Vox clamantis in deserto
In N.H., mothers in opioid treatment struggle to keep children
By RACHEL GOTBAUM
Jillian Broomstein starts to cry when she talks about the day her newborn son Jeremy was taken from her by New Hampshire’s child welfare agency. He was 2 weeks old.
“They came into the house and said they would have to place him in foster care and I would get a call and we would set up visits,” she said. “It was scary.”
Broomstein, who was 26 at the time, had not used heroin for months and was on methadone treatment, trying to do what was safest for her child. The clinic social worker told her that since Jeremy would test positive for methadone when he was born, she would need to find safe housing or risk losing custody.
Broomstein moved in with a friend and her kids — but it turned out that friend had her own legal battles with the state’s Division of Children, Youth and Families, known as DCYF. The friend’s home would not pass muster as “safe housing” because of that.
Since Broomstein grew up in foster care and had no family to take her in, Jeremy was taken from her. She had 12 months to try to get her son back or lose her parental rights permanently.
To get their children back from the foster care system in New Hampshire, parents struggling with addiction are required to be compliant in drug treatment and have a safe place to live. If they can’t find housing or if they relapse, the clock does not stop ticking.
“I cannot stress enough that 12 months is a really short window for somebody who’s in early recovery,” said Courtney Tanner, who runs Hope On Haven Hill, one of the few places in New Hampshire where pregnant women and new mothers can live with their children and get treated for addiction. But with just eight beds here, the waitlists can be long.
There are more than 430,000 children in foster care in the U.S., according to the latest government figures. The opioid crisis is definitely a factor in an increasing trend of more children being removed from the home, but the scope of the problem is hard to measure due to poor tracking.
New Hampshire has some of the highest rates of opioid abuse in the country. One of the fastest-growing groups of heroin users is women of childbearing age. In the past few years the number of children taken into state custody has more than doubled, according to DCYF. Last year, New Hampshire spent $36 million for foster care.
“Here in New Hampshire, what I have seen is a mom can be enrolled in this program and compliant in treatment and they are giving birth to a child and that child is still being removed and put into foster care,” said Tanner.
In 2012 state legislators made major budget cuts to DCYF — and those dollars have not been restored. Child welfare workers in New Hampshire have more than triple the caseloads than in many other states, according to the agency’s director Joseph Ripsam. Also as a result of the budget cuts, DCYF can only engage a family once case workers have opened a legal case of abuse and neglect. There’s little money to support parents before that happens.
“The result of that is … that more children coming into the foster care system that otherwise might not if we had the capacity to serve families more holistically up front,” said Ripsam.
After her son Jeremy was placed into foster care, Jillian Broomstein continued her methadone treatment and her parenting classes.
She was determined to get her son back. She finally got off a waiting list and got a bed at one of the residential treatment centers for young mothers. After a few months she was reunited with Jeremy. But she was told that her case was unusual.
“They said in court that it was an odd case that they gave me my child back so quickly,” Broomstein said. “It made me want to cry.”
“I knew it was going to be hard,” she said. “Not everybody tries to get their children back. A lot of people I’ve known just give up; they just resort back to drugs again.”
Invented figures and steam trains in once-war-torn Essex, Conn.
"Peony Dress'' (painting), by Jennifer Knaus, in the group show "The Imagined & Invented Figure,'' with Aris Moore and Jennifer McCandless, at the Melanie Carr Gallery, Essex, Conn., June 23-July 23.
The gallery says that Ms. Knaus's work consists of paintings and drawings that are "both beautiful and absurd, depicting women dressed in plant life in the style of 17th Century still lifes.'' Tourist information on Essex below.
From Wikipedia:
"The Essex Steam Train is one of the most famous and popular Essex attractions. The main station is located in Centerbrook, with other stations in Deep River, Chester, and Haddam. The regular train ride goes from Essex to Deep River and then the Becky Thatcher Riverboat takes the passengers up to the Haddam area. The Essex Clipper Dinner Train goes from Essex all the way up to Haddam.
"The Ivoryton Playhouse is a regional theater located in Essex's village of Ivoryton. The theater produces 8-12 plays and musicals each year.
"The Connecticut River Museum, located at the end of Main Street and right on the Connecticut River, is home to numerous river artifacts and is home to the Connecticut River Eagle Festival each year.''
Essex Steam Train.
Don Pesci: 'A decent respect for reality and truth'
Themis of Rhamnous, Attica, by the sculptor Chairestratos, c. 300 BCE
Some time ago, the Republican leader in the Connecticut State House, Themis Klarides, reminded a reporter that she was Greek. Her first name, she said, meant “justice.” rje
That was almost right. Themis was an ancient Greek Titaness, the “lady of good counsel,” a personification of divine order, fairness, law, natural law and custom. The name Themis literally means “that which is put in place.” The symbols by which Themis is known are the scales of justice, tools in the ontological order that assure balance.
