Vox clamantis in deserto
For spring
“Yearn,’’ by Lissa Banks in the Members Exhibition at Attleboro Arts Museum, through Feb. 1.
Kathy Toler: Trump plan would slash mail service and raise rates in many places
Via OtherWords.org
I’ve been a postal clerk for 23 years, serving my customers in a public post office in Gresham, Ore.
As you might imagine, with the holidays fast approaching, it’s a busy time of year for us. Every day, I help my customers mail letters, cards, and packages across town and across the county. Even when we’re busy, it’s a joy to share a small part in spreading holiday cheer.
Because the U.S. Postal Service charges uniform rates across the country, I don’t need to ask you if a package is being sent to a home or a business, or whether the recipient lives in a big city or a distant rural area.
You can select a flat rate box that goes anywhere for one price, no matter what’s inside. Or if you pack your own gift, we price it based on weight and distance. The post office never charges you more to send your gift just because your grandma happens to live out in the country.
If you took your packages to a private delivery firm, on the other hand, you might be hit with extra charges because of where your grandma lives.
On top of their base rates, UPS and FedEx charge more for deliveries to over half of all U.S. ZIP codes — hitting not just Alaska, Hawaii, and other distant areas, but also many small towns. Even suburbs of major cities — like Laveen, just eight miles from Phoenix, and Whites Creek, eight miles from Nashville — can draw extra charges.
According to new research by the Institute for Policy Studies, these ZIP codes are home to around 70 million people.
These extra costs already range up to $4.45 for a package delivered to a home in a rural area. But my real worry is that these extra costs are just a taste of what would happen if the U.S. Postal Service is sold off to private, for-profit corporations.
Last summer, the White House Office of Management and Budget recommended postal privatization in a report on government restructuring. And just in time for the holidays, a presidential task force just made recommendations that would slow down the mail, privatize large portions of the Postal Service, and lead to other service cuts.
If these privatization efforts succeed, millions of people may well face a return to 19th century standards of expensive, private delivery services and limited USPS access.
For the first 121 years of U.S. history, postal services were limited to those in cities. Farmers and other pioneers had to either travel long distances to cities or pay handsomely for private carriers to deliver their mail periodically.
Without competition from the public Postal Service, for-profit firms would likely jack up delivery fees even higher for the 70 million people who already live in areas hit by delivery surcharges.
And of course, USPS doesn’t just ship gifts. Millions of people rely on us for delivery of prescription drugs, medical supplies, and other essential items.
I think of myself as a public servant. I’m glad that the United States Postal Service treats all Americans fairly, regardless of where they live or work. A privatized, for-profit company won’t do that.
If the armfuls of gifts customers bring into my post office are any indication, that means holiday shipping would be a lot more expensive for millions of people.
Let’s protect the world’s finest public postal network, and together insist that the U.S. Mail is Not for Sale.
Kathy Toler has been a postal clerk in Gresham, Ore. for 23 years. The views expressed here are her own, not necessarily those of her employer’s.
And the other on a neck
“One Foot On The Floor (oil, charcoal, graphite, gold leaf, glitter on linen), by Hilary Tait Norod, in her show at Workbar Central Square, Cambridge.
N.E. just got a lot more clout on Capitol Hill
Jim Brett, president and CEO of the New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com), says that New England’s congressional clout just got a big boost because Democrats won the House in the mid-terms.
“I would say, today, that our region, our New England congressional delegation is a powerhouse in the new 116th Congress,” Mr. Brett recently told a group in Ipswich.
In New England, all 21 House seats will now be held by Democrats, with the defeat of a Republican in Maine’s Second Congressional District. To read more, including about individual New England congressional movers and shakers, please hit this link.
'But the mountains aren't quite high enough'
New Hampshire’s Franconia Range, which Robert Frost could have seen from his home.
“I met a lady from the South who said
(You won't believe she said it, but she said it):
"None of my family ever worked, or had
A thing to sell." I don't suppose the work
Much matters. You may work for all of me.
I've seen the time I've had to work myself.
The having anything to sell is what
Is the disgrace in man or state or nation.
I met a traveler from Arkansas
Who boasted of his state as beautiful
For diamonds and apples. "Diamonds
And apples in commercial quantities?"
I asked him, on my guard. "Oh, yes," he answered,
Off his. The time was evening in the Pullman.
I see the porter's made your bed," I told him.
I met a Californian who would
Talk California—a state so blessed,
He said, in climate, none bad ever died there
A natural death, and Vigilance Committees
Had had to organize to stock the graveyards
And vindicate the state's humanity.
"Just the way Stefansson runs on," I murmured,
"About the British Arctic. That's what comes
Of being in the market with a climate."
I met a poet from another state,
A zealot full of fluid inspiration,
Who in the name of fluid inspiration,
But in the best style of bad salesmanship,
Angrily tried to male me write a protest
(In verse I think) against the Volstead Act.
He didn't even offer me a drink
Until I asked for one to steady him.
This is called having an idea to sell.
It never could have happened in New Hampshire.
The only person really soiled with trade
I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire
Was someone who had just come back ashamed
From selling things in California.
He'd built a noble mansard roof with balls
On turrets, like Constantinople, deep
In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,
As if to put forever out of mind
The hope of being, as we say, received.
I found him standing at the close of day
Inside the threshold of his open barn,
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—
And recognized him, through the iron gray
In which his face was muffled to the eyes,
As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed
A drover with me on the road to Brighton.
His farm was "grounds," and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor's at a trading station.
And be was rich, and I was still a rascal.
I couldn't keep from asking impolitely,
Where bad he been and what had he been doing?
How did he get so? (Rich was understood.)
In dealing in "old rags" in San Francisco.
Ob, it was terrible as well could be.
We both of us turned over in our graves.
Just specimens is all New Hampshire has,
One each of everything as in a showcase,
Which naturally she doesn't care to sell.
She had one President. (Pronounce him Purse,
And make the most of it for better or worse.
