The train station may be a better bet

The Wilkinson Mill, one of  the beautiful old factory buildings in Pawtucket.

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

There’s something  very desperate and  sad about Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien’s idea that the Rhode Island General Assembly should consider letting the old mill town finance the entire public part of a Pawtucket Red Sox (aka PawSox) new-stadium  financing deal. The bonds to be sold would supposedly be paid off by letting the city use all the state sales and income tax revenue to be generated by the ballpark for that purpose.

Thus the city would glued to the fortunes of one company, whose revenues in coming decades are impossible to predict with any precision. (Will Minor League baseball be popular in 10 years?) Of course, whatever such a financing agreement says, if the tax revenue doesn’t meet expectations and so Pawtucket can’t cover the debt, the state would have to come in to try to save the city.

I wish that Pawtucket officials would spend more time trying to find ways to leverage for economic  development the coming Pawtucket/Central Falls train station, which will link the old mill city more closely with booming Greater Boston, and less time obsessing about the PawSox as if it’s the only game (so to speak) in town. Better to lure and/or keep dozens of small companies than rely upon one bigger one with very rich out-of-state owners who can easily move their operations.

Llewellyn King: In search of the real Winston Churchill

Why do so many American devotees of Winston Churchill work so hard to play down his drinking? That is a question that has interested me for some time.

One man I know — who owns several of Churchill’s paintings — avers that Churchill didn’t drink much, just sipped frugally on an ever-present glass. He is one of a line of Churchill admirers who don’t want to think that Churchill drank incessantly. But the evidence is there, from the writer Nicholas Monsarrat to his hostess Eleanor Roosevelt.

The revisionists want him sober through the war years. I doubt that he was falling-down drunk, but his consumption of alcohol (especially Scotch and Champagne, which he started on at breakfast) was awesome — as was everything else he touched.

I raise this because, for me, the furniture of the holidays includes a movie. So I went to see Darkest Hour, the biographical story of the first days of Churchill’s premiership, in May 1940.  That spring, Germany had invaded Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France. The British army and allies — 338,000 troops — were trapped on the French coast at Dunkirk.

The movie is remarkable in fidelity, touching on all the high points from Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax’s hope of making peace with Hitler, through the dubious offices of Mussolini, to the last cautious but patriotic endeavors of the deposed prime minister, Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain is treated as he was: a man up against history forced to bargain with Hitler, while a weak Britain rearmed. The real appeaser was Halifax, who later was sent to Washington, where he endeavored to undermine Churchill. The movie does justice to the booze, too.

I was especially glad to see the movie recognized the genius and courage of the evacuation of the army at Dunkirk by an armada of many hundreds of small boats, some just barely seaworthy. The enormousness of the operation was somehow missed in the movie Dunkirk, which came out earlier in the year.

Joe Wright’s movie jams in many little episodes loved by the Churchill cognoscenti, such as Churchill’s habit of working from bed with terrified dictationists on hand and, of course, always with a glass in reach; his habit of walking around naked, no matter who was there; and his funny encounter with Clement Atlee, the Labor Party leader {and later prime minister}, when Churchill was in the toilet.

I both salute Gary Oldman’s bravura performance and question his interpretation of Churchill as a somewhat doddery, old, old man. He was just 65 and according to his newspaper publisher friends, most notably Brendan Bracken and Lord Beaverbrook, was at his peak.

On YouTube, you can find film of Churchill addressing Congress in April 1943. I submit that he is more robust and spry than in the performance that Oldham gives, even if the great man — maybe the greatest Englishman — had already had a few.

In Praise of Short Books That Do the Job

Many of my friends write books — and I admire them their industry — but not all.

One very literate journalist, when I asked her why she hadn’t tried her hand at authorship, came back with, “You wouldn’t want to lock me up in a room with all those words, would you?” Quite so.

Nonetheless, books are becoming important to journalists in a way they weren’t earlier. There being no magazines left in which large arguments can be advanced, books are the answer.

Gone are the days in which a writer like Stewart Alsop could argue the Vietnam War in 7,000 words in The Saturday Evening Post. If you want to write something weighty these days, write a book.

But publishers insist on a certain number of pages. The result is many books are too long, padded.

I’m grateful to two friends who’ve written short books that make their point. There is Tim McCune’s Smoke Over Bagram, a revealing look at the contractor’s life in the surreal world of Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, and Kevin d’Arcy’s Adventures in the Gardens of Democracy.

McCune’s can be found on Amazon as a virtual book. D’Arcy’s book, which is about British journalism and the decline of representative democracy, is published by a small British house, Rajah.

I thank them for saying what they have say without padding. No pea of an idea in  a haystack of words for either. So I devoured both books with joy and without giving over days of my time.

The Things They Say

“Nothing corrupts a politician as much as friendship. Good politicians don’t bribe; they make us like them.” — Matthew Parris, journalist and former Conservative member of the British House of Commons.

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

Meeting at Miramax

"Grabby, Gropey, Rapey'' (detail)  (ink and watercolor on calfskin vellum), by Sharon Lacey, in her show "Lurking in Fleshy Coverings,'' at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Jan. 3-Jan. 28.

She says her paintings are inspired by medieval manuscript illuminations of "soul battles." 

