Vox clamantis in deserto
The future of the MBTA
lnside South Station, Boston, the major MBTA commuter rail hub.
From Robert Whitcomb’s ‘Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Rhode Island and Massachusetts readers would do well to read The Boston Globe’s Dec. 5 article “Mass. officials have big ideas – and big decisions – for the MBTA commuter rail’’. Bay State transportation officials are pondering how the system should change over the next few decades, including route and station additions, service frequency, fare structures and equipment. The many Rhode Islanders who commute on the MBTA to and from Boston, mostly from Providence but some from points south, should read the piece. Please hit this link
'Winter and summer'
“Winter was always the effort to live; summer was tropical license. Whether the children rolled in the grass, or waded in the brook, or swam in the salt ocean, or sailed in the bay, or fished for smelt in the creeks, or netted minnows in the salt marshes, or took to the pinewoods and the granite quarries, or chased muskrats and hunted snapping turtles in the swamps or mushrooms or nuts on the autumn hills, summer and country were always sensual living, while winter was always compulsory learning. Summer was the multiplicity of nature; winter was school.
”The bearing of the two seasons on the education of Henry Adams was no fancy; it was the most decisive force he ever knew; it ran though life and made the division between its perplexing, warring, irreconcilable problems, irreducible opposites, with growing emphasis to the last year of study. From earliest childhood the boy was accustomed to feel that, for him, life was double. Winter and summer, town and country, law and liberty were hostile, and the man who pretended they were not was in his eyes a schoolmaster—that is, a man employed to tell lies to little boys.’’
— From The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams (1838-1918), his posthumously published memoirs. The book, by a member of Massachusetts’s most distinguished family, won the Pulitzer Prize and is considered a great classic.
UNH School of Law seeks to offer mostly online degree focusing on intellectual-property law
The University of New Hampshire School of Law named its honors program after the great Massachusetts U.S. senator, secretary of state and orator Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native.
The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com) reports:
The University of New Hampshire School of law, in Concord, recently forayed into the online-education industry. If it gets permission from the American Bar Association, UNH will create the nation’s first specialized law degree.
“If given the approval to proceed, the online law degree from UNH will focus on intellectual property, covering topics from patents and trade secrets to privacy. The degree will take three and a half years to complete, and will likely start in the fall of 2019. The school would require the students to be in Concord only three or four weeks each year, and most classes will be taught online. The hope is that the American Bar Association will make an exception to their rule, which says law degrees can offer at most one third of total credit hours through distance learning, with the rest taking place on campus. Only three of the accredited law schools in the country, including Syracuse University, in New York State, Southwestern University, in Los Angeles, and Mitchell-Hamline University, in Minnesota, have applied for and received approval to offer an online JD degree.
“Dean Megan Carpenter said in a statement that, ‘Intellectual property is a perfect area for this. It is the law of innovation, so we should think about ways to innovate in legal education while teaching it. . . It’s satisfying to use a technology when you’re learning about law that supports that technology.’
“The New England Council congratulates UNH on this exciting new initiative and commends them for working to make law school more accessible.’’
In the off-season
“Isle’’ (watercolor on paper), by Connie Glore, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass.
Waterbury 'tougher than New York’
Waterbury from the west, with Union Station clock tower at left.
“My past is not pleasant; I grew up in a very tough town, Waterbury, Connecticut. I grew up in New York {City}, too, but Waterbury was tougher.’’
— Dylan McDermott, TV actor
Editor’s note: He’s right. I lived near Waterbury for four years and it’s a tough town, although the communities around it are fairly sedate and bucolic. Waterbury is an old manufacturing city, once nicknamed “The Brass Capital of the World.’’ It was a major center for making watches and clocks (think Timex) as well as most anything made of brass.
The Naugatuck River flows through the middle of it, a major reason for its rise to prominence; the river provided the power for the first factories. I well remember the river’s vivid changing colors depending on which toxic chemicals companies were pouring directly into the Naugatuck. No EPA then!
Floods from Hurricane Diane, in 1955, did tremendous damage along the river.
Despite the city’s rather gritty reputation, it has a fine museum, the Mattatuck.
— Photo by JLLM06
Llewellyn King: For neckties and against AI, airline bosses and hedge funds in 2019
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
No New Year’s resolutions this year. Nary a one. Instead I am throwing myself, body and soul, into campaigns -- campaigns designed to halt the slide in civilized life.
Here are my campaigns:
1. Rescue the necktie: More and more men are going around naked about the throat but wearing a pocket square. Now I love pocket squares, very useful if you should meet one of those famous actresses who is always in tears. Whip it out, get it soaked and presto! It goes on eBay.
The thing is that neckties are disappearing. Only businessmen on the perp walk and some politicians wear them. Even former President Barack Obama appears to have abandoned them almost entirely -- a serious regression.
Ties are important. They conceal protruding Adam’s apples, turkey necks and dirty shirt fronts. Also, they are used to wipe eyeglasses and to twirl when listening to people who go on and on.
2. I am pushing to get airline executives to ride “basic coach” on at least one 10-hour flight. They will learn that they are the agents of physical cruelty and weird perversity.
They have ordained travel without luggage because the fees for luggage on “basic” are so high you would be paying for another class of service if you take a suitcase.