He's your one chance to score against the state.)
She had one Daniel Webster. He was all
The Daniel Webster ever was or shall be.
She had the Dartmouth needed to produce him.
I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as be coasted by,
Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharf
At the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himself
They weren't Red Indians but veritable
Pre-primitives of the white race, dawn people,
Like those who furnished Adam's sons with wives;
However uninnocent they may have been
In being there so early in our history.
They'd been there then a hundred years or more.
Pity he didn't ask what they were up to
At that date with a wharf already built,
And take their name. They've since told me their name—
Today an honored one in Nottingham.
As for what they were up to more than fishing—
Suppose they weren't behaving Puritanly,
The hour bad not yet struck for being good,
Mankind had not yet gone on the Sabbatical.
It became an explorer of the deep
Not to explore too deep in others' business.
Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has
One real reformer who would change the world
So it would be accepted by two classes,
Artists the minute they set up as artists,
Before, that is, they are themselves accepted,
And boys the minute they get out of college.
I can't help thinking those are tests to go by.
And she has one I don't know what to call him,
Who comes from Philadelphia every year
With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds
He wants to give the educational
Advantages of growing almost wild
Under the watchful eye of hawk and eagle
Dorkings because they're spoken of by Chaucer,
Sussex because they're spoken of by Herrick.
She has a touch of gold. New Hampshire gold—
You may have heard of it. I had a farm
Offered me not long since up Berlin way
With a mine on it that was worked for gold;
But not gold in commercial quantities,
Just enough gold to make the engagement rings
And marriage rings of those who owned the farm.
What gold more innocent could one have asked for?
One of my children ranging after rocks
Lately brought home from Andover or Canaan
A specimen of beryl with a trace
Of radium. I know with radium
The trace would have to be the merest trace
To be below the threshold of commercial;
But trust New Hampshire not to have enough
Of radium or anything to sell.
A specimen of everything, I said.
She has one witch—old style. She lives in Colebrook.
(The only other witch I ever met
Was lately at a cut-glass dinner in Boston.
There were four candles and four people present.
The witch was young, and beautiful (new style),
And open-minded. She was free to question
Her gift for reading letters locked in boxes.
Why was it so much greater when the boxes
Were metal than it was when they were wooden?
It made the world seem so mysterious.
The S'ciety for Psychical Research
Was cognizant. Her husband was worth millions.
I think he owned some shares in Harvard College.)
New Hampshire used to have at Salem
A company we called the White Corpuscles,
Whose duty was at any hour of night
To rush in sheets and fool's caps where they smelled
A thing the least bit doubtfully perscented
And give someone the Skipper Ireson's Ride.
One each of everything as in a showcase.
More than enough land for a specimen
You'll say she has, but there there enters in
Something else to protect her from herself.
There quality makes up for quantity.
Not even New Hampshire farms are much for sale.
The farm I made my home on in the mountains
1 had to take by force rather than buy.
I caught the owner outdoors by himself
Raking.up after winter, and I said,
“I’m going to put you off this farm: I want it."
“Where are you going to put me? In the road?”
“I’m going to put you on the farm next to it.”
“Why won't the farm next to it do for you?"
"I like this better." It was really better.
Apples? New Hampshire has them, but unsprayed,
With no suspicion in stern end or blossom end
Of vitriol or arsenate of lead,
And so not good for anything but cider.
Her unpruned grapes are flung like lariats
Far up the birches out of reach of man.
A state producing precious metals, stones,
And—writing; none of these except perhaps
The precious literature in quantity
Or quality to worry the producer
About disposing of it. Do you know,
Considering the market, there are more
Poems produced than any other thing?
No wonder poets sometimes have to seem
So much more businesslike than businessmen.
Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.
She's one of the two best states in the Union.
Vermont's the other. And the two have been
Yokefellows in the sap yoke from of old
In many Marches. And they lie like wedges,
Thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end,
And are a figure of the way the strong
Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,
One thick where one is thin and vice versa.
New Hampshire raises the Connecticut
In a trout hatchery near Canada,
But soon divides the river with Vermont.
Both are delightful states for their absurdly
Small towns—Lost Nation, Bungey, Muddy Boo,
Poplin, Still Corners (so called not because
The place is silent all day long, nor yet
Because it boasts a whisky still—because
It set out once to be a city and still
Is only corners, crossroads in a wood).
And I remember one whose name appeared
Between the pictures on a movie screen
Election night once in Franconia,
When everything had gone Republican
And Democrats were sore in need of comfort:
Easton goes Democratic, Wilson 4
Hughes 2. And everybody to the saddest
Laughed the loud laugh the big laugh at the little.
New York (five million) laughs at Manchester,
Manchester (sixty or seventy thousand) laughs
At Littleton (four thousand), Littleton
Laughs at Franconia (seven hundred), and
Franconia laughs, I fear—-did laugh that night--
At Easton. What has Easton left to laugh at,
And like the actress exclaim "Oh, my God" at?
There's Bungey; and for Bungey there are towns,
Whole townships named but without population.
Anything I can say about New Hampshire
Will serve almost as well about Vermont,
Excepting that they differ in their mountains.
The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;
New Hampshire mountains Curl up in a coil.
I had been coming to New Hampshire mountains.
And here I am and what am I to say?
Here first my theme becomes embarrassing.
Emerson said, "The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land with little men."
Another Massachusetts poet said,
"I go no more to summer in New Hampshire.
I've given up my summer place in Dublin."
But when I asked to know what ailed New Hampshire,
She said she couldn't stand the people in it,
The little men (it's Massachusetts speaking).
And when I asked to know what ailed the people,
She said, "Go read your own books and find out."
I may as well confess myself the author
Of several books against the world in general.
To take them as against a special state
Or even nation's to restrict my meaning.
I'm what is called a sensibilitist,
Or otherwise an environmentalist.