'More mellow' later in the day

"The weather-beaten granite has an individuality which belongs to this corner of the land and marks it as a stone fit for our builder’s purposes. Under every sort of weather – and we have them all in Connecticut – it throws back the light in a warm and friendly glow. Its texture is as rough as homespun, its strength as rugged as the pioneer’s; yet in the late afternoon, its surface seems to glow softer and more mellow, under the slanting rays of the sun, much as a face that is usually a little stern and rigid may melt into more genial lines under the influence of friendship. The character of New England is stamped upon this stone.’’

-- Robert Dudley French

The region's restaurant

One of the most charming and useful features of New England is the diner, which was invented in the region. This one is in Somerville, Mass.

Protectionism bad for New England lobstermen

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

Beware of protectionism, especially involving close and traditionally friendly nations. Here’s a little  example of what can happen when the United States excludes itself from international trade deals.

The New England lobster industry (which mostly means Maine) is understandably worried about the fact that Canada, whose Maritime Provinces are very big lobster exporters, and the European Union have agreed to end E.U. tariffs on Canadian lobster imports. North American lobsters are very popular, if expensive, food in Europe. The E.U. is the world’s biggest seafood importer.

The lobster deal is part of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Implementation Act (CETA). This is the sort of agreement that recalls the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free-trade agreement between the E.U. and the U.S. Such a pact would strengthen economies on both sides of the Atlantic and make the West better able to confront the economic and security challenges posed by the aggressive, expansionist dictatorships of Russia and China.  And, after all, we share basic political, social and economic values with Europe. We’re stronger together. But the Trump administration’s instincts, here and elsewhere, are protectionist, even when it comes to our closest allies, whom we need as much as they need us in a dangerous world.

The TTIP would, of course, be particularly beneficial to New England.

Don Pesci: In New England politics, 'moderate Republican'' is a term of art

An 1874 cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly.

VERNON, CONN.

A historical repetition, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard reminds us, is not possible, because it is not possible to recreate historically the precise conditions that occasioned the event we wish to replicate. Karl Marx, a poor economist but a passable social critic, put it this way: “History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce.”  

The shadow of a not too amusing farce hovers over a recent Hartford Courant story.

The central premise of the report is this: Charlie Barker of Massachusetts is a successful Republican governor, his approval rating an astonishing 71 percent. Baker is the usual New England moderate Republican, one who is conservative on fiscal issues but liberal on social issues. If only Connecticut were able to field a Charlie Baker-like gubernatorial candidate in the upcoming 2018 race, the GOP might be able to sweep the boards and restore to the gubernatorial office – held for two terms by Dannel Malloy, a progressive governor with an appalling approval rating of 29 percent, the lowest in the nation -- a “moderate” governor such as John Rowland, Jodi Rell or Lowell Weicker.

Here is the paragraph upon which the proposition precariously rests: “In both style and substance, Baker evokes the New England moderate, a breed that traces its lineage from Leverett Saltonstall and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. to John Chafee and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. On the federal level, this type of politico has gone largely extinct in Connecticut following losses by former U.S. Reps. Nancy Johnson and Chris Shays. Since 2008, the state has only sent Democrats to Washington.”

Just to begin with, U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker was by no means a moderate Republican. His eccentric political posture is signaled very clearly in the boastful title to his own autobiography, Maverick. Before Weicker had been dethroned by former state Atty. Gen. Joe Lieberman, his liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating was higher than that of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, who was neither a Republican nor a moderate. Indeed, during Weicker’s long reign as a U.S. senator, there were many Republicans in Connecticut who seriously doubted that Weicker was a Republican at all.

As governor, Weicker operated as a fiscal progressive, and he strained to the breaking point the compromised affections of fiscally moderate Republicans and Democrats by instituting an income tax. Governors Ella Grasso and Bill O’Neill, both moderate Democrats, were unalterably opposed to an income tax – for the soundest of reasons.  They supposed, correctly as it happened, that an income tax would spare legislators in the General Assembly the ordeal of a) reducing spending, and b) disappointing unionized state workers, Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. Following the imposition of an income tax, state spending tripled within the space of three succeeding governors. One can easily imagine Grasso snarling in that portion of Heaven reserved for moderate Democrat Connecticut governors.

Other Republicans mentioned in the paragraph – Governors Rowland and Rell and U.S. House members Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays -- were, as advertised, fiscal conservatives and social moderates. But, as the story notes, a doom hung over them, and they were at last displaced by fiscally progressive, socially progressive Democrats.

So then, here is the lesson that ought to be learned by people in Connecticut, both Democrat and Republican, who do not wish to repeat the mistakes of recent history: 1) “moderate” is a term of art deployed by artful politicians who are, in truth, immoderate, and 2) the division between fiscal and social issues is largely imaginary.

Are the urban poor in Connecticut’s larger cities deprived because of economic or social disruption, and which, in this sad turn of events, is the chicken and which the egg? Isn’t it obvious that there are two economies in the state, one urban and one suburban? And there are two social models in the state as well, one urban and one suburban.

