The Great Marsh

Over the Great Marsh.

One of the most beautiful places in  New England is the Great Marsh, an area of marsh, mudflats, tidal rivers and barrier beaches extending from Cape Ann into New Hampshire. It’s an area of great and changeable beauty and a very rich ecosystem, which spawns much of the region's seafood and nurtures numerous other animal species.

Unrequited love

On the Snow

"We're all supposed to love the Earth
And thrill to nature's bold displays.
We're all supposed to be entranced
When nature sends us snowy days.

But I just tumbled on the snow
And gave my knee a nasty whack.
If I'm supposed to love the Earth,
The Earth should try to love me back.''

 -- Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Stairs to nowhere

Escher Series #3 (bird's eye walnut and quilted maple, one compartment), by Jay Rogers, in his show "Fantasy Architectures: Sculptural Boxes, at the Society of Arts + Crafts, Boston, through Jan. 6.

Mr.  Rogers has been making art for over 30 years, says the gallery. His current series is inspired by  M.C. Escher and Giovanni-Battista Piranesi. "Each sculpture differs in size, scope, and medium, but the one thing they seem to have in common is the puzzling nature of their construction. It's difficult to see where a piece begins or ends,'' with  ''strange optical illusions.''

Chris Powell: Conn. politicians avoid tough decisions about transport and most everything else

Metro-North train arriving in  the Noroton Heights section of Darien, Conn.

MANCHESTER, Conn.


Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy told a business group last week, is being brought low by its political culture of postponing tough choices. As a result, the governor said, the state now is without the revenue to maintain and improve its transportation system. Thus the governor suggested that the state hasn't raised taxes enough. He added that he is proudest of what he considers his toughest decision -- to increase funding of the state employee pension system.

Yes, state government has been avoiding tough choices for a long time but the governor himself may be the worst offender. For raising taxes is always the easy  ] choice and the Malloy administration's two record-breaking tax increases have only impoverished the state, feeding more spending and leading to more budget deficits.

Of course this habit hasn't been peculiar to Malloy. Elected governor in 1990 after promising to prevent a state income tax, Lowell P. Weicker Jr. quickly broke his promise upon realizing that preventing an income tax would require tougher choices -- confronting unionized state and municipal employees and restricting welfare benefits to reduce antisocial behavior.

It was the same with Gov. Jodi Rell, who proposed a huge tax increase in the name of solving all the problems of municipal education, as if those problems have anything to do with money. Even Democratic legislators let Rell's proposal fall flat.

The tough choice with state employee pensions isn't to fund them better but to phase them out completely -- not because they are so extravagant for most state employees but because state employee wage and insurance compensation by itself is more than competitive with private-sector compensation and because Connecticut's future governors and legislatures are never likely to have the political virtue to avoid diverting pension fund contributions to general purposes.

The tough choice with education isn't to spend more on it, as Malloy always has been inclined to do, but to stop operating it by social promotion, to act on the miserable student test scores showing that most high school graduates never master math and English because they don't have to master anything to graduate.

The tough choice with government employee labor policy is not to keep making the unions happy because they control the majority political party but to repeal the laws that prohibit controlling labor costs.

The tough choice with poverty policy is to stop doing what only perpetuates dependence.

Disparaging legislators who like to discuss transportation projects, the governor told the business group that it's "really fun to say we're going to spend more money." But the governor has had more such fun than anyone else during his seven years at the top of state government. He repeatedly has celebrated expensive inessentials like the bus highway between New Britain and Hartford and the commuter railroad between New Haven and Springfield and every week he produces excited announcements of state funding for goodies all around the state as if state government isn't running a huge deficit again and as if the governor himself isn't simultaneously warning of financial disaster.

The governor is entitled to his opinion of his proudest moment, but improving the security of government employee pensions may not win him much admiration from most state residents, who get no closer to pensions than the taxes they pay so that government employees can have them.


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

 

Negin Owliaei: Proposed law would let employers take the tips of waitstaff

Via OtherWords.org

Thea Bryan is a single mother putting herself through graduate school. She spends her days at an unpaid internship for her social work program. At nights, she bartends for tips.

Sometimes, the pay is lucrative. But around October, her work — and money — started to lag. “When business is slow, as it has been for me lately, I don’t get paid. The managers get paid, the kitchen staff gets paid, the dishwasher gets paid. I don’t,” Bryan said.

The Department of Labor could make things much worse for Bryan. Under a proposed new rule, she might have to hand her tips over to her bosses.

The new rule would let minimum wage employers take over the tips that customers leave for their servers. That’s right: If you serve, your boss would get your tips.

Bryan shared her story at a press briefing put on by Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United on Dec.  12. “Why is there such an effort to keep people from making decent wages?” Bryan asked. “First they don’t want to pay an decent hourly wage if you get tips. Now they want to take your tips if you make a decent hourly wage!”

The National Restaurant Association, also known as “the other NRA,” frames the proposed rule as a way to allow for tip pooling, to end pay disparities between the front and back of the house.

But ROC United and other groups point out that there’s no provision to ensure that tips stay in the hands of workers and not their bosses.

In fact, the language in proposal suggests that employers could allocate tips to make capital improvements or lower menu prices — or they could just pocket the tips themselves.

That transfer of money from workers up to their bosses is no small change. If the rule is enacted, the Economic Policy Institute says that employers would take $5.8 billion in tips from workers, an estimate they call conservative.

The restaurant industry is already rife with wage theft.

Employers of tipped workers are among the worst offenders in minimum wage violations, especially due to the sub-minimum tipped wage. Employers can pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour as long as their tips bring them up to the full minimum wage.

But enforcement is lax. Bryan says she’s gone two weeks without getting paid a minimum wage, and hasn’t been able to get her employer to make up the difference.