I refuse to adapt myself a mite
To any change from hot to cold, from wet
To dry, from poor to rich, or back again.
I make a virtue of my suffering
From nearly everything that goes on round me.
In other words, I know wherever I am,
Being the creature of literature I am,
I shall not lack for pain to keep me awake.
Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers:
"Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it."
Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,
No less than England, France, and Italy.
Because I wrote my novels in New Hampshire
Is no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.
When I left Massachusetts years ago
Between two days, the reason why I sought
New Hampshire, not Connecticut,
Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this:
Where I was living then, New Hampshire offered
The nearest boundary to escape across.
I hadn't an illusion in my handbag
About the people being better there
Than those I left behind. I thought they weren't.
I thought they couldn't be. And yet they were.
I'd sure had no such friends in Massachusetts
As Hall of Windham, Gay of Atkinson,
Bartlett of Raymond (now of Colorado),
Harris of Derry, and Lynch of Bethlehem.
The glorious bards of Massachusetts seem
To want to make New Hampshire people over.
They taunt the lofty land with little men.
I don't know what to say about the people.
For art's sake one could almost wish them worse
Rather than better. How are we to write
The Russian novel in America
As long as life goes so unterribly?
There is the pinch from which our only outcry
In literature to date is heard to come.
We get what little misery we can
Out of not having cause for misery.
It makes the guild of novel writers sick
To be expected to be Dostoievskis
On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort.
This is not sorrow, though; it's just the vapors,
And recognized as such in Russia itself
Under the new regime, and so forbidden.
If well it is with Russia, then feel free
To say so or be stood against the wall
And shot. It's Pollyanna now or death.
This, then, is the new freedom we hear tell of;
And very sensible. No state can build
A literature that shall at once be sound
And sad on a foundation of well-being.
To show the level of intelligence
Among us: it was just a Warren farmer
Whose horse had pulled him short up in the road
By me, a stranger. This is what he said,
From nothing but embarrassment and want
Of anything more sociable to say:
"You hear those bound dogs sing on Moosilauke?’’
Well, they remind me of the hue and cry
We've heard against the Mid - Victorians
And never rightly understood till Bryan
Retired from politics and joined the chorus.
The matter with the Mid-Victorians
Seems to have been a man named Joh n L. Darwin."
"Go 'long,"‘ I said to him, he to his horse.
I knew a man who failing as a farmer
Burned down his farmhouse for the fire insurance,
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.
And how was that for otherworldliness?
If I must choose which I would elevate —
The people or the already lofty mountains
I'd elevate the already lofty mountains
The only fault I find with old New Hampshire
Is that her mountains aren't quite high enough.
I was not always so; I've come to be so.
How, to my sorrow, how have I attained
A height from which to look down critical
On mountains? What has given me assurance
To say what height becomes New Hampshire mountains,
Or any mountains? Can it be some strength
I feel, as of an earthquake in my back,
To heave them higher to the morning star?
Can it be foreign travel in the Alps?
Or having seen and credited a moment
The solid molding of vast peaks of cloud
Behind the pitiful reality
Of Lincoln, Lafayette, and Liberty?
Or some such sense as says bow high shall jet
The fountain in proportion to the basin?
No, none of these has raised me to my throne
Of intellectual dissatisfaction,
But the sad accident of having seen
Our actual mountains given in a map
Of early times as twice the height they are—
Ten thousand feet instead of only five—
Which shows how sad an accident may be.
Five thousand is no longer high enough.
Whereas I never had a good idea
About improving people in the world,
Here I am overfertile in suggestion,
And cannot rest from planning day or night
How high I'd thrust the peaks in summer snow
To tap the upper sky and draw a flow
Of frosty night air on the vale below
Down from the stars to freeze the dew as starry.
The more the sensibilitist I am
The more I seem to want my mountains wild;
The way the wiry gang-boss liked the logjam.
After he'd picked the lock and got it started,
He dodged a log that lifted like an arm
Against the sky to break his back for him,
Then came in dancing, skipping with his life
Across the roar and chaos, and the words
We saw him say along the zigzag journey
Were doubtless as the words we heard him say
On coming nearer: "Wasn't she an i-deal
Son-of-a-bitch? You bet she was an i-deal."
For all her mountains fall a little short,
Her people not quite short enough for Art,
She's still New Hampshire; a most restful state.
Lately in converse with a New York alec
About the new school of the pseudo-phallic,
I found myself in a close corner where
I bad to make an almost funny choice.
"Choose you which you will be—a prude, or puke,
Mewling and puking in the public arms."
"Me for the hills where I don’t have to choose.”
"But if you bad to choose, which would you be?"
1 wouldn't be a prude afraid of nature.
I know a man who took a double ax
And went alone against a grove of trees;
But his heart failing him, he dropped the ax
And ran for shelter quoting Matthew Arnold:
"'Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood':
There s been enough shed without shedding mine.
Remember Birnam Wood! The wood's in flux!"
He had a special terror of the flux
That showed itself in dendrophobia.
The only decent tree had been to mill
And educated into boards, be said.
He knew too well for any earthly use
The line where man leaves off and nature starts.
And never overstepped it save in dreams.
He stood on the safe side of the line talking—
Which is sheer Matthew Arnoldism,
The cult of one who owned himself "a foiled
Circuitous wanderer," and "took dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne"—
Agreed in 'frowning on these improvised
Altars the woods are full of nowadays,
Again as in the days when Ahaz sinned
By worship under green trees in the open.
Scarcely a mile but that I come on one,
A black-checked stone and stick of rain-washed charcoal.
Even to say the groves were God's first temples
Comes too near to Ahaz' sin for safety.
Nothing not built with hands of course is sacred.
But here is not a question of what's sacred;
Rather of what to face or run away from.
I'd hate to be a runaway from nature.
And neither would I choose to be a puke
Who cares not what be does in company,
And when he can't do anything, falls back
On words, and tries his worst to make words speak
Louder than actions, and sometimes achieves it.