But the poor themselves are indivisible; there is not one part of a poor man that is economic and another part that is social.  The traditional family in cities as we know it – dad, mom, two and a half children – has been entirely uprooted and destroyed, mostly owing to programs that finance the production and spread of poverty and social disruption.  And the consequent pathologies associated with these policies – fatherless families, a high incident of crime, crippling economic dependence on government for the necessities of life, poor educational possibilities – are everywhere apparent for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The politician who claims to be fiscally conservative but socially liberal is a prisoner of a false dichotomy – a willing prisoner, a man or a woman who simply refuses to confront the truth that lies, as George Orwell says, right in front of his nose.

And that is why the fiscally conservative-socially liberal politician has been vanishing from our politics. He will be replaced by demagogues who can lie in such a way that even the stones will believe them.

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

Into tears

"Dissolve'' (oil on linen), by Louise Bourne, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.

'A lineup of isobars'

"It’s snowing again.

All day, reruns of the blizzard of ’78

newscasters vying for bragging rights

how it was to go hungry

after they’d thumped the vending machines empty

the weatherman clomping

four miles on snowshoes

to get to his mike

so he could explain

how three lows

could collide to create

a lineup of isobars

footage of state troopers

peering into the caked

windows of cars...''

-- From "New Hampshire, February 7, 2003,'' by Maxine Kumin

'Fundamental structures'

"Cairn in Snow,'' by Caspar David Friedrich.

“After the winds and storms of autumn have lashed the trees to penitence, there sometimes comes a large-flaked and otherwise inconsequential snow which gives to the trees and their landscape the sequel gift of innocence. It was in such a landscape, on the morning of such a fall, that we began having our thoughts about the end of one year and the beginning of another. The snow seemed helpful, in that it blotted out the bright surface shapes of specific recollection in favor of the more enduring and powerfully molded impressions of fundamental structures and meanings.’’ 

--The late Alan H. Olmstead, a Connecticut essayist and editor, from his book In Praise of Seasons.

Stoned while texting while driving

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

Rhode Island “Medical marijuana’’ dispensers have taken in a total of some $27 million in retail revenues so far in 2017, reports The Providence Journal (“Regulators worried by glut of cultivation,’’ Dec. 20).  How many of the customers are actual, sincere patients seeking relief from severe or at least chronic pain and how many are just gaming the system for the simple pleasure of getting stoned is unknowable. In any case, it’s not particularly comforting to know that some of those many motorists driving erratically as they text may also be stoned. It can only get worse; the state hasn’t shown that it can regulate this booming new drug industry.

Susan Sandler Brennan: The rotary that leads to career success

The library of Bentley University, in Waltham, Mass.

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

Working in college career services, I see companies recognizing that the path from college to career has shifted from a one-way to a two-way street where employers and students can connect. Truth be told, it’s more of a rotary—with many exits—because it takes a committed community to successfully transition students to their first jobs and beyond. The career-development ecosystem includes not only employers, but also career services, peers, faculty members and alumni. Each “exit” connects students to important voices and learning opportunities.

Part of what will give students the confidence to explore these exits is learning how to build trust with the people who will guide them on their path. It’s my job in career services at Bentley University to present opportunities to students, starting from their first year on campus, that open doors to these career relationships. Here’s how we help students build a career community:

Student career colleagues

Juniors and seniors who are motivated, successful and well-rounded can be positive influences on their peers. Acting as "career colleagues," these juniors and seniors provide a comfortable and welcoming environment for new Bentley students to engage with Career Services in drop-in hours and in the classroom. Students trust their peers because they have more common experiences and believe they will give good advice, since they’ve recently been through the same process. And with this model, professional staff members are able to have more in-depth transformational advising appointments as students advance in their major. During her sophomore year, Caroline Gervais of the Class of 2019, used career colleagues for résumé review and advice about internship searches. She found that talking with her peers about their past career experiences and how they handled situations similar to her own to be incredibly valuable.

Faculty

Higher education institutions have to build curriculum around market demand and faculty need to be aware of the skills that employers are demanding. Bentley’s own market research shows companies want multifaceted employees who have the essential hard and technical skills, but they want those coupled with traditional soft skills like communication and collaboration. It’s no longer enough for a data analytics expert to know the numbers. They also have to be able to communicate the story those numbers tell. Our faculty focus on blending business with the liberal arts to prepare students. For example, we offer a liberal studies major—which allows business majors to add a second major with a liberal arts concentration. Students might combine a major in economics and finance with a liberal arts major in earth environment and global sustainability, leaving them well prepared to develop a business plan for a growing solar power company. Other institutions are following suit.

Scott Latham, vice provost for innovation and workforce development at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, made this point during a recent event hosted by Bentley about the future of work: “Having discussions where you have faculty and industry in the room is incredibly important … If that doesn’t happen and you don’t have buy-in [from faculty], then you’re not going to be able to align your workforce needs with our curriculum.”

Employers

Open and ongoing communication with recruiters is a key part of what we do in career services. To prepare our students for the workforce, we need to stay on top of market demand and the kinds of skills employers want. Internships that have purpose—with opportunities to contribute to a project and be taken seriously—are good ways to connect students and employers. I also see more recruiters leveraging their best storytellers (employees or student interns) to come to our career fairs and share what it’s really like to work there: culture, growth and what they will be doing day to day. When Gervais heard about a 2018 summer merchandising internship opportunity at TJX, she talked to recruiters at a career fair and applied that same day. She also reached out to two Bentley students who had completed a TJX internship; they counseled her throughout the interview process.