Balance is the baseline in the Greek cosmos according to which right order is measured. To know whether a thing is right and just – morally, legally, ethically, religiously, secularly, atheistically -- one must have more than a nodding acquaintance with reality. Idle dreaming is a fatal threat to right order. Political visions – modern politics is consumed with visions that the ancient Greeks might have considered nightmares – are justifiable and practical only when they take into account the reality of life on the ground. Therefore, the best and most just politician is the one most solidly grounded in reality.
Klarides does not have her feet firmly planted in the clouds. She has more than a decent respect for reality and truth. And while she may be willing to suffer fools gladly, she is not willing to afford foolishness the same compassionate tolerance.
Klarides, along with Democratic House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, appeared recently on Tom Dudchik’s Capitol Report.
Dudchik cited a report in The Boston Globe: “If all politics is local in the era of {the late U.S. House Speaker} Tip O’Neill, the reverse may be true under Trump.” He then turned to Aresimowicz and asked, “How big an issue are you going to make Trump?” And to Klarides, “What do you think about the issue?”
Aresimowicz: I’m not going to make that an issue…
Klarides: (scoffing) Oh, that’s not true (laughter from all).
Aresimowicz: We’re not Washington. We will listen to each other. We have to work with each other. When we can find common ground, we will. But now it’s about who has the best vision for the state of Connecticut, and who’s going to move it forward. Who do you want to align your political beliefs with? That’s what I’m going to be talking about.
Klarides: Well, I will tell you: I think this will be a fight between who is more unpopular, Governor {Dannel} Malloy or President Trump. Clearly, Governor Malloy is more unpopular. But I … It’s very frustrating to me to have to answer to what the President is doing or saying. If he does something I like, I say he is. If he does something I don’t like, I say I don’t. But the frustration here is this: Let’s remember something very clearly. There has been a Democrat governor for eight years, and there has been a Democrat controlled House and Senate for about 40 years. If Connecticut was booming, if businesses wanted to come here, if there were job after job and people had more money in their pockets – my good colleague (Aresimowicz) who I like very much – but our vision is a little bit different as to what the state should be doing – they [Democrats] would be pounding their chests, saying the following: We have brought this state back, and a Democrat governor and a Democrat controlled legislature [are responsible for the recovery]. The words Donald Trump would never be mentioned. But they can’t – because they have single-handedly ruined the state. And I do agree with him. We have done some bipartisan budgets. But as much as he and I like each other personally, the only reason we’ve done Democrat and Republican budgets is that there is only a four seat difference in the House and a tie in the Senate. That is the reality. It has nothing to do with the deficit. And that’s where we are.
The most important part of Klarides’s response to Dudchik’s question is, “And that’s where we are.”
A vision detached from reality does not produce a corresponding corrective reality; it produces havoc, disorder and the justifiable wrath of Themis, the “lady of good counsel.”
Reality is simply the sum of occurring events and their inevitable consequences. Perhaps the most banal expression in modern politics is “moving things forward,” rather as if it were possible to move present events into the past. The question that must be decided in the upcoming election is not a matter of the glittering vision we might prefer. Politics is the art of the possible. Forty years of Democrat hegemony in the General Assembly and two terms in office of one of the least popular governors in Connecticut history have made nightmares of political visions. Voters in Connecticut, Republicans hope, have awakened; they are hungry for real solutions to real problems.
Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.
Teaming up to fight straw pollution
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
NEWPORT, R.I. — In response to increased plastic waste on beaches and in the ocean, Green Drinks Newport recently partnered with Clean Ocean Access and The Last Straw to launch Strawless by the Sea, a collaborative campaign to eliminate plastic straws in the City-by-the-Sea.
Strawless by the Sea launched June 8, on World Oceans Day, and will continue through the summer. Bars, restaurants and other establishments in Newport, such as coffee shops and yacht clubs, are encouraged to make a voluntary commitment to stop offering plastic straws and stirrers, in an effort to stop plastic pollution at the source.
According to the Ocean Conservancy, more than 500 million plastic straws are used daily in the United States — enough to circle the earth 2.5 times. Plastic straws are used for 20 minutes on average, but take up to 500 years to break down.
“Last summer I was eating at an outdoor establishment on a very windy day and watched several plastic straws blow into the water,” said Kara DiCamillo, Green Drinks Newport organizer and Clean Ocean Access board member. “I’ve attended many beach cleanups hosted by Clean Ocean Access and knew that I’d be picking those same straws up one day.”