It seems a narrow choice the age insists on
8ow about being a good Greek, for instance)
That course, they tell me, isn't offered this year.
"Come, but this isn't choosing—puke or prude?"
Well, if I have to choose one or the other,
I choose to be a plain New Hampshire farmer
With an income in cash of, say, a thousand
(From, say, a publisher in New York City).
It's restful to arrive at a decision,
And restful just to think about New Hampshire.
At present I am living in Vermont.
— “New Hampshire,’’ by Robert Frost
Vermont town loses its cops
Downtown Randolph, Vt.
Photo by M.S.Maguire Copyright: ©2006 M.S.Maguire
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
‘The Boston Globe had a rather poignant story Dec. 4 about the perhaps permanent loss of the town police force of Norman Rockwellian Randolph, Vt., in the White River Valley, because of fiscal and other issues. Law enforcement will, at least for the time being, be provided by Orange County. Townspeople are saddened that they’re losing an element of their local identity and some folks seem to feel less secure. It’s important to preserve such local agencies. Not every public service should be outsourced, or privatized.
To read more, please hit this link.
'Shadows and Light'
Image from the “Shadows and Light’’ show at The Franklin Gallery at Riverstones Custom Framing, in the very lively and interesting city of Rochester, N.H., through January. The show, coordinated by Peter Abate and featuring 34 artists, is a traveling exhibition. “Shadows and Light’’ is about the interplay and interpretation of shadow and light in art. The pieces in “Shadows and Light’’ explore the technical aspects of light and shadow as well as the symbolic and metaphorical ways these elements are expressed.
The Cocheco River provided power for Rochester’s early factories and mills, which made it a very prosperous place for many decades, starting in the early 19th Century. Shoes and blankets were among the major products. Prosperity spawned a remarkable degree of cultural energy, which continues to this day and has included the construction of an opera house and the residence of numerous visual artists, albeit some only in the summer.
Martha Bebinger: Boston nurse denied life insurance because she has naloxone prescription
Isela was denied life insurance because her medication list showed a prescription for the opioid-reversal drug naloxone.
— Photo by Jesse Costa for WBUR
BOSTON
Bloodwork was supposed to be the last step in Isela’s application for life insurance. But when she arrived at the lab, her appointment had been canceled.
“That was my first warning,” Isela said. She contacted her insurance agent and was told her application was denied because something on her medication list indicated that Isela uses drugs. Isela, a registered nurse who works in an addiction treatment program at Boston Medical Center, scanned her med list. It showed a prescription for the opioid-reversal drug naloxone — brand name Narcan.
“But I’m a nurse, I use it to help people,” Isela told her agent. “If there is an overdose, I could save their life.”
That’s a message public health leaders aim to spread far and wide. “Be prepared. Get Naloxone. Save a life,” was the message at the top of a summary advisory from the U.S. surgeon general in April.
But some life insurers consider the use of prescription drugs when reviewing policy applicants. And it can be difficult, some say, to tell the difference between someone who carries naloxone to save others and someone who carries naloxone because they are at risk for an overdose.
Primerica is the insurer Isela said turned her down. (We agreed to use just Isela’s first name because she is worried about how this story might affect her ongoing effort to get life insurance.) The company said it can’t discuss individual cases. But in a prepared statement, Primerica noted that naloxone has become increasingly available over the counter.
“Now, if a life insurance applicant has a prescription for naloxone, we request more information about its intended use as part of our underwriting process,” said Keith Hancock, the vice president for corporate communications. “Primerica is supportive of efforts to help turn the tide on the national opioid epidemic.”
After Primerica turned her down, Isela applied to a second life insurer and was again denied coverage. But the second company told her it might reconsider if she obtained a letter from her doctor explaining why she needs naloxone. So, Isela did contact her primary care physician — and then realized that her doctor had not prescribed the drug.
Isela bought naloxone at a pharmacy. To help reduce overdose deaths, Massachusetts and many other states have established a standing order for naloxone — one prescription that works for everybody. Isela couldn’t just give her insurer that statewide prescription; she had to find the doctor who signed it. As it happens, that physician — Dr. Alex Walley — also works at Boston Medical Center.
Walley is an associate professor of medicine at Boston University; he also works in addiction medicine at Boston Medical Center and is the medical director for the Opioid Overdose Prevention Pilot Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
“We want naloxone to be available to a wide group of people — people who have an opioid use disorder themselves, but also [those in] their social networks and other people in a position to rescue them,” Walley said.
He said he has written a half-dozen letters for other BMC employees denied life or disability insurance because of naloxone, and that troubles him.
“My biggest concern is that people will be discouraged by this from going to get a naloxone rescue kit at the pharmacy,” Walley said. “So this has been frustrating.”
The life insurance hassle — and threat of being turned down — has discouraged Isela and some of her fellow nurses. She is not carrying a naloxone kit outside the hospital right now because she doesn’t want it to show up on her active medication list until the life insurance problem is sorted out.
“So if something were to happen on the street, I don’t have one — just because I didn’t want another conflict,” Isela said.
BMC has alerted the state’s Division of Insurance, which has said in a written response that it is reviewing the cases and drafting guidelines for “the reasonable use of drug history information in determining whether to issue a life insurance policy.”
But Isela isn’t a drug user. And yet, she is being penalized as if she were.
Michael Botticelli, who runs the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine at BMC, said friends and family members of patients with an addiction must be able to carry naloxone without fear that doing so will send them to the insurance reject pile.Jewr
“It’s incumbent on all of us to make sure that we try to kind of nip this in the bud,” he said, “before it is any more wide-scale.”
Botticelli said increased access to naloxone across Massachusetts is one of the main reasons overdose deaths are down in the state. The most recent state report showed 20 fewer fatalities through the first nine months of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017.
Botticelli relayed his concerns in a letter to Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. surgeon general, who says he contacted the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. That group says it has not heard of any cases of life insurance applicants being denied because they purchased naloxone.