Alumni

Many companies are sending alumni back to their respective campuses to recruit students. In addition to the obvious—instant commonality on each side—this greatly expands an employer’s outreach. Bentley alumni also serve as mentors to our students; examples include participation in the classroom through corporate partnerships, informational interviews as part of our career development seminar, or hosting job shadows, site visits and internships. Prior to applying for the TJX internship, Gervais attended a networking night at Bentley,where she was able to discuss merchandising career opportunities with alumni who work at the company. She was particularly interested in their insights on how their Bentley experience helped them prepare for the positions they now hold, as well as post-internship opportunities in the company’s merchandising track. Now that Gervais has secured the position with TJX, she has found several other alumni connections and mentors who she can refer to for guidance and advice in the future.

What’s important to note about the rotary is that while it presents opportunity at each exit, many students will experience a roadblock if they don’t build the confidence to take new routes that are outside their comfort zone. As educators, mentors and employers, it’s up to us to serve as a personalized GPS system that will help guide them along their journey.

Author and clinical psychologist Meg Jay talks about the fact that successful people have often had to overcome challenges and adversity, which in turn helps build resilience. This demonstrates that we have the power to prepare students for lifelong success regardless of their circumstances. Resilience is also important in the context of the job market. Millennials, for example, change jobs every few years. As rapid technological change affects all generations, we will need the resilience to prove our value and work alongside technology.

When my son first learned how to drive, he told me that when he got to a rotary, he put the music on full blast and pretended he was in the Gladiator movie. His philosophy: “I’m going in and I’m going to get around this thing.” We need to help students build their confidence and build a supportive community so they know they can deal with difficult choices and situations. They learn how to become resilient. They go boldly into the rotary.

Susan Sandler Brennan is associate vice president for university career services at Bentley University. She is a co-chair of NEBHE’s Commission on Higher Education & Employability.

Vessel traffic screwing up cod communication

Atlantic cod.

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists studying sounds made by Atlantic cod and haddock at spawning sites in the Gulf of Maine have found that vessel traffic noise is reducing the distance over which these animals can communicate with each other. As a result, daily behavior, feeding, mating and socializing during critical biological periods for these commercially and ecologically important fish may be altered, according to a study recently published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Three sites in Massachusetts Bay, two inside the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) and one inshore south of Cape Ann, were monitored for three months by researchers at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and at the sanctuary offices in Scituate, Mass. Vocalizations, such as Atlantic cod grunts and haddock knocks, were recorded by bottom-mounted instruments at each site during spawning in winter and spring.

“We looked at the hourly variation in ambient sound pressure levels and then estimated effective vocalization ranges at all three sites known to support spawning activity for Gulf of Maine cod and haddock stocks,” said Jenni Stanley, a marine research scientist in the passive acoustics group at the NEFSC and SBNMS and lead author of the study. “Both fluctuated dramatically during the study. The sound levels appear to be largely driven by large-vessel activity, and we found a signification positive correlation with the number of automatic identification system (AIS) tracked vessels at two of the three sites.”

AIS is an automatic tracking system, used on ships and by vessel-traffic services. It provides information on a vessel, such as its unique identification number, position, course, and speed, which can be displayed on a shipboard radar or electronic chart display.

Ambient sounds — those in the surrounding environment — include animals vocalizing, physical sounds such as wind and water movement or geological activity, and human-produced sound from ships and marine construction. Many marine animals use ambient sound to navigate, to choose where to settle, or to modify their daily behaviors including breeding, feeding, and socializing.

Cod grunts were present for 100 percent of the spring days and 83 percent of the winter days. Haddock knocks were present for 62 percent of the winter days within the three-month sampling period. However, ambient sound levels differed widely at the three sites, both on an hourly and daily time scale. The Atlantic cod winter spawning site, nearest the Boston shipping lanes, had the highest sound levels, while the Atlantic cod spring spawning site inshore south of Gloucester, Mass., had the lowest. Sound levels in the haddock winter spawning site, further offshore in the sanctuary, were in the middle of the range detected in the study.

Study data were also used to calculate the estimated distance a fish vocalization would be heard at each of the spawning sites. The effective radius ranged widely, from roughly 4 to 70 feet, and was largely dependent on the number of tracked vessels within a 10-nautical-mile radius of the recording sites.

Lower-level, chronic exposure to increased ambient sound from human activities is one of the most widespread, yet poorly understood, factors that could be changing fish behavior, according to researchers. If they can’t hear as well as they need to, then sound signals from other fish can be lost, compromised, or misinterpreted in ways that can cause a change in behavior. Since Atlantic cod, for example, vocalize to attract mates and listen for predators, not hearing those signals could potentially reduce reproductive success and survival.

“Anthropogenic sound in certain ocean regions has increased considerably in recent decades due to various human activities such as global shipping, construction, sonar, and recreational boating,” Stanley said. “As ocean sound increases, so does the concern for its effects on populations of acoustic signalers, which range from invertebrates to marine mammals. We don’t know if or to what extent specific species can adapt or adjust their acoustic signals to compete in this environment.”

