the scale and origin of fake comments. However, the FCC has rejected these petitions.

As a federal agency, the FCC should be far more concerned about the identity theft of the citizens they’re tasked to represent.

Internet providers like Verizon, the former employer of the FCC chairman, complain that net neutrality rules slow their investments in internet technology. However, ISPs exist in a shockingly non-competitive market.

More than 50 million households in the United States have only one choice of provider, and those providers score the lowest customer satisfaction rates of all 43 industries tracked by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Personally, I’ve never had an ISP that offers reasonable customer service or internet speeds and reliability at the levels I pay for.

This isn’t an industry that consumers are satisfied with, so why should they hold even more power than they already do? No wonder they have to rely on sleazy tactics like stealing identities and posting fake comments.

The internet has become an essential tool in the 21st Century. A small handful of companies shouldn’t have the power to decide which parts of it people can access.

Corporate-funded lies and identity theft highlight a major threat to the benefits of increased communication. How can we prevent special interest groups from warping the internet to spread misinformation and further their political goals?

That’s a question we must answer, because misinformation campaigns are rampant, and they’re being used to restrict your rights and freedoms. But at the very least, a former Verizon employee shouldn’t hold the power to give ISPs a major win at the expense of consumers — and a free and open Internet.

Mark Luskus is a med student at Emory University, in Atlanta He’s  particularly interested in infectious diseases and public policy.

James P. Freeman: A bumpy trip though Massachusetts's circus of 2017

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools”
—  William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act V, Scene V)

The struts and frets of 2017 confirm we are on a portentous path to a dusty death.

Is there a doctor still in the house?

The Massachusetts Medical Society rescinded its opposition to physician-assisted suicide. Perhaps that phrase was too forthright in these sensitive times. So, a statement from the society reads “medical aid-in-dying.” The society’s governing board will, for now, adopt of position of “neutral engagement.” Theirs might be a dutiful death.

Newly offensive public statues and monuments were the rage. In Boston a street sign, “Yawkey Way,” so-named 40 years ago, became an object of moral grandstanding. Red Sox owner John Henry is now “haunted” by the racist legacy of a predecessor  owner, Tom Yawkey. Never mind that the Yawkey Foundation is one of the largest charitable organizations in the city. Henry and fellow progressives are more concerned about erasing history than improving it.

The Boston Globe — which Henry owns — haunted many subscribers with delivery and production problems. The Globe got it wrong in asking its readers this question: “Does Boston deserve its racist reputation?” More probing would have been: “How does racism still exist after a century of pure-bred progressivism in Boston?”

Bad news. The Boston Herald filed for bankruptcy and was sold for pennies on the dollar.

Boston Public Schools needed a bigger piggy bank, surprisingly, as it paid certain employees with off-the-books payments, revealed an IRS audit. But they won’t be pressing the snooze button. BPS announced (based upon computer research) the rescheduling of most of its starting times next school year.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term. No mention during the campaign that Walsh overwhelmingly crushed free speech and freedom of the press during the Free Speech Rally in August.

Andrea Campbell, 35, will be the first African-American woman to lead the Boston City Council. Her presidency, says The Globe, will make the council the “most diverse in the city’s history.” Forget political diversity, though. Republicans need not apply — there are none on the council.

For all the region’s proud progressives, don’t kiss and tell. The following codswallop appeared in wearyourvoicemag.com:  “10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask on a First Date.” Warning: “What do you do for fun?” isn’t one of them.

Amazon came calling and Massachusetts went groveling. Twenty-six Commonwealth entities submitted bids to become the company’s second headquarters.

Take the long road home. State Sen. Thomas McGee, a Democrat from Lynn, proposed legislation that would bring more toll roads to Greater Boston. Funds would be allocated to all statewide transportation needs, including the troubled MBTA. For roadways, however, Massachusetts already spends an average of $675,939 per state-controlled mile — a figure exceeded only by Florida and New Jersey.

Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura Healey continued her quest as progressivism’s most litigious social-justice warrior. Her personal vendetta against the Trump administration included 24 instances of legal intervention in just the first six months of the year. How about Ticketmaster? Drug dealers?