Adams said it’s good to — as Botticelli suggests — nip the problem in the bud.
“Naloxone saves lives,” Adams said, “and it is important that all Americans know about the vital role bystanders can play in preventing opioid overdose deaths when equipped with this lifesaving medication.”
Isela said the second company that rejected her has agreed to let her reapply, in light of Walley’s letter stating that she carries the drug so that she can reverse an overdose. Isela is in the process of reapplying.
This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
The only cure: Get plenty of sleep
”Insomnia’’ (print), by Mei Fung Elizabeth Chan in the Duxbury Art Association’s Winter Juried Show at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Mass., Feb. 3-April 13.
Llewellyn King: A Christmas cake for the Bakers' Year
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Christmas is coming. I know this because of indelible evidence in my own home. My wife, Linda Gasparello, has just baked a Christmas cake. If I doubt that this is the month of Christmas, I just have to look at it, cooling on the kitchen counter, declaring itself, in its way, the harbinger of the holidays.
The cake can’t be eaten yet. No, no. Linda, who’s a phenomenon at the range, explains when she sees me circling with a knife, the cake needs to “cure” for at least a week. Rum must infuse the cornucopia of fruit which has bonded with flour and eggs and whatever else makes a cake a cake. I don’t know all the fruits and nuts that go into The Great Christmas Cake, but I do know there are dried apricots. Linda gave me some as a bribe to get out of the kitchen while she was baking the cake.
All year we eat very little cake in our home. Desserts are avoided for the usual reason: keeping down the calorie count. But recently, for a party, Linda made a carrot cake. Not because she’s my wife, but because I adore carrot cake, I can say that hers is the best-ever.
How come I indulge in carrot cake when I eschew sponge, hide from German chocolate and, with a heavy heart, have even shaken my head at Sachertorte (chocolate cake covered with apricot jam and chocolate icing) in Vienna -- a crime against Austria, practically an act of war? (I must confess, though, that I once ate the cake in the Hotel Sacher in Vienna where it was invented.) The answer is carrots sound so healthy. “Good for you,” my mother used to say. She was a frightful cook and so raw carrots were better than anything she tried to do to them, which was mostly boil the life out of them until they were soft and spongy, most of the nutrients gone.
This year I read Hotel Sacher, a novel by Rodica Doehnert which traces the role of the great hotel at the end of the 19th Century -- how it was a kind of headquarters for the events that led to the end of Austro-Hungarian Empire and to World War I. If you want to research this in chilling detail, read Max Hastings’s book Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War.
Back to cakes and Christmas. Linda’s cake has so many things in it I wonder it doesn’t cause a criticality incident or spontaneously ignite.
There seems to be boom in cooking and baking in particular. It all goes back to Julia Child, “The French Chef” starting on television in the 1960s, who whet the nation’s palate for cooking. Julia showed that cooking could be fun (especially if you cook with wine and imbibe as you go) and challenging -- so much so that today we have an abundance of cooking shows.
The ones I hate are those which weaponize cooking — with contestant chefs who are sent home in tears because their sauce separated or, horror of horrors, their soufflé collapsed.
Anyway, it seems 2018 is the Bakers’ Year. Linda is an exception because she bakes and tames meat. She can make a delectable osso buco as easily the tiramisu which follows. Mostly, there’s a divide between the flour people and meat people. Pretty much in the same the way, when I worked at The Washington Post, there was a divide between the pot smokers and the drinkers. Me, the latter.
I can tell baking is in by the number of recipes I find people exchanging, and I put it all down to The Great British Baking Show, on PBS, which entertains and makes baking exciting. Here contestant chefs also are sent home, but with such teary reluctance that if you want a hug from the whole cast and the other amazing chefs, you deliberately add a cup of salt instead of sugar to the cake. Tears and hugs all round.
We’re planning a Great British Christmas Tea at our house with Devonshire clotted cream and jam on scones, little sandwiches and – play the drums and trumpets fortissimo -- the fruited cake, which is curing very nicely, thank you.
And for Christmas itself? We’re going out to a restaurant. Happy holidays!
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com. He is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Patrick would have been stronger candidate than Warren
Deval Patrick
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
So former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has decided not to run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. As a fine speaker (to me better than Obama) and retail politician with two successful terms as the state’s CEO, he could have been a formidable candidate for the nomination, if not in the general election.
His decision opens the door wider for fellow Bay State Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who, if she decides to run, could draw on some of the financial and other campaign resources that Patrick would have gotten and certainly has an enthusiastic following of progressives. But it’s hard to see how the senator could get elected president.
Tim Faulkner: Opposition mounts to seismic blasting off East Coast to find oil and gas
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and environmental groups intend to resist the recent announcement of plans to commence seismic blasting for offshore oil and gas drilling. But time may be running out to prevent it.
Seismic blasting uses underwater airguns to search for fossil fuels deep beneath the seafloor, a process that endangers marine mammals such as whales and dolphins.
On Nov. 30, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued what is known as incidental harassment authorizations (IHA) to five companies for conducting seismic testing in an area from Delaware to Florida, a region twice the size of California.
The companies are ION GeoVentures, based in Houston; Spectrum Geo Inc. of England; TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company of Norway; WesternGeco of England, and CGG, based in Paris.
Whitehouse called their approval “a statement” and “just an idea” that could be stalled by Congress. But according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the five authorizations are under final review and seismic surveys could begin as early as January.
The IHA allows the the companies to perform deep-penetration seismic surveys that search thousands of meters below the seafloor for oil, natural gas, and minerals. The federal “incidental take authorization” provision allows the activity to kill, harass, hunt, or capture marine mammals. Harassment is defined as “any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance which has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild; or has the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”
The federal National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says the potential to displace or harm marine life is minimal because of brief and limited exposure to survey noise.
According to the environmental advocacy group Oceana, the surveys deliver seismic blasts every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day over days or even weeks. Survey boats use dozens of airguns simultaneously to produce a constant blast that can travel thousand of miles.