James P. Freeman: A war on Christmas started in Boston and continues there

"The Examination and Tryal {Trial} of Father Christmas (1686).''

Vice President Mike Pence was probably just following the many examples of his superior. On the South Lawn at the White House, celebrating the passage of the Republican tax cut with President  Trump and many members of Congress, Pence proclaimed an outrage:  “Merry Christmas America.” Good Lord!

That happy holiday affirmation confirms (fulfilling another Donald Trump campaign promise) that Christmas is back at the White House. This comes after years of increasing dilution — denial? — of the holiday by a public intent on rapacious diversity at the expense of traditional customs. And inclusivity. Ponder this thought:  Had the Affordable Care Act of 2010 been signed into law around Christmas time, President Obama likely would have uttered, “Season’s Greetings America!” Still, Vice Presidents say the darnedest things. (Joe Biden, notwithstanding.)

But the war on Christmas began in Boston, surprisingly. Where it continues.

Christmas did not originate as a Christian holiday. The upper classes in ancient Rome celebrated Dec. 25 as the birthday of the sun god Mithra. The date fell in the middle of Saturnalia, the monthlong festival of the Unconquered Sun, dedicated to feasting, singing, and gift-giving. Mithraism spread throughout Europe; as did Christianity. In the 4th century, Pope Julius I chose Dec. 25 for the Feast of the Nativity, as a way of adopting and absorbing these pagan traditions.

Much later, some Protestants in Europe and Puritans in the New World were determined to purify religious belief and remove everything that was not directly commanded or described in the Bible. They believed that the Dec.  25 date was pagan in itself, a concoction of the Roman Catholic Church. (A footnote to history, the Bible doesn’t actually mention a specific date for Jesus’s birth.)

The early settlers in New England were particularly contemptuous of Christmas, nicknaming it “Foolstide.” On May 11, 1659, Christmas was banned by the General Court in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1630 in what would become Boston. As americanheritage.com explained, “This decree was passed more than a generation after the landing of the Pilgrims (1620), but it was merely a legal expression of the attitude they brought with them on the Mayflower.”

The law was repealed in 1681. But Christmas was still far from popular with the Puritans in New England. “Their dim view of what they regarded as pagan revelry or, alternatively, papist idolatry,” American Heritage writes, “was so pervasive that over a hundred years later Christmas in New England was a dull affair compared to the festive holiday of New York and points south.”

But anti-Christmas sentiments weren’t based purely on theological grounds. Around the time of the Revolutionary War, “Christmas celebrations were associated with the British monarchy and [still] shunned in Boston,” recalled New Boston Post. As late as 1850, New England schools and shops were open on Christmas Day. Over time, there was a greater cultural acceptance and recognition of the day as Puritanism faded. To help settle the matter, President Ulysses S. Grant formally declared Christmas a federal holiday in 1870. But not much was settled.

Flash forward …

Today, christianity.com says, “Our secularized society frantically chases the celebration but isn’t too keen on preserving the source.” It lamented five years ago that “in polite company it is no longer proper to greet with ‘Merry Christmas’''. Those feelings were articulated, if not reinforced, years before, by affectations like “Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Holidays.” All in the name of inclusiveness.

Who can forget Boston’s contribution to inclusiveness in 2005 B.T.? (Before Trump.)

The city’s Department of Parks and Recreation in November of that year officially renamed the giant spruce on Boston Common (an annual gift from Nova Scotia) a “Holiday Tree” instead of a Christmas Tree. That move, noted The Harvard Crimson, “sparked controversy over the role of religion in municipal holiday celebrations.” A new Puritanism, perhaps?

Jeff Jacoby, columnist for The Boston Globe and self-described practicing Jew, responded. “And so it begins again — the annual effort to neuter Christmas,” he wrote, “to insist in the name of ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘sensitivity’ that a Christian holiday celebrated by something like 90 percent of Americans not be called by its proper name or referred to in religious terms.” And Jacoby continued, “suppressing the language, symbols, or customs of Christians in a predominantly Christian society is not inclusive. It’s insulting.” Imagine the horror if Christians started referring to the Menorah as a “Holiday Candelabra.” Or worse, the renaming of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

But many did not take heed to Jacoby’s thoughtful piece. The latest assault on Christmas in 2017 A.T. (After Trump) comes wrapped in ribbons and bows from Boston University.

As reported by New Boston Post’s Evan Lips, the assistant director of B.U.’s Core Curriculum, Kyna Hamill, who is also a senior lecturer, argues that the Christmas carol “Jingle Bells” has “racist origins.” In her research paper “The Story I Must Tell:  Jingle Bells in the Minstrel Repertoire,” Hamill writes, “The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history.”

Cover the kids’ ears and delete the downloads. Hamill determines that the song’s origins “emerged from the economic needs of a perpetually unsuccessful man, the racial politics of antebellum Boston, the city’s climate, and the intertheatrical repertoire of commercial blackface performers moving between Boston and New York.” Halt the sleigh!

This song now joins other Christmas music featuring offensive gestures, suggestions, implications, as only deep-thinking progressives and/or arrested-development academics can muster:  “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (bullying, LGBT youth allegory); “Santa Baby” (seduction); and “White Christmas” (no explanation necessary).