In Newport, straws are among the top 10 items found during beach cleanups, and can do so much harm to seabirds, turtles and other marine creatures. Clean Ocean Access (COA) staff and volunteers have picked more than 2,000 straws on local beaches during the past five years, and some 650 more have been collected by COA’s marina trash skimmers in Newport Harbor in just eight months.
“We are thrilled to see the community-led efforts to eradicate plastic straws, and this effort aligns perfectly with our successful two-year campaign for a plastic bag ordinance on Aquidneck and Conanicut islands,” said Dave McLaughlin, COA’s executive director and co-founder. “The spirit of our position for the plastic bag ordinance was to tickle more persuasion so that people start making better choices in their daily lives to eliminate single-use plastics and to switch to durable reusable alternatives. There are real cost savings for businesses and consumers and this initiative advances the efforts of the biggest islands in the Ocean State to lead by example that a thriving economy and a healthy economy go hand in hand.”
Restaurants can reduce the use of plastic straws by implementing a “straws upon request” policy, switching to paper straws or reusable straws, or by going completely “strawless.”
Tyler Bernadyn, a local hospitality professional who started The Last Straw, an internalized campaign to educate bartenders and their guests on the importance of recognizing and reducing plastic pollution, said he knows we can all do better.
“Seeing how many single-use straws and plastic cups are wasted during a single service and watching these same items wash up on our beaches and pollute our harbor really inspired me to start this initiative,” he said. “Being behind the bar, you have an opportunity to encourage change and help protect our most valuable resources here in Newport, which is our beaches and waterways.”
Several Newport-area establishments have joined Strawless by the Sea: Bannister’s Wharf Marina & Guest Rooms, Belle’s Café at the Newport Shipyard, Brix Restaurant at Newport Vineyards, The Clarke Cooke House, Fluke, Malt, Mission, Newport Dinner Cruises, Scales & Shells, TSK, Winner Winner, and Taproot Brewing Co. at Newport Vineyards (scheduled to open June 20).
Environmental groups and local businesses have also backed Strawless by the Sea, including Bowen’s Wharf, Discover Newport, Sail Newport, Sailors for the Sea, The Ocean Project, and World Oceans Day.
“As an individual, refusing a single-use plastic straw in our bars and restaurants in Newport is the easiest and simplest way to take action to address plastic pollution that is in our waters and on our beaches,” DiCamillo said.
Jim Hightower: Trump's bid to use Postal Service to hit Amazon may backfire big time
Photo by Chensiyuan
Close up of the James A. Farley Post Office, in Manhattan. Read the inscription over the columns: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds''
Via OtherWords.org
The U.S. Postal Service has 30,000 outlets serving every part of America. It employs 630,000 people in good middle-class jobs. And it proudly delivers letters and packages clear across the country for a pittance.
It’s a jewel of public-service excellence. Therefore, it must be destroyed.
Such is the fevered logic of laissez-faire-headed corporate supremists like the billionaire Koch brothers and the right-wing politicians who serve them.
This malevolent gang of wrecking-ball privatizers includes such prominent Trumpsters as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (a former Wall Street huckster from Goldman Sachs), and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney (a former corporate-hugging Congress critter from South Carolina).
Both were involved in setting up Trump’s shiny new task force to remake our U.S. Postal Service. It’s like asking two foxes to remodel the hen house.
Trump himself merely wanted to take a slap at his political enemy, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, by jacking up the prices the Postal Service charges to deliver Amazon’s packages. The cabal of far-right corporatizers, however, saw Trump’s temper tantrum as a golden opportunity to go after the Postal Service itself.
Trump complained about the Postal Service not charging Amazon enough for mailing packages. But instead of simply addressing the matter, the task force was trumped-up with an open-ended mandate to evaluate, dissect, and “restructure” the people’s mail service — including carving it up and selling off the parts.
Who’d buy the pieces? For-profit shippers like FedEx, of course. But here’s some serious irony for you: The one outfit with the cash and clout to buy our nation’s whole postal infrastructure and turn it into a monstrous corporate monopoly is none other than… Amazon itself.
I’d prefer my neighborhood post office, thanks. To help stop this sellout, become part of the Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service: www.AGrandAlliance.org.
Jim Hightower, an OtherWords columnist, is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.
Babson College to open Dubai branch
"The Babson Globe,'' on the college's campus in Wellesley.