The impact on sea life is significant. Airgun blasts cause temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, disruption of mating and feeding, beach strandings and even death, according to Oceana. Airgun blasts also kill fish eggs and larvae.
“For whales and dolphins, which rely on their hearing to find food, communicate, and reproduce, being able to hear is a life or death matter,” according to Oceana.
According to a 2013 report, catch rates of Atlantic cod, haddock, rockfish, herring, sand eel and blue whiting declined by 40 percent to 80 percent because of seismic testing.
Seismic airgun testing in the Atlantic Ocean could injure 138,000 whales, according to BOEM. The noise is particularly threatening to the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
BOEM offers a list of protective measures to reduce harm to sea life, such as halting airgun use when animals get too close to vessels.
When a similar proposal was advanced under President Obama, more than 90 percent of the coastal communities in the Mid- and South Atlantic passed resolutions opposing the practice. The dissent was known as the Resolution Revolution, organized by Oceana. Shortly before Turmp took office in 2017, the Obama administration denied the applications for seismic testing in the Mid and South Atlantic, citing impacts on marine life. President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reversed that decision in May 2017, with the America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.
In January, Zinke announced plans to open the entire East and West coasts to offshore fossil-fuel exploration, prompting broad public opposition and efforts by coastal governors to meet with Zinke to convince him to halt the initiative.
In February, Gov. Gina Raimondo and Rhode Island’s congressional delegation held a press conference to announce their opposition to offshore drilling. Block Island, Charlestown, Jamestown and Tiverton all passed resolutions opposing offshore drilling and seismic blasting.
During a 45-day comment period on the proposed seismic airgun testing, the National Marine Fisheries Service received 15 petitions with a total of 99,423 signatures. Only one petition, with 595 signatures, supported the seismic surveys. The 14 other petitions with nearly 99,000 signatures opposed seismic blasting, as well as oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
After the recent news of forthcoming seismic testing, Whitehouse said South Atlantic Republicans “would do well to remember the job Oceana did with the Obama administration trying for offside drilling.”
Whitehouse intends to work with the Commerce Committee and Appropriations Committee “to align our folks” to halt the seismic surveys and offshore oil and gas extraction.
On Dec. 11, Whitehouse, Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-MA, and six other senators asked the Department of Commerce to rescind IHA’s and the Department of Interior to deny the seismic survey permits. In a letter, the senators cite environmental threats and economic harm to tourism and fishing. They also noted that the results of the surveys would be kept private by the survey companies and not available for government or public use.
BOEM, however, is already reviewing the survey applications and could approve them by January.
“If they try to move up to the Northeast, they’ll find that the opposition is bipartisan,“ Whitehouse said. “So, I think we have a real prospect of stopping it, but it’s hard to stop something that’s at this point is just an idea, a statement. Once it hits the administrative steps, we’ll figure out what the best way to counterattack is.”
The counterattack is also going through the courts, primarily in the South. On Dec. 11, Oceana and eight other environmental groups filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina a lawsuit that claims that by issuing the IHA, the National Marine Fisheries Service ignored science and violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. The lawsuit wants the authorizations suspended until environmental assessments are performed.
If and when the seismic blasting get underway, Oceana will track the activity with a real-time map.
Tim Faulkner is a reporter and writer for ecoRI News.
Vertigo in wood
Roller Coaster, (mulbury and plywood), by Andy Moerlein, at Boston Sculptors Gallery.
'Silence knows no direction'
”sleet against the windowpane
or maybe a mouse in the wall…
I listen…
but silence knows no direction
outside,
heavy pine boughs,
deep in the woods
so quiet, so still
a deer steps
inside, warm,
the sound of a cat's paw
disturbs very little
as it hunts in a dream
silent as sleet’’
— “Silent Solstice (Winter Becomes Maine),’’ by Denis Dunn
'Mysterious core of life'
Town meeting in Huntington, Vt.
“Vermont tradition is based on the idea that group life should leave each person as free as possible to arrange his own life. This freedom is the only climate in which (we feel) a human being may create his own happiness. ... Character itself lies deep and secret below the surface, unknown and unknowable by others. It is the mysterious core of life, which every man or woman has to cope with alone, to live with, to conquer and put in order, or to be defeated by.’’
— Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958), American writer and education reformer
An American enigma
Calvin Coolidge.
Coolidge: An American Enigma, by the late Robert Sobel, published by Regnery, is a very well written look at the life of the Vermont-born Massachusetts lawyer and politician who became our 30th president. I found the stuff about “Silent Cal’s’’ early life particularly engaging. Sobel calls Coolidge our last “Jeffersonian’’ (limited government) president.
A man of integrity and reserve, Coolidge rather incongruously presided over “The Roaring Twenties’’. The well educated and smart Coolidge was, of course, a far more complicated character than many people thought when he was president. He was also a good writer, and sometimes showed flashes of sentiment/emotion in speeches and letters that he usually kept hidden from the public. And he wrote almost all of his own speeches – the last president to do so.
Coolidge would have agreed with this quote from James Madison:
“The infirmities most besetting popular governments…are found in defective laws, which do mischief before they can be mended, and laws passed under transient impulses, of which time and reflection call for a change.’’
The Coolidge Homestead, now a museum, in Plymouth Notch, Vt.
Ross Gittell/Bob Hieronymus: Trying to Improve pipeline from N.E. colleges to N.E. jobs
From the New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
England colleges and universities are often presented as a source of economic advantage in the New England states for providing a strong talent pool for regional employers. Yet, many state officials and others are questioning the efficacy of colleges and universities in serving regional labor market needs, as employers across New England are currently experiencing pronounced shortages of skilled workers.
Regional groups such as the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the New England Council (NEC) have key roles to play in addressing this challenge.