Not to be forgotten, of course, is the now-scurrilously controversial “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Though written in 1944, as America was fighting a two-front battle liberating freedom across the globe during World War II, current interpretations hear sinister connotations (date-rape and slut-shaming). Last year, given these sensitive times, the song was rewritten by a millennial singer-songwriter couple — modern-day Puritans — to emphasize “affirmative consent.” 

But not all reason and hope are lost.

A surprising defender of the faith, if not the music, comes in the form of Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura Healey. Appearing last year on the WGBH radio show Greater Boston, she said “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” didn’t need a rewrite. “I don’t think that is necessary or accomplishes what we need to accomplish when it comes to the actual work we need to do,” she said. In fact, “I like the song … I like all these songs and I love this time of year when we’re hearing all these songs.” Healey’s statement is proof that a progressive can be right at least once in a lifetime.

As for readers of this column (and always-outraged social justice warriors in Boston): "Nollaig Shonadhuit! Mo’adim Lesimkha! Feliz Navidad! Merry Christmas!''

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

Runaway 'Strategic Planning'

Image from "Strategic Planning,'' by Chantal Zakari, at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Jan. 3-28. The gallery explains:

"Chantal Zakari creates a collection of flags that reference business nomenclature which is widely being used by academic administrations. The business term 'Strategic Plan' originated in the military but is now a staple of every university, liberal arts college, and even small art schools. It functions as a promise for positive change along with improvements for the institution's immediate future.

"The designs of these pennants, sailing burgees and medieval gonfalons are a study ... with visual elements from various historical periods. Collected on Internet clipart sites, the vernacular imagery points to a hollow vocabulary: SWOT for strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats; Competitive Landscape; Synergy; Global Imperative; Innovation Catalyst; Leadership Workshop… The accompanying artist's book for the exhibition is designed in the style of a product catalog. Here, the banners are seen within context, in college specific spaces such as faculty offices, dorm rooms, libraries and art studios.

"At a time when an increasing number of small colleges are under financial stress due to a shrinking student population caused by enormous increases in tuition, these art objects stand as reminders of the true ideals of higher education that are at risk.''

A Modernist collection at the Met and the madness behind it

Scofield Thayer.

This in from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

"Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection," at the Met Breuer, July 3-October 7, 2018

"This exhibition at The Met Breuer will present a selection of some 50 works from The Met's Scofield Thayer Collection—a collection that is best known for paintings by artists of the school of Paris, and a brilliant group of erotic and evocative watercolors, drawings, and prints by Gustave Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso, whose subjects, except for a handful, are nudes. The exhibition will be the first time these works have been shown together and will provide a focused look at this important collection; it also marks the centenary of the deaths of Klimt and Schiele.

"An aesthete and scion of a wealthy family {in Worcester, Mass.}, Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) was co-publisher and editor of the literary magazine the Dial from 1919 to 1926. In this avant-garde journal he introduced Americans to the writings of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust, among others. He frequently accompanied these writers' contributions with reproductions of modern art. Thayer assembled his large collection of some 600 works—mostly works on paper—with staggering speed in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna between 1921 and 1923. While he was a patient of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, he acquired a large group of watercolors and drawings by Schiele and Klimt, artists who at that time were unknown in America.''

Prepare to see the new film coming out soon called Stroke of Genius: Scofield Thayer, about Modernism and madness.  Hit this link for more information.

Llewellyn King: Declaring Christmas with my misfit pal in Zambia

"Bacchanalia,'' by Lovis Corinth.

Every year, I write about Christmas. But none of my Christmas columns has given readers more pleasure than this one.

You’ll find them in any outlandish place: the misfits. They are the people Arthur Miller wrote about in a wonderful short story,  which was later made into a less wonderful 1961 movie, The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe, who was for  few years Miller's wife, and Clark Gable.

The trouble with the movie was that Marilyn didn’t belong in it. The original story was simply about a group of men who didn’t make it in society and lived on life’s perimeter. They were classic misfits: men who had too many wives, bad love affairs or drinks; or disgraced themselves variously in their professions or families, and sometimes their countries.

You’ll find the misfits in faraway places, like Nome, Alaska or Key West, Fla. And you’ll find them scattered in the Australian Outback, or hanging on in some corner of Africa.

That gets me to my tale.

My misfits were in a corner of Africa in 1957, in Ndola, which proudly called itself the commercial capital of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

Ndola wasn’t a garden spot: No one picked up the atlas and said, “I want to settle in Ndola.”

In fact, Zambia wasn’t one of the parts of Africa that Europeans selected for settlement, unlike Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) or Kenya. People went to Zambia to mine the copper, to farm or to trade — most people, that is. The misfits just gravitated there, much as I did, looking for a congenial place to hang out.

And what a bunch of misfits we were!

There was Percy Powys, the scion of a good family in Wales. His misfortunes, he said, began when he took a Piccadilly whore home for dinner. His parents decided he needed to make a new life in Africa, and they shipped him off to Johannesburg.

Three wives, several executive jobs and oceans of gin later, Percy was working in construction. A tough, weathered man of uncertain age, he always reminded me of Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s description of one of the captains in Two Years Before the Mast, a man “made of steel and whalebone.”