From our friends at the New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
"Babson College (in Wellesley, Mass.) recently announced its plan to expand internationally, opening a new location in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, to offer graduate and executive education programs for working professionals across the region. The expansion is part of an effort to extend its reach and impact around the world, adding to its existing hubs in Wellesley and Boston, MA, San Francisco, and Miami
The Babson MBA – Dubai will be delivered through a blended online and face-to-face format, and will launch in January 2019. Babson Executive Education will be working with organizations in the region to develop customized programs in addition to offering specialized open enrollment programs at part of the Academy at Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
Babson College President Kerry Healey said, 'At Babson, we believe that the success of entrepreneurs is critical to economic growth and sustainability around the world. By bringing Babson’s recognized leadership in entrepreneurship education to Dubai, we will support the U.A.E.’s long term economic development goals, make Entrepreneurial Thought & Action accessible to more people and places, and educate global leaders who will create great economic and social value everywhere.'''
The New England Council congratulates Babson College on this expansion and commends its efforts to promote economic growth around the world. Read more on the Babson College Web site.
No silver lining
"Irene has shining golden hair,
And fame and glory without end,
And greater wealth than even she
Could ever find a way to spend.
But Beth cannot afford to buy
What goes beyond her basic needs.
She must make do with what she has
And squeeze each penny till it bleeds.
Which woman hates her empty days?
Whose sadness makes her hard and mean?
Who yearns and yearns to change her life?
I’m sorry, but . . . it’s not Irene.''
-- "Irene and Beth,'' by Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Preppie summer
-- Photo by Ryssby
Camden is a summer center of the sort of WASP (faux and real)/preppie culture from which Ralph Lauren and some other designers draw inspiration.
"I have always been inspired by the dream of America -- families in the country, weathered trucks and farmhouses; sailing off the coast of Maine; following dirt roads in an old wood-paneled station wagon; a convertible filled with young college kids sporting crew cuts and sweatshirts and frayed sneakers.''
-- Ralph Lauren, the clothes designer and retailer.
Still in the textile industry
"Window' (extruded pigmented medium), by Erica Licea-Lane, at the Kingston Gallery, Boston, through July 1.
Licea-Lane, a former textile artist, uses deep layers of paint to create surface density and deep structure, creating intricate abstract pieces. Licea-Lane says that "They speak about time, process, and the textiles that became the common thread in my childhood."
'Our Town' in our town
The play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, was first produced in 1938. It's set in a small New Hampshire town around the turn of the 20th Century.
"In Middlebury’s production of Our Town,
three local churches served as the stage:
Baptist for the first act; Methodist, the second;
And St. Stephen’s Episcopal (mine) for the third.
Between the acts, we followed ushers
who carried lanterns past stages vignettes:
two lovers spooned behind the bandstand on the green,
a horse and buggy meandered down the street,
and in the window of the barber shop
a barber stood with razor and strop''
-- From "Our Town: Middlebury, Vermont,'' by Jennifer Bates
Lynette Paczkowski: Colleges' limited responsibilities regarding potentially suicidal students
The Great Dome at MIT, in Cambridge, Mass.
From the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
In 2004, then-University of New England President Sandra Featherman authored a piece for NEBEHE's New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE), then called Connection, headlined “Emotional Rescue” and focused on how a new generation of troubled college students was straining campus resources. Featherman, who died in April, wrote of colleges and universities scrambling to provide additional and better support services for students in need. She cited to a 2001 University of Pittsburgh survey in which 85 percent of schools reported increases in the severity of problems presenting at campus counseling centers over the preceding five years
Eight years later, a NEJHE article by Lasell College admission counselor Christopher M. Gray asked whether the proliferation of natural disasters and tragedies, such as the Sandy Hook mass shooting, were creating a new category of emotionally vulnerable college students. Specifically, he suggested that it was higher-education professionals’ “duty to aid these college-bound students as much as possible,” and urged the provision of counseling, knowledge and support. But moral duties and obligations aside, what is a higher education institution’s legal obligation to provide support services? And from a risk-management perspective, if the institution provides such services, what is its liability if the student’s mental-health issues nevertheless consume him or her?
The recent case of Nguyen v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, et al., considered the question of whether a college or university has the obligation to protect its students from all harm at all times, including suicide. Han Nguyen was a 25-year-old graduate student at MIT when he committed suicide in 2009. His family sued the school, alleging that the school lacked sufficient support services, did not provide adequate care for its students, and failed to intervene despite knowledge of his mental state. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did not find MIT liable under the facts of the case, and within its decision, the court articulated the obligations of colleges and universities when it comes to suicide prevention.
Ultimately, the court rejected the notion that colleges and universities must act in loco parentis and keep its students safe under all circumstances. “University students are young adults, not young children. Indeed, graduate students are adults in all respects under the law. Universities recognize their students’ adult status, their desire for independence, and their need to exercise their own judgment. Consequently the modern university-student relationship is respectful of student autonomy and privacy.”