A so-called brain drain problem is frequently cited. This is cued in part by the relatively low percentages of New England high school graduates going to a college in their home states. All the New England states are in the bottom quintile in the percentages of high school graduates staying in state to go to college, all with percentages well below the national average of 72%–from a low of 36% in Vermont to a high of just 60% in Massachusetts (NICHE, 2017).
Also of concern is that the region’s colleges collectively have a high percentage–more than four of every 10–of their student population from out of state with inherently weaker connection to the state of college attendance and its labor market. The labor market perils are highlighted by data reported in November 2018 by the Chronicle of Higher Education that eight of the 10 four-year nonprofits with the highest out-of-state employment of graduates are in New England, and analysis identifying a strong positive correlation between New England college percentages of students from the region with percentages of graduates employed in the region. (See Figure 1.)
Yet, while New England high school graduates go to college out of state at high rates, they are very likely to stay within the region to go to college. More than three of every four New England high school students stay within the region to go to college, according to data from the labor market analytics firm Emsi on the fall 2016 entering freshman class, the latest figures available. This is well above the U.S. average for staying in state to go to college.
Notably, it is above that for the state of Texas, which, is among the top five states in the retention of high school students going to college but is more than three times the geographic size of the entire New England region (269,000 square miles compared with 72,000). This means that students staying in the New England region to go to college–even when going to college outside of their home state–can be much closer to their home towns and labor markets than a student staying in state in Texas.
Connecting New England college students to careers in the region
With over three-quarters of New England high school grads staying in the region to go to college, and the more than 24,000 students from outside the region starting college in the region as freshmen each year, the most important problem to address is not keeping high school graduates in state to go to college but rather it is more strongly connecting New England college students who are from the region and from outside the region to careers and employers in the region. One challenge, however, is that New England college students are highly dispersed across the region’s large and diverse higher education sector.
There are 33 colleges within the region with more than 1,000 New England high school grads as freshman students each year–from UMass-Amherst with 3,650, to Massachusetts Bay Community College with 1,006. These top destinations for New England college-goers, however, collectively account for less than one-half the total number of New England high graduates at New England colleges, and it is a diverse group.
All but one of the top college destinations for New England residents are public institutions. More than half (17) of the top 33 are community colleges, which are key institutions in connecting New England higher education with the economy. The other approximate half include all the public flagships, nine regional publics and one private college, Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Each of the 33 institutions counts over three-quarters of their total entering freshman students from New England, except SNHU, where about one-third are from the region.
Another group of 33 colleges in the region with notable numbers of New England high school grads as freshmen ranges from Johnson & Wales University with 986 to Husson University with 577. This second group is also widely dispersed across the region–from all the states in the region except for Vermont—but in contrast to the top 33 is dominated by private institutions (about two-thirds, 19). It also includes seven state universities and seven community colleges.
At the privates, the intermingling of New England high school graduates with out-of-region students is much higher than at the publics. Some private colleges in this second group have high percentages of their student body from New England (e.g., Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Providence College, each with over two-thirds). A New England-focused recruitment strategy could be effective at these colleges and help address the labor supply challenges that the region’s declining high school graduating classes presents, by working in a focused manner to have more high school graduates from the region stay in the region to work after college graduation.
At other private colleges, such as Harvard University and Boston University, the percentage of students from the region is much lower (21% at Harvard and 31% at B.U.). To add to the skilled labor supply, recruitment efforts at these colleges should have more of a focus on out-of-region student interests and their reasons for job selection, including for example, varied job and career paths and options after first placement.
The diverse and dispersed high education sector in New England means that it is difficult to base talent-recruitment efforts for New England college students from New England at any single college or in any one state or with just privates or publics or just at four-year colleges. The dispersion of the student population from outside the region is even wider absent the concentration at community colleges (99% of students from the region) and public four-year colleges (89% from the region).
Figure 1: Correlation % of Grads Employed in Region and % of Freshmen from Region at Selected New England Higher Education Institutions
Deep and broad regional approach needed
NEBHE convened the Commission on Higher Education & Employability in recognition of the need to take a regional approach to connecting high education to the economy in the region. The Strada-Gallup Education Consumer Survey in 2017 examined the main motivations driving college students’ decisions nationwide to pursue postsecondary education. Employment outcomes were the main motivation for higher education, with 58% reporting job and career outcomes as their primary reason. This is true across all higher education pathways and demographic subgroups. And the focus on work/job market outcomes often intensifies as college students get closer to graduation, and closer to having to pay off student debt and be on their own financially.
The commission appropriately identified as one of its priorities the provision of more robust and relevant New England local labor market information to college students in the region, to inform their career exploration and inform their job search and post-college job placement. This is consistent with higher education’s mission and role, particularly the public institutions.
There are tools available to better inform New England college students about career pathways/opportunities in New England and encourage college graduates in the region to stay in the region and be a stronger talent pool for employers in New England. One example is Emsi’s Career Coach.
Career Coach enables students to start with interest-based career exploration and then identify the programs at colleges that can set them on a path to accomplish their professional goals. As students navigate Career Coach, they are presented with key labor market data specific to their region, including wages, job growth, in-demand skills and live job postings from local and regional employers. For example, if a college student were to explore Career Coach for New England in November 2018, they would have information about occupations specifically in the region with the highest numbers of job postings–including software application developers, registered nurses, marketing managers, industrial engineers, management analysts, sales managers and accountants–and know specific information about the companies in the region recruiting and what the job requirements are and what the jobs pay. This helps New England college students to connect more strongly to the regional economy.
A New Hampshire model
The Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) has adopted Career Coach. As part of its systemwide implementation, each of the state’s seven community colleges received its own website that matches their unique colors and branding. Each site displays labor market data specific to their service area and includes links to the host college’s program pages. Sharing the same core software also means that students across the state benefit from a consistent and familiar interface, regardless of which college’s site they visit. CCSNH also plans to integrate Career Coach with its enrollment and academic planning systems, leveraging the unique strengths of both platforms to provide students a comprehensive solution for challenges from career exploration to course registration.