Most misfits don’t have wives or girlfriends: The company of women is disturbing to them — a reminder of what they haven’t got or what they’ve had too much of.

In this sense, Geordie (which is a regional nickname for a person who comes from Northeast England) was different. He had a wife, although nobody saw much of her.

Geordie sometimes worked on the railways. He’d been a commando, a London bus driver, and a lot of other things. He had a seventh-grade education and the distinction of being the only one of the misfits who was blacklisted by the police in every bar in Ndola.

Geordie was a rough man with elegant taste: He loved Scotch, Italian opera and chess — and he could combine all three. He’d play a Verdi opera on his phonograph, play chess with me, and all the while consume prodigious quantities of tea laced with Scotch. The more he drank, the more he turned up the volume on his phonograph. Then he’d grab me by the shoulders and shake me, yelling, “Do you believe that a human being could compose something so beautiful?”

Sometimes, at the latter part of the tea party, Geordie would become so consumed with his need to communicate the beauty of Verdi that he’d go out into the street, grab an unsuspecting passerby’s wrist in a hammerlock, and drag the poor devil inside to listen to opera. It didn’t seem to be an effective way of spreading a love of opera, and often resulted in unpleasantness with the police.

Geordie was a serious misfit and one of the greatest men I’ve ever met.

There were others, like Peter Robertse, an Afrikaaner who spoke with an Oxford accent and had been a Spitfire pilot in The Battle of Britain. His country had expectations for him in the diplomatic corps. But after Peter removed his pants at a diplomatic reception in Rome, he started down the long road to Ndola, where he worked intermittently in construction. At night, when he’d drunk too much gin, he’d relive The Battle of Britain and would rage on until he passed out.

Then there was my friend George Parkes, whom this tale is really about. He was an Armenian, built like a steel spring with a tremendous joie de vivre — a joy which had gotten him through one marriage and innumerable jobs in many countries.

At 35-years-old, George was full of schemes — schemes that didn’t quite come off. One of his schemes was to import dried fish from Lake Tanganyika and transport it to Ndola, where he’d become a dried-fish millionaire. Another was to buy diamonds in what was then called the Belgian Congo and to transport them to Johannesburg, where they could be sold — all to be done without alerting the governments of the countries that lay in between.

I think it was just the romance of smuggling that appealed to George. At the time I knew him, he was selling cars.

As for me, I’d set out to make my fortune in journalism. Unaccountably, I found myself laying drains in Ndola.

One day, George came to me in a state of high excitement. He told me that he had sold a car and we had to celebrate with his commission.

But we wouldn’t celebrate in the raunchy dives of Ndola. We would drive to the next town, Kitwe, where we had heard tell there was a great French restaurant. And we would put on suits, abandoning the ubiquitous khaki which was our uniform.

What’s more, George had a girl for the occasion: a beautiful English rose named Jean. She had followed a man from London to Africa only to find out that he had a wife. So Jean was a sort of honorary misfit — and the only woman admitted to the company.

We bathed, we shaved, we took suits out of our closets that we hadn’t seen in a year. In a state of almost unbearable joy, we drove to Kitwe in a borrowed car.

All the way, George kept saying, “My father always said that Christmas is when you have five pounds in your pocket.” We had 15 pounds and it was Christmas, indeed.

We were much taken with the restaurant. We ate splendidly and drank French wines. We felt invincible, as one does on festive occasions.

And we were much taken with the idea of declaring Christmas whenever we wanted to. We tried to sing a carol, but we weren’t very successful. So we took a different tack: I recited verses from “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”

As our halcyon time wound down, a stranger stopped at our table and said, “I’ve never seen three people enjoying themselves so much. I’ve paid your bill. I had some luck myself today.” With that, he departed.

It was Christmas in spades. It was also July.

On Twitter: @llewellynking2

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

 

Ndola, Zambia.

Training New England's students for jobs in the Digital Age

Visualization of a portion of the routes on the Internet.

See this video from the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE.org) on education for students soon to enter the digital economy.

NEBHE says:

"NEBHE’s Dec. 4, 2017 Summit included a session on "Educating Workers for the Digital Economy." Companies are looking for qualified applicants who have 'digital' skills. The challenge for educators is to find ways to integrate the current digital skills needed into the curriculum while teaching students to be agile in adapting to ever-changing technologies.''

A visionary Koch heir

Maybe here's a large walking example of a good reason, aesthetically anyway, to increase estate taxes. He's Wyatt Ingraham Koch, son of Bill Koch,   the billionaire who owns a  summer mansion in Osterville, on Cape Cod, and killed the Cape Wind renewable-energy project because he didn't want to look at it on the far horizon. You might call young Mr. Koch the face of the GOP tax bill.

To read the piece, please hit this link.

And this one. And this one.

Robert Benchley: 'Christmas Afternoon' and 'God help us'

Done in the Manner, If Not the Spirit, of Dickens

What an afternoon! Mr. Gummidge said that, in his estimation, there never had cbeen such an afternoon since the world began, a sentiment which was heartily endorsed by Mrs. Gummidge and all the little Gummidges, not to mention the relatives who had come over from Jersey for the day.