The court identified limited circumstances under which a college or university must take reasonable measures to protect a student from self-harm: where the college or university has actual knowledge of a student's suicide attempt that occurred while enrolled or recently before matriculation, or of a student's stated plans or intentions to commit suicide.
The court also addressed what would satisfy the college or university’s obligations under such circumstances. “Reasonable measures by the university to satisfy a triggered duty will include initiating its suicide prevention protocol if the university has developed such a protocol. In the absence of such a protocol, reasonable measures will require the university employee who learns of the student’s suicide attempt or stated plans or intentions to commit suicide to contact the appropriate officials at the university empowered to assist the student in obtaining clinical care from medical professionals or, if the student refuses such care, to notify the student’s emergency contact. In emergency situations, reasonable measures obviously would include contacting police, fire, or emergency medical personnel.”
The court’s decision is crucial in encouraging schools to continue to offer resources to students in need. The court not only placed finite parameters on when a school has a duty to intervene, but also identified the “complex and competing considerations” giving rise to its decision: adult students’ privacy and autonomy; the notion that non-clinicians cannot and should not be expected to probe or discern suicidal ideations that are not expressly evident; and allowing schools to take steps to acknowledge and manage the risk of campus suicide with realistic duties and responsibilities.
To be sure, the MIT student at issue had a history of presenting with academic concerns, even admitting to mental-health issues. In May 2007, he had contacted his program coordinator for assistance with test-taking problems. The program coordinator referred him to a coordinator in the MIT student disability services office, who described some of MIT’s accommodations for students with disabilities.
The student declined the accommodations. The program coordinator then referred him to MIT’s mental-health and counseling service. The student met with a psychologist on three occasions, but ultimately reported that he would be receiving treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital, not through MIT. Subsequently, the student twice met with the assistant dean in the student support office. Ultimately, the student did not seek or receive assistance from that office either. Nor did he ever communicate to any MIT employee that he had plans or intentions to commit suicide, and any prior attempts that were discussed took place well over a year before matriculation at MIT.
The plaintiff nevertheless claimed, among other things, that MIT had voluntarily assumed a duty of care. But the court found that “[a]lthough MIT voluntarily offers mental health student support services, there [was] no evidence that [the] services increased [the student’s] risk of suicide [or] that [the student] relied on [these] mental health services.”
Nothing within this case minimizes the tragedy that is the loss of a student. Nothing within this case suggests that colleges and universities can or should be ambivalent to the needs of their students or that an institution will never, under any circumstances, face liability for failing to prevent a foreseeable student suicide. Rather, the court made clear what the school’s duties and obligations are. To have decided this case any other way would have had a chilling effect on colleges and universities’ efforts to provide support and services to the increasingly large population of students in need of assistance.
Lynette Paczkowski is a partner at the Massachusetts law firm of Bowditch & Dewey, with experience representing clients from various industries including education, construction, utility, professional services, real estate and nonprofit, as well as individuals in litigation matters and litigation-avoidance strategies.
Robert Whitcomb: Boston transit trials and triumphs
MBTA trolley bus.
From, Robert Whitcomb's Boston Diary, in The Boston Guardian, where a version of this piece first ran.
A little historical perspective is needed as we whine about MBTA delays and cancellations (especially during and after winter storms) and gridlocked street traffic.
The fact is that Boston has much better mass transit now than it had, say, three decades ago. Most importantly, there’s a lot more of it available. And for all their occasional breakdowns, the MBTA subway cars, trolleys, buses and commuter trains are generally in better condition than they were when I lived in Boston fulltime, almost 50 years ago. (These days I ride MBTA subways and commuter rail once or twice a month.)
And consider the South Station bus-train complex at the center of the MBTA empire: for decades a depressing, dirty domain for derelicts. Now it’s a spectacular intermodal center, served by more subway, commuter rail and bus lines than a generation ago, as well as by Amtrak’s semi-high-speed Acela. I love that the MBTA’s still newish Silver Line will take you directly to Logan Airport from the complex.
I can well remember when young having to wait for a bus across the street from South Station -- a creepy area dominated by the dubious Essex Hotel and frequented by panhandling bums, sexual predators and sexual businesspeople, among my other pals. (“Hey, cutie, have a light?’’) I had to take a bus because for a long time there were no trains to the South Shore, where I had relatives, the old New Haven Railroad having long since collapsed. Finally, the MBTA extended rail commuter lines down there.