A high school girl golfer beat a high school boy golfer by shooting the best score in the Central Massachusetts Division 3 boys’ golf tournament this fall. But she did not get the trophy, sparking national headlines and progressive incredulity.

In more gender-related news, the Girl Scouts of America advised against children hugging relatives. Such activity, reported The Washington Post, “could muddy the waters when it comes to the notion of consent later in life.” Meantime, the Boy Scouts of America accepted girls into their ranks to “shape the next generation of leaders.” And the singer Pink is raising her daughter gender-neutral. No wonder kids are confused today.

Poor Johnny and Jane.

Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian at Cambridgeport School, refused to accept a gift of Dr. Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump — a gesture recognizing “National Read a Book Day.” The Seuss illustrations are “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes,” she wrote in a letter to Trump. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered Soeiro posed for a picture in 2015 wearing a Seuss outfit and holding a copy of Green Eggs and Ham book. Only in Cambridge. Well, maybe not …

In a letter to parents, the Boyden Elementary School, in Walpole, bizarrely asserted that its annual Halloween costume parade “is not inclusive of all the students and it is our goal each and every day to ensure all student’s individual differences are respected.” Instead, trading a parade for political correctness, the school laughably said that Halloween would be known as “black and orange” spirit day. Call it Banned in Boyden.

Not on my ocean view! Having faced a “very vicious and very well-funded lobbying organization” to protect Nantucket Sound for 17 years, said Bloomberg, the last gale warnings were issued for America’s largest proposed  (and now dead) offshore wind project, known as “Cape Wind.” It’s officially kaput. Some wonder if Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth will now close, as scheduled, in 2019. Power down, green protesters!

Scandals ran down Beacon Hill. Former Democrat state Sen. Brian Joyce was indicted in a sweeping federal corruption case. i And Democrat Stan Rosenberg stepped down as state Senate president amid an investigation of sexual-assault allegations against his civil-law husband, Bryon Hefner — while he conducted state business. Rosenberg said the Senate has a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual harassment.

Charlie Baker is running for Comedian-in-Chief of the Commonwealth. When the popular incumbent announced his re-election, a running joke circulated within the GOP:  “For which party?” Confirming his unassailable allegiance to progressivism instead of conservativism, the governor signed bills mandating free birth control and bilingual education.

Always in character, thin-skinned progressive U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren got her feathers ruffled with faux-outrage, once again. She said President Donald Trump used a “racial slur” during a White House celebration of Native Americans when he referred to her as “Pocahontas.” Funny, did she consider the 1995 eponymous movie to be a slur, too? Millions didn’t. The Disney animation grossed over $141 million during its theatrical release in the United States.

Among the initially named visiting fellows at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics for the 2017-2018 school year were two improbable scholars:  former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and former U.S. Army intelligence-analyst-turned-traitor Chelsea Manning. Harvard students are falling behind … Fordham students. Two students were kicked out of a coffee shop at Fordham University for violating a “safe space” with their “Make America Great Again” hats.

Shootings were up 18 percent in Boston. There was no evidence, nonetheless, that those weapons were modified with “bump stocks.” But bump stocks were outlawed in Massachusetts as a threat to society.

Fifty years after The Summer of Love, take the flowers out of your hair but be sure to put some LSD in your head. People looking to get an “extra edge at work are turning to [the] illegal drug to boost their focus and creativity,” reported fox25boston.com. They are micro-dosing, which involves taking small amounts of the substance about twice a week. Says computational neuroscientist Selen Atasoy, “It’s really like jazz improvisation, what LSD does to your brain.” Will it block progressive impulses in 5/4 time?

Psychedelic meet-up groups are trending in Portland, Ore.; San Francisco, and New York. Cutting-edge hipster millennials in Boston are likely meeting now.

Meanwhile, the opioid crisis rages on. However, for the first nine months of 2017, Massachusetts reported a 10 percent decline in deaths over the like period in 2016, likely a result of more immediate administration of Naloxone, which reverses the effects of overdose. Theirs is a dusky death.

Needham-based TripAdvisor, the travel and restaurant Web site (which includes reviews and public forums), got into trouble when it repeatedly removed posts warning of alleged rape, assault and other injuries at Mexican resorts. And, forbes.com reported, a writer in London tricked TripAdvisor by creating a “fictional eatery” that became the city’s top rated restaurant. Trust but verify.