Some employers already steal tips, as ROC United co-director Saru Jayaraman pointed out. ROC United has surveyed nearly 10,000 restaurant workers, Jayaraman said, and one in five reported that employers have taken a portion of their tips, even though that’s currently not legal.

The Department of Labor is already feeling the pressure. Jayaraman said tens of thousands of people submitted comments against the rule in the first three days alone.

The battle over tips is only adding to Bryan’s stress over wages. “My son is 11 years old,” she said. “I would like to know how much money I will be making any given month so I can enroll him in after school activities and maybe take him to the movies every once in a while, or pay my rent.”

That’s why Bryan’s not limiting her advocacy to the fight over owning tips. She says she’d like to see all people in the service industry get a livable minimum wage, just like any other worker would expect. “I’m a restaurant professional,” she declared, “and I deserve a professional wage.”

Negin Owliaei is a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies. She co-edits Inequality.org, where an earlier version of this op-ed appeared.

Cape mansion and gorgeous gardens now a museum

Highfield Hall, in Falmouth, Mass.

An electic art gallery/museum in an old summer mansion, and its gorgeous grounds, in Falmouth on Cape Cod are well worth visiting. It’s Highfield Hall & Gardens, built by the Beebe family, whose fortune was started by James Madison Beebe (1809-1875), an early dry-goods and department-store mogul in Boston. (He helped found  the late, great Jordan Marsh,  for many years Boston’s biggest department store.)

In the  ‘60s, it looked for a time as if the house, gardens and woods around the mansion would be developed, but local citizens banded together to save them.

Interestingly for a former summer place on the Cape, it’s not on the ocean. But when the two Beebe houses  -- Highfield and Tanglewood (the latter was torn down in ’77) were built on the property, the structures, on a hill, had views of Buzzards Bay because there many fewer trees around the 1,000-acre property in the late 19th Century. Indeed, much of the Falmouth area then was open ground for crops and for pasturage for cows and sheep.

New Year's apparition

"I saw the New Year coming.

He seemed ancient, tired, and blue

As if he knew so many things

He wished were not so true.

Then as he came nearer,

I saw what everyone knows.

He really is a young man

Wearing an old man's clothes.''

-- The Rev. Roscoe E. Trueblood

How Wall Street ravaged Main Street and democracy and spawned cynical demagogues like Trump

Wall Street, with the flag-bedecked New York Stock Exchange.

Read these books on how a corrupt and hyper-privileged Wall Street ravaged Main Street and undermined democracy. Hit this link.

Llewellyn King: The other side of Christmas; where to get the workers, or will we need them? dog poems

-- Photo by J.M. Suarez

Deck the halls! It’s Christmas and I love the warmth of it: Strangers embracing and goodwill flowing; gorgeous music, particularly the English and German carols; the feasting, and the wondrous excitement of it all. It’s every year’s exuberant moment.

But it isn’t for everyone.

The shut-in and the shut-out have an especially hard time as the rest of us cavort in funny hats, red vests, hugging, laughing, eating (too much) and drinking (a bit too much). My mother, who was a teetotaler all year long, would drink two small glasses of sweet sherry and declare that God would forgive her because it was Christmas.

But it’s also a time when those who are hurting hurt more. When those who are lonely feel their isolation more keenly. And when those who are bedridden feel the bondage of the blankets more acutely.

For those incarcerated at Christmas, the bars press in. For those who have no home, the sidewalks are hard and the shelters are terrible. Homelessness is the workhouse and sleeping in the streets is the debtors’ prison of the 21st Century.

There are no mangers in urban America.

Spare a thought among the jollity and mirth for those who are sick, those who care for the sick, those who are in prison, and those who will lay down their heads on a concrete couch maybe after a dinner handed out by a charity. They weren’t made for that.

Dog Poems That Warm The Heart

If you’re getting a puppy for Christmas, or if you have a dog, it’s time you read the four greatest poems ever written, to my knowledge, about dogs. They are the work of Rudyard Kipling.

My wife, Linda Gasparello, and I routinely send them to friends who have lost a dog or, even more sadly, have had to put one down.

I can’t resist the first two lines of “His Apologies”:

Master, this is Thy Servant. He is rising eight weeks old.
He is mainly Head and Tummy. His legs are uncontrolled.

Or this verse from “The Power of the Dog”:

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

After Tax Cuts, Where to Get the Workers?

If the tax cuts produce more jobs, as President Trump promises, there will be a labor shortage of gargantuan proportions.

Talking to an executive from a trucking company, I learn that his company is desperate for drivers. Nationwide, there are more than 30,000 vacancies for drivers in a workforce of 3.5 million. Turnover is 90 percent, as drivers seek better jobs and easier work.

A driver makes about $41,000 a year— a wage that hasn’t kept up with living costs. In the glory days, before trucking was deregulated in 1980, a driver made good money and was firmly part of the middle class.

Likewise, the contracting industry is hampered by a lack of workers. An architect in a large practice tells me they can’t get contractors for new projects because the contractors can’t get qualified help.

Next step: Welcome back the undocumented? Considering the severity of the labor shortage, one wonders how soon automated trucks will hit the streets. My friend in the trucking industry says his company is watching Tesla with keen interest and is in touch with Tesla management.

At Harvard, I sit in on a Boston Global Forum session whose participants are talking about massive job displacement by artificial intelligence. Optimists tell you that all past automation has led to an abundance of new jobs. But, avers a friend in industry, in the past, automation produced new products, and AI looks like it will just make old ones better. And there’s the rub.

The Things They Say

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked me for my autograph.”

—   Shirley Temple Black

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com), based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., is a veteran publisher, essayist and international business consultant who is also executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS,

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.