Deploying technology and Web- and mobile-based info is a good start, but academic changes that will substantively and proactively help students engage with career exploration in New England is essential. For example, several New Hampshire community colleges have adopted an innovative first-year course called “Ethnography of Work,” originally developed by Guttman Community College in New York City.
In this course, students visit local employers, use Career Coach and apply principles of ethnography–observing, recording and analyzing a culture (in this case workplace) to produce a written account of an institution and the role, responsibilities and daily life of people (in this case, workers) at the institution–in their exploration of workplaces and future careers. The course provides strong academic based links of course work to practical career information and exploration and earns students transferable social science credits.
Inspired by the University of Hawaii system, New Hampshire colleges also plan to embed Career Coach into core English composition courses, where students will use it to develop and write about their career goals as they relate to employment opportunities in their local college area. And the CCSNH is also working with the state’s Department of Education, encouraging high school counselors and parents (along with students) to take advantage of this resource as they help students explore opportunities to continue learning and working, right in their own backyard. The goal is to facilitate early and broad adoption of tools like Career Coach that can help create stronger connection of high school and college students to the economy in the region.
New Hampshire’s approach suggests the value of having a central, consistent and comprehensive source of labor market and career-academic program information for all colleges and communities in New England. For the region, this would enable students to explore in detail academic programs aligned with their career aspirations and possibilities. It would help to address the outmigration of young talent to outside the region and strengthen the homegrown workforce pipeline to employment in the region. And it could also strengthen the connection of college students from outside the region to the regional economy as college students from outside the region explore career opportunities and connections with employers in their use of Career Coach and also in their curriculum and coursework.
Potential partnership possibilities with use of regionwide Career Coach could be supplemented with information and programing from NEBHE (for higher education information and Regional Student Program tuition break), the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (for economic info) and the New England Council (for business engagement and partnership).
There will be a need to complement the career coach-type efforts and related academic programing with business-connecting activities such as internships, apprenticeships and other work-based learning at regional employers. This is where the New England Council and other business organizations in the region could be very helpful.
Creative recruitment efforts–based on what we know about where New England high school grads attend college – are also needed. These efforts could include “New England Patriot” recruiting events and nights by regional employers specifically targeted to students who are from New England. Events could focus on students at different types of institutions, for example events focused on community college students in the region (with a focus on jobs requiring more technical and vocational specific training and education), or students at regional public universities (who are more likely to stay in the region than students attending the public flagships).
And there is the opportunity to make targeted effort to strengthen connections to the regional economy for the many students attending colleges in New England who are from outside the region. This could involve “New England career exploration/information” events targeted to students at New England colleges from outside the region. These events could be focused on the attributes of the region–its cultural and recreational resources–and also its diverse and large number of job and career possibilities in exciting and growing fields including biotech, regenerative medicine, advanced composite materials, robotics, data analytics and artificial intelligence to name just a few. And these events could be used in part on introducing different areas in the region to student populations that might not be aware of the opportunities outside of Boston, for example, in Providence, Portland, Burlington, Manchester, New London, Lowell and other mid- and smaller-sized cities in the region.
Many of these events–to address the diverse and dispersed higher ed sector in New England–should be multi-college, metro- or rural-wide area. It could be helpful if NEBHE, the Federal Reserve Bank or NEC hosted these events (or all three jointly hosted). Even when focusing on students from outside the region, it will be difficult for employers to focus on one college or in one state. For example, the top five destination colleges for students from outside the region (SNHU, B.U., Northeastern, Boston College and Harvard) together account for less than one of every six freshman students from outside the region.
What will remain to be done?
There will remain a need to address intra-regional brain drain as the more rural areas of New England do experience out-migration of young people from rural area college deserts to university and college centers. Special efforts will have to be made to “reconnect” college graduates from rural areas to the economies in their home communities. This could involve bringing talent plus jobs back to rural areas, with targeted effort to support students from rural areas in starting their business and bringing their start-ups “back” to their hometowns. Targeted effort could also be made to connect, students at colleges in rural areas to local economies. Efforts that include promotion of entrepreneurship at rural colleges, such as Dartmouth College’s Entrepreneurial Network, which include having college-launched businesses stay based locally, could serve as good models.
The region’s higher education institutions are only as strong a source of competitive advantage as are the connections among colleges and universities and their students to the businesses and industry in the region. A regionwide career coach with connections type approach, that strengthens the connectivity of college students and programs in the region to regional businesses and jobs, can help bolster the region’s economic future.
Ross Gittell is chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire. Bob Hieronymus is vice president of business development and partnerships at Emsi.
Holy Cross lauded for Teach for America role
At Holy Cross, Fenwick Lawn, with Commencement Porch of Fenwick Hall in the foreground and the Chapel beyond.
This is from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com
“The College of the Holy Cross, a Council member, was recently ranked as a ‘Top Contributor’ of graduates to Teach for America programs. In 2018, the small private college in Worcester sent 12 students, making it the second biggest contributor among all small schools in the country.
“Under the Teach for America programs, graduates sign on for two years of teaching in under-served schools across the country. Since the program’s inception in 1990, 212 Holy Cross alumni have participated. This year, 3,600 teachers will be sent to 36 different states, with Holy Cross graduates heading to classrooms in Washington, DC, Texas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee and Florida.
“Amy Murphy, director of the Center for Career Development at Holy Cross, said, ‘Holy Cross challenges our students to consider the ways they can best use their gifts, talents and passions in service to others. For many of our graduates, that is in our nation’s most under-resourced communities and schools. What’s more, Holy Cross students embody many of the qualifications and traits that Teach for America seeks in candidates: demonstrated leadership skills, high achievement and a commitment to standing in solidarity with those from marginalized or impoverished backgrounds.”’
“The New England Council commends Holy Cross on continuing to foster civically engaged students with a passion for learning and thanks them for their dedication to educating our future leaders.’’