Snowflakes actually coated the College of Holy Cross in May. A committee was formed to determine what to do about the fact that its founding president owned slaves, and what to do with a now-objectionable sports name: “Crusaders.” As National Review noted, “where there’s a will, there’s a microaggression.”

Not to be outdone, Pope Francis, a leader in thoughts and words, is considering a change in one word of “The Lord’s Prayer.” The pontiff, conversant in nine languages, is concerned about the word “temptation.” He believes that the phrasing in the Our Father prayer “is not a good translation.” Will this translate to stemming high rates of disaffiliation plaguing the Catholic Church?

Next year, should it be tempted to arrive, marks the 45th commemoration of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. Since then, it is estimated that over 58 million abortions have taken place in America. As a stark reminder, the only gravestone on the premises of the chapel at Holy Trinity Church in Harwich reads: “In memory of The Unborn – Denied the Precious Right to Life (1973-   ).” Theirs was a despicable death.

James P. Freeman, a former banker, is a New England-based writer and former columnist with The Cape Cod Times. His work has also appeared in The Providence Journal, newenglanddiary.com and nationalreview.com

Year-end hello from the country

Season's greetings from Endolane Farm, in Little Compton, R.I.

-- Picture by Lydia Whitcomb; house by Kevin Vendituoli

Quiet interior

"The Quilter's Daughter, 2012-14'' (oil on linen), by Christopher W. Benson, in the show "Pictures & Windows: The Paintings of Christopher W. Benson from 1975 to 2017,'' at the Newport Art Museum, through Dec. 31. The museum says his scenes are like a less dramatic version of Norman Rockwell's works, showing snapshots of American life that might help show what we have in common in a deeply divided nation.

Llewellyn King: With his attacks on 'mainstream media,' which he, too, depends on, Trump pumps up dictators

Mr. President, one of the things you should know, as your first tumultuous year in office draws to its close, is that the United States has the best media in the world. Only United Kingdom media rivals it.

It is a bulwark of the American Dream, of American exceptionalism.

Its role as the carrier of information in the United States is as important as it is outside the nation.

That is why your situation room in the White House has so many news feeds. Often, despite the huge apparatus of government information gathering, it is reporters who tell it like it is first and give you actionable information.

It is because of the media that we know what is going on in Myanmar, Syria, Yemen and Zimbabwe -- even inside the royal family of Saudi Arabia.

I would have the temerity suggest that even you, despite your seemingly pathological hatred of all information that does not accord with your own views and personal interests, and your administration in times of crisis turn first to the media, and especially to outlets like The New York Times and CNN. In your heart of hearts, you know you are going to find out what is happening there, not on the political networks like Fox, One America News and Newsmax, and not through government’s cumbersome channels of information relay.

Mr. President, we are an irregular army of no-particular hue. We wear no uniform and are the antithesis of unity. We live in a world of miserable pay (the television stars are the exceptions), bad hours, stress, sometimes too much drink, and disrupted private lives. We write about everyone’s hurt but our own. But we love what we do and know when it matters; matters globally as much as domestically.

Dan Raviv, when he was with CBS, described his job his way, “I like to find out what’s going on and tell people.” Exactly.

For all of the academic talk about media and society, that is the job – finding out -- and it is a great and important job. That is why thousands of news people work through the night, or crawl out of bed at 3 a.m., or risk their lives in places like Iraq, Syria and Congo, and will be working on Christmas Day and every other holiday. That is why we eat bad food out of machines, fly in cramped aircraft and go without sleep.

So journalists do not mind personally if you denigrate us, call our work “fake” and impugn our integrity or have your agent, press secretary Sarah Sanders, do so.

But, Mr. President, we do mind and we should mind, and we should be in a state of incandescent rage with the way you are damaging the truth and hurting America at home and, especially, abroad. We do mind and should mind and keep minding when you put journalists’ lives at risk in distant and hostile places.

And we should mind, and you should mind, when you and Sanders give aid and comfort to criminal coddlers, dictators, kleptocratic governments and oppressive regimes.