In the first place, there was the ennui. And such ennui as it was! A heavy, overpowering ennui, such as results from a participation in eight courses of steaming, gravied food, topping off with salted nuts which the little old spinster Gummidge from Oak Hill said she never knew when to stop eating--and true enough she didn't--a dragging, devitalizing ennui, which left its victims strewn about the living-room in various attitudes of prostration suggestive of those of the petrified occupants in a newly unearthed Pompeiian dwelling; an ennui which carried with it a retinue of yawns, snarls and thinly veiled insults, and which ended in ruptures in the clan spirit serious enough to last throughout the glad new year.

Then there were the toys! Three and a quarter dozen toys to be divided among seven children. Surely enough, you or I might say, to satisfy the little tots. But that would be because we didn't know the tots. In came Baby Lester Gummidge, Lillian's boy, dragging an electric grain-elevator which happened to be the only toy in the entire collection that appealed to little Norman, five-year-old son of Luther, who lived in Rahway. In came curly-headed Effie in frantic and throaty disputation with Arthur, Jr, over the possession of an articulated zebra. . . . In came Fonlansbee, teeth buried in the hand of little Ormond, who bore a popular but battered remnant of what had once been the proud false bosom of a hussar's uniform. In they all came, one after another, some crying, some snapping, some pulling, some pushing--all appealing to their respective parents for aid in their intramural warfare.

And the cigar smoke! Mrs. Gummidge said that she didn't mind the smoke from a good cigarette, but would they mind if she opened the windows for just a minute in order to clear the room of the heavy aroma of used cigars? Mr. Gummidge stoutly maintained that they were good cigars. His brother, George Gummidge, said that he, likewise, would say that they were. At which colloquial sally both Gummidge brothers laughed testily, thereby breaking the laughter record for the afternoon.

Aunt Libbie, who lived with George, remarked from the dark corner of the room that it seemed just like Sunday to her. An amendment was offered to this statement by the cousin, who was in the insurance business, stating that it was worse than Sunday. Murmurings indicative of as hearty agreement with this sentiment as their lethargy would allow came from the other members of the family circle, causing Mr. Gummidge to suggest a walk in the air to settle their dinner.

And then arose such a chorus of protestations as has seldom been heard. It was too cloudy to walk. It was too raw. It looked like snow. It looked like rain. Luther Gummidge said that he must be starting along home soon, anyway, bringing forth the acid query from Mrs. Gummidge as to whether or not he was bored. Lillian said that she felt a cold coming on, and added that something they had had for dinner must have been under-cooked. And so it went, back and forth, forth and back, up and down, and in and out, until Mr. Gummidge's suggestion of a walk in the air was reduced to a tattered impossibility and the entire company glowed with ill-feeling.

In the meantime, we must not forget the children. No one else could. Aunt Libbie said that she didn't think there was anything like children to make a Christmas; to which Uncle Ray, the one with the Masonic fob, said, "No, thank God." Although Christmas is supposed to be the season of good cheer, you (or I, for that matter) couldn't have told, from listening to the little ones, but that it was the children's Armageddon season, when Nature had decreed that only the fittest should survive, in order that the race might be carried on by the strongest, the most predatory and those possessing the best protective coloring. Although there were constant admonitions to Fonlansbee to "Let Ormond have that whistle now; it's his," and to Arthur, Jr., not to be selfish, but to "give the kiddie-car to Effie; she's smaller than you are," the net result was always that Fonlansbee kept the whistle and Arthur, Jr., rode in permanent, albeit disputed, possession of the kiddie-car. Oh, that we mortals should set ourselves up against the inscrutable workings of Nature!

Hallo! A great deal of commotion! That was Uncle George stumbling over the electric train, which had early in the afternoon ceased to function and which had been left directly across the threshold. A great deal of crying! That was Arthur, Jr., bewailing the destruction of his already useless train, about which he had forgotten until the present moment. A great deal of recrimination! That was Arthur, Sr., and George fixing it up. And finally a great crashing! That was Baby Lester pulling over the tree on top of himself, necessitating the bringing to bear of all of Uncle Ray's knowledge of forestry to extricate him from the wreckage.

And finally Mrs. Gummidge passed the Christmas candy around. Mr. Gummidge afterward admitted that this was a tactical error on the part of his spouse. I no more believe that Mrs. Gummidge thought they wanted that Christmas candy than I believe that she thought they wanted the cold turkey which she later suggested. My opinion is that she wanted to drive them home. At any rate, that is what she succeeded in doing. Such cries as there were of "Ugh! Don't let me see another thing to eat!" and "Take it away!" Then came hurried scramblings in the coat-closet for overshoes. There were the rasping sounds made by cross parents when putting wraps on children. There were insincere exhortations to "come and see us soon" and to "get together for lunch some time." And, finally, there were slammings of doors and the silence of utter exhaustion, while Mrs. Gummidge went about picking up stray sheets of wrapping paper.

And, as Tiny Tim might say in speaking of Christmas afternoon as an institution, "God help us, every one."

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) was  born and raised in Worcester and graduated from Harvard. He went on to become a very popular and mostly humorous writer for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, as well as a Hollywood actor.