And the burying of the Central Artery and related Big Dig work has often smoothed traffic and made downtown Boston more attractive and thus more prosperous.
The rebuilding/expansion of the Back Bay MBTA-Amtrak station will further improve life for transiteers. The station now is dank, dark and cave-like – an unsettling entry for travelers entering the gorgeous Copley Square neighborhood.
Now, if they could finally directly connect South and North Stations so that you could take an Amtrak or commuter train to north of Boston from south of it without having to get off at South Station and go to North Station by MBTA, cab or Lyft or Ube -- the current ridiculous situation. And more ferries, please, including on the Charles River.
Of course, Boston street traffic is often horrendous. That’s in part because the city has a dense public-transit system, which makes it more prosperous, which brings in more businesses and individuals, which clogs the streets and spawns the need for more mass transit, etc. At the same time, far, far too many people persist in driving their cars everywhere in this compact city.
Uber and Lyft have also worsened traffic, by putting many more vehicles on the road to serve cell-phone dependents who might otherwise have taken the subway, trolleys or buses. Boston needs to get many more people into transport that takes up much less room on the streets than all these cars with one passenger. That means we need more and better buses, not that I will ride in one.
Robert Whitcomb is president of The Boston Guardian, editor of New England Diary and a GoLocal24.com columnist.
Innning after inning after inning in PawSox stadium saga
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:
The latest Pawtucket Red Sox stadium financing proposal supposes that, among other things, Pawtucket would get enough income (to pay off construction bonds) from stadium-related income, including from stores and restaurants that would purportedly go up around the stadium. Given the current fragile state of much retail in the Age of Amazon, that expectation – or hope – may be excessive. And how popular will minor league baseball be over the next few decades? And, lest we forget, Pawtucket already has a big municipal debt burden.
Then there’s the assertion that the state wouldn't be on the hook if Pawtucket couldn’t pay the interest on the bonds that it sells to help fund the stadium. The trouble is that the cold, hard bond market closely connects the fortunes of municipalities and the states they're in. To maintain its bond rating, Rhode Island might have to come in to rescue the city if the PawSox promoters’ projections turn out to be wrong.
Consider that back in 1991, then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun decided that the state had to step after a private insurer of deposits in credit unions and small banks went bust. So far as the bond market was concerned that state had to come to the rescue. After all, it was called the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation….And Pawtucket is part of Rhode Island.
I hope that the PawSox stay – I know they don’t want to move to Worcester! -- but the latest deal has some big risks for taxpayers. I wonder if they can find plausible additional stadium users besides a baseball team. Soccer? Horse shows? Croquet?
David Warsh: With new editor, is The Wall Street Journal at a big turning point?
SOMERVILLE, MASS.
Ever since John Dryden turned the Roman poet Horace back on himself with a gentle aside, “Even Homer nods” has been a useful way of observing that the most accomplished story-teller occasionally loses the thread of the narrative.
The old saw came to mind last week when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. replaced the editor of The Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ, for most of a hundred years, and especially after World War II, served as Homer to the Republican party – in particular the paper’s editorial page. Such was the deliberate and reassuring voice of Vermont Royster, chief editorial writer from 1958 to 1971, that the paper still reprints one of his editorials annually on the eve of Thanksgiving.
Starting with the appointment of Robert Bartley as its editor, in 1972, the editorial page began veering off course. Bartley was a complicated man, a Midwesterner, possessing many good instincts, including enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan. A sense of fair play, however, was not among his gifts. Three decades of increasingly bad sportsmanship began with the election of Bill Clinton, in 1992.
WSJ editorials proceeded in lockstep with Congressman Newt Gingrich throughout the 1990s; after they 2000 espoused the views of the faction led by Vice President Dick Cheney known as the “Vulcans”; and make common cause with the Congressional Freedom Caucus today.
Meanwhile, the news pages remained on the same even keel under Paul Steiger, managing editor from 1991 to 2007. After Rupert Murdoch bought the paper from the Bancroft family, that began to change. Murdoch replaced managing editor Marcus Brauchli (who had succeeded Steiger a few months before) with Robert Thomson, his fellow Australian, who was generally seen to move the news pages slightly to the right.
Thomson was promoted in 2012 to take charge of a newly-formed publishing unit, some on whose executives had been tainted by Murdoch’s British newspapers’ phone scandal. He was succeeded by Gerard Baker, a conservative columnist for Murdoch’s Times of London.