This scum, these men and women who trash decency as the inherent right of power, now fear the scrutiny of media less. They dismiss the incriminating as “fake.” It happens in Ankara, Beijing, Budapest, Damascus, Moscow, Nairobi, Riyadh and many other places.

You have provided the world’s malfeasants with the great blanket rejoinder: fake.

Everything not laudatory to the abusers is fake and the messengers, the journalists, trade in untruth and should be treated accordingly -- as concoctors, fabricators, liars, spies and even traitors.

Mr. President, you have damaged the world’s safety valve and given huge comfort to the enemies of decency, openness and democracy.

You have armed the dictators with a pernicious weapon by undermining the freedom of the press to find out what is going on and publish it. You have spread the suffering of the politcal prisoner in distant jails and all who are suffering the brutality of oppression. Their hope is often only the faint light cast by inquiring media.

A great shame on you, Mr. President.

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

Frank Robinson: 'Senior Moments'/December greetings

"Senior Moments

(written in a retirement community)

Two friends talking to each other,

each one hardly hearing the other.

Such a wonderful democracy –

everyone is old.

For people with a lot of past

and very little future,

what counts is now.

Fragility and strength –

these crowds of people

who should have stayed in bed.

How strange,

after all these years,

not to have a home any more.

In this time of truth,

the only thing to do

is to lie.

“People change.’’

This is the lesson

that we have to learn again.

Too many singles trained to be doubles,

too many workers with nothing to do.

Commune, kibbutz,

New England village,

or resort hotel –

take your pick.

The fear is

I’ll feel too deeply

or I won’t feel deeply enough.

Marriage in old age –

each one waiting for the other

to lose his mind.

“I can remember

a thousand thousand words,

but not the name of my husband.’’

“This is such a funny joke,

every time I tell it,

I laugh.’’

We’re so lucky to be here,

and yet we’d give anything

not to be.

Remembering and forgetting –

diseases of old age.

Each of us knows

how little time there is,

so you’d think we wouldn’t waste it.

At seventy-eight,

I’ve got my health, my hair, my wife –

I’m all set.

This is what it’s like here ---

one long schmooze,

followed by an even longer snooze.

Environmental Poem:

My hair retreats ever year,

like the ice in the Arctic.

If there is a paradise,

I promise to tell you by email

right away.

Canes and ski poles,

walkers and wheelchairs ---

an army on the move.''

-- By Frank Robinson, an Ithaca, N.Y.-based poet, art historian and former head of the art museums at Cornell University and the Rhode Island School of Design. He has written such year-end poems for years.

Holiday readings to you

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Providence Athenaeum.

-- Painting by Nancy Whitcomb

'Lost in the onslaught of parenthood'

OnJan. 20, 10, 2018,, ArtProv Gallery, in Providence, will host an artist talk featuring Jessica Burko. 

The gallery says: "In this intriguing talk, Jessica will discuss her series 'Quiet/Loud,'  currently on display at ArtProv Gallery. She’ll share her inspiration behind the works and how they reveal her attempt to balance the expected roles of modern womanhood with maintaining a sense of self. Her pieces, which are self-portraits in motion, visualize the contradiction between asserting an identity as an individual and being lost in the onslaught of parenthood. She’ll also describe her many-step process of creating the mixed-media works, and how it is imbued with both meditative and monotonous motion driven by her need to reconcile the disparity of suffering and love.''

'Mellowed by two centuries'

A remnant building of Brook Farm, a utopian community in the 1840s  in West Roxbury, Mass., closely associated with Transcendentalists, a group that included such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller and influenced  many writers and intellectuals through much of the 19th Century. It was centered in New England.

“Transcendentalism has been called the inevitable flowering of the Puritan spirit. But Puritanism does not necessarily bear blossoms, and the fruit thereof is often gnarled and bitter. In New England, however, the soil was conserved by a bedrock of character, mellowed by two centuries of cultivation, and prepared by Unitarianism. New England Federalism checked the flow of sap, fearful lest it feed flowers of Jacobin red. There was just time for a gorgeous show of blossom and a harvest of wine-red fruit between this late frost and the early autumn blight of the Civil War.’’

-- By Samuel Eliot Morrison, in The Oxford History of the American People.