It’s a commonplace that Fox News underwent a sea change after Donald Trump was elected, becoming something of an echo chamber, with the president tweeting commentary from its morning broadcasts and occasionally phoning in for interviews. Less noticed has been the struggle within the news pages of the WSJ. Several of its top political and investigative reporters have left in the past two years for other newspapers; Baker has been accused of showing excessive deference to the president, even as The Journal took the lead in breaking stories of hush money payments by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Meanwhile, the editorial pages led the campaign against the FBI, ultimately devising the counterattack against the Mueller investigation known as “Spygate,” that House Speaker Paul Ryan shrugged off last week.
Murdoch himself had installed Baker by by pouring champagne over his head. Now the British-born newsman will host a WSJ-branded television show on Fox Business Network and write a column for a weekend section of the paper. Presumably the decision to replace him was that of Murdoch’s sons. The promotion of Matt Murray, executive editor and long-time staffer, was announced with much less ceremony. It is hard to imagine a more poignant exemplar of traditional WSJ values than Murray’s book, The Father and the Son: My Father's Journey to the Monastic Life (Harper, 1999).
It was late last month that former House Speaker John Boehner told a policy conference in Michigan, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.”
Indeed. And in the length of time between Homer and the present day, forty years of populist agitation from the pulpit of a formerly conservative newspaper is no more than forty winks. Still, it seems like a long time to me. The other big question, of course, is who will replace editorial page editor Paul Gigot, 63, who took over from Bartley in 2001. In the meantime, though, the GOP’s Homer has shown the first signs of waking up.
David Warsh, an economic historian and long-time columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com
Snapper migration season
-- Photo by Lydia Davison Whitcomb, in Little Compton, R.I.
Watch out near streams and ponds! Snapping turtles are on the move at this time of year, and they can appear out of nowhere.
Don't try to pick up one! They can extend their long necks to give you a very bad bite.
They are on the roads, too. Hit this link.
William Morgan: New Providence hotel -- suburban banality in a spot crying out for urban grandeur
What would a truly creative capital city erect on a premier spot in an historic downtown? An art center? A library? A theater? A museum? Maybe a knock-your-socks-off hotel?
How about a cookie-cutter commercial travelers motor inn of the kind you could see along any highway leading to the airport in any American city?
Homewood Suites by Hilton near Kennedy Plaza, Providence
(Tocci Building Corporation)
What does it say about Providence that an anywhere hotel is being constructed on one of the most important lots downtown? This piece of suburban blandness joins such significant civic monuments as City Hall, the old railroad station, and two handsome courthouses, not to mention some notable statuary.
Federal Building Annex, 1939-40, and the 1908 Federal Building.
(William Morgan)
The Hilton is rising on the site of long-gone Central Fire Station. The firehouse architect gave the city a monumental piece of public architecture, a delightful yet dignified exercise in English Renaissance with a landmark tower (no doubt used for drying hoses).
Central Fire Station (1880-90) and the then-new Federal Building and Post Office.
One does not need to see the finished product to know how ho-hum this purported “upscale” hostelry will be. As is often the case with projects such as this, the renderings look better than the actual building ever will. Yet, the designers, ZDS Architecture & Interior Design, claim to have created “a building that recognizes and is responsive to the grand and traditional neighbors that surround it without resorting to imitation.”
Homewood Suites. $20 million of blandness.
(Tocci Building Corporation)
The 109,000-square-foot hotel will be eight stories, the first floor of which will be devoted to the parking of cars. The Homewood Suites is saved from being an overbearing rectangular block by the odd shape of the lot. And the designers have mitigated the building’s bulk by dividing the façade into three groupings, in a 2, 4, 2-story sequence, in a reference to a classical column. Alas, the brick skin looks exactly like what it is, a thin veneer.
Homewood Suites under construction.
(William Morgan)
Do you ever wonder why so many uninspiring new buildings in Providence get wrapped in these contact-paper-thin brick panels? In the 21st Century we ought to be unafraid of exposing the structural frame, or crafting envelopes of contemporary materials. Perhaps the purpose of the brick is to give the allusion of Early American domestic architecture. But it is not easy to make an eight-story block homey.
The very successful new Dean Hotel occupies an older brick building.
(William Morgan)
The “greatest works” of the architect of the Homewoods hotel, ZDS's Eric Zuena, include “luxury hotels” in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh.” So, why didn’t Providence get some of that luxe? One should be wary of architects’ mission statements that announce they are “at the forefront of a NEW DESIGN ERA, redefining success by SOLVING UNPRECENTED PROBLEMS” (their capitalization).
Providence may need hotels. But why one at the lower end of Hilton spectrum? There must be something in between sheikdom glitz and the traveling salesman’s stopover.
The Hotel Providence, another attractive hotel in a repurposed building.
(William Morgan)
Well-meaning people – financiers, bankers, builders, developers, city boosters – are working hard to improve Providence. Yet something is missing. Maybe we need to begin any major project by asking what it will look like and what will it contribute to the commonweal.
William Morgan is a nationally known architectural historian and author.
Wizard of the weeklies
The cover of the last issue of The (Boston) Phoenix, March 15, 2013.
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
I felt the accelerating passage of time the other day when reading of the death at 74 of Stephen Mindich, the long-time publisher of the “alternative weekly’’ empire whose flagship was the Boston Phoenix. Eventually the Internet killed it.
But for many years, starting in the ‘70s, the Phoenix papers played an outsize role in political and arts coverage of their communities, financed by retail and event advertising and personal classified ads, some of which were pornographic. The papers could be seedy and irresponsible but they also ran some very good reporting and writing and launched many journalists into distinguished careers – in the last couple of decades of the golden age of well-paid journalism. Mr. Mindich’s death was a reminder of how long ago the Boomer youth culture that spawned the Phoenix had its salad days.
A pig heads for paradise
"Final Step (Untitled Castle)'' (acrylic on canvas on panel), by Jung Hur, at Corey Daniels Gallery, Wells, Maine, through June 17.
Chris Powell: Avoiding teaching at UConn; Kansas vs. Conn.; why the 'buffoon' won
Main quad of the flagship campus, in Storrs, of the University of Connecticut.
At least some Republicans are refraining from the gush that usually insulates the University of Connecticut from scrutiny of its budget and political correctness. UConn President Susan Herbst's plan to retire for a teaching position early next year has prompted not just reflexive praise for her administration but also criticism of the university's financial excesses, particularly at the ever-troubled UConn Health Center in Farmington.
State government long has been reducing its subsidy to the university, causing it to raise tuition, and while UConn's facilities have improved greatly, fair questions abound, starting with administrative staff and salaries. But similar questions should be asked about instructional staff.
UConn prides itself on being a "research" university, the euphemism for a school where professors don't have to get their hands dirty teaching mere undergraduates, work that can be delegated to less expert and untenured instructors.
How much teaching are professors at UConn really doing, and is the state better served by their doing "research" instead? UConn seems never to have answered the question, perhaps because governors and legislators have never asked it.
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EVEN KANSAS MIGHT BE A STEP UP: "Conservative businessman" Bob Stefanowski, as he styles himself in his television commercials, implicitly recognizing that no one ever heard of him, hasn't even qualified for the primary for the Republican nomination for governor. But the other day the Democratic Governors Association criticized him exclusively among the many Republican candidates.
Stefanowski had boasted in a commercial that his state budget plan had been developed in part by the economist Arthur Laffer, who had advised President Reagan. The DGA scoffed: "Conveniently Stefanowski forgot to tell voters about another one of Laffer's more recent credentials: chief architect of the Kansas budget disaster."
Yes, Kansas isn't doing well under Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican. But Connecticut seems to be doing even worse, especially since Kansas never had the advantages Connecticut had before its government employee unions took over.
If the budget plan of an obscure candidate is the worst thing the DGA can cite about Republicans here, maybe Connecticut really has a chance of political change.
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ISN'T THERE SOMETHING IN BETWEEN?: Venal, crude and stupid as the Trump administration can be, it may be most damaging not for any particular policy but for giving the impression that what it offers are the only alternatives to the failures and corruption of the liberalism that has been the country's political ethos since the 1960s.
Many people sense those failures and that corruption at least vaguely. That's why Hillary Clinton could not carry three ordinarily Democratic states in the 2016 election, losing many working-class voters and forfeiting the presidency to someone who strikes many people as a megalomanical buffoon. But so many liberals now are on the government payroll that liberals are incapable of considering whether anything that passes as liberal policy might be mistaken.
As the Democratic nominee for governor of California in 1934, the socialist Upton Sinclair titled his platform "End Poverty in California." Big money was against him and he was defeated, causing him to observe that it's hard to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Though Sinclair's side is in charge of Connecticut now, it is even harder here.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
A simpler life
Interstate 90 approaching Chicopee, Mass., exit.
"Now I will abandon the route of my life
as my shadowy wives abandon me, taking my children.
I will stop. I will park in a summer street
where the days tick like metal in the stillness.
Then I will rent the room over Bert's Modern Barbershop
where the TO LET sign leans in the plateglass window;
or I will buy the brown BUNGALOW FOR SALE.
I will work forty hours a week clerking at the paintstore.
On Fridays I will cash my paycheck at Six Rivers Bank
and stop at Harvey's Market and talk with Harvey.''
-- From New Hampshire-based poet Donald Hall's "Mr Wakefield on Interstate 90''.