The airline bosses should be squeezed into the amazing shrinking toilets (too small for grownups); they should have their knees in their faces and have to sit up as straight as a drill sergeant. They should then try to stand up after hours of contortion.
3. I want a punitive tax for banks who will not speak to you but will put you through hours of automated telephone hell, in the hope that you will give up and leave them alone (with your money and their fees with which they steal that money).
4. Hedge funds that shred the lives of workers and deny customer service in the name of “shareholder value” should be prosecuted for hate speech for those words. “Shareholder value” can be roughly translated as “We’re going to screw you.” How about “customer value” or a little “social value”?
You have been on the line for hours and are begging the artificial-intelligence recording to let you hear a live human voice, even if it is originating from a faraway country and its owner is speaking English as a third language. The machine says, “Do you want to hear the main menu again?” You slide to the floor, defeated, crazed and suicidal.
I want it to be a federal crime to have a machine with a woman’s voice. They are cursed routinely with foul expletives that even a machine should not have to hear, let alone one that thinks it is a woman. #MeToo should get on this one and demand that the programmer gets the sack without pension.
5. I will be working for honesty from automated systems. I do not want my computer to “welcome” me when I turn it on. I believe that it does not care, that it is not sincere and that it is, to this point in time, inanimate and has no feelings. Therefore, when machines say things like “Have a nice day,” even “thank you,” they are lying.
This will change as artificial intelligence is given artificial emotions and machines talk to us in ways so crafty we will not know whether it is a machine or a person. We may not even know if the damned thing has captured the affections of our loved ones. Some states still have an “alienation of affections” common law tort that allows the thwarted lover to sue for stolen love.
Already, you may have a good case for filing a lawsuit against Facebook for running off with your children. Albeit in plain sight.
Happy New Year.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
'Glacial arrogance'
Bubble Rock, in Acadia National Park, Maine. It was left there by the last Ice Age. Such ‘‘glacial erratics’’ cam be found all over New England.
“The forest floor is white,
but here & there a boulder rises
with its glacial arrogance
& brooks that bubble
under the sheets of ice
remind us that the tundra of the soul
will soften
just a little
towards the spring.’’
— From “New England Winter,’’ by Erika Jong
A cover for Christmas
Based on “Christmas Carolers’’ (oil on canvas), by J.C. Leyendecker, for the Dec. 21, 1907 Collier’s magazine cover at the National Museum of American Illustration, Newport. This takeoff features Judy Goffman Cutler, museum director and co-founder; Laurence S. Cutler, chairman/CEO and co-founder, and Jill Perkins, museum shop manager/interior administrator.
Heating from the woods
“My wife, Daniela, and I live in an old house from 1810 with three fireplaces at the end of a dead-end dirt road on Cape Cod, so I turn the trees into firewood for us and a friend of mine sells the rest.’’
— Sebastian Junger, famed bestr-selling book author (The Perfect Storm, etc.) and journalist. He lives part of the year on the Outer Cape.
Trump's push for dirtier water
Northeast bays from space.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Of course, the Trump administration wants to roll back federal protections under the Clean Water Act to please mining, agribusiness and real-estate-development interests! If this actually happens, you can expect more pollution, including of public drinking water, as well as damage to fish stocks and other wildlife in wetlands, rivers and lakes. Trump’s plan would harshly affect such coastal bodies of water as Narragansett, Buzzards and Chesapeake bays.
The Trump mob likes to say that the move would return needed power to the states to make determinations on water quality and how to protect it. But many states, especially in the South, that are basically run by big business interests, would simply engage in a race to the bottom of regulations, leaving more environmentally responsible states downstream to handle the new pollution.
'Surreal waiting game'
Left, “So Sophisticated” (oil on canvas), by Alexandra Rozenman; right, “Witness’’ (oil on canvas), by Anita Loomis, in the show “Untold Stories, at Fountain Street Fine Art, Boston, through Dec. 23.
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To see a video of the show “Untold Stories,’’ by Anita Loomis and Alexandra Rozenman, please hit this link.
This is the show’s last weekend at Fountain Street Fine Art, Boston.
From Artscope’s review:
“The immediate condition and activity conveyed within the pictures made by painters Anita Loomis and Alexandra Rozenman is extrapolation. …{T}he paintings allow and welcome conjecture. The artists have created environments that focus the viewer’s attention towards inference, encouraging the seer to intellectually step into and become part of vague spaces and curious scenes — to participate in a surreal guessing game.
“For the viewer, the stories within the compositions are open-ended and puzzling, being directed in possibility by the depicted visual objects and glimpses of human form. We approach these compositions by asking what’s going on. Some paintings depict relatable imagery such as domestic interiors, landscapes and active scenes, while others are expressive and fantastical with abstracted and speculative shapes and figures.’’
Restoring smell at Massachusetts Eye and Ear
Cross-section of the interior of the human nose.
From the New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
”Physicians at Massachusetts Eye and Ear {in Boston} recently announced their use of electrodes in the nose to stimulate nerves, causing people who had lost their sense of smell to suddenly report smelling strong scents like onions or fruit.
“The electrodes are described as a “cochlear implant for the nose,” positioned in the sinus cavities to stimulate the olfactory bulb, which is the part of the brain where smell is processed. Dr. Eric Holbrook, corresponding author of the study and chief of rhinology at Mass. Eye and Ear, is careful to remind patients that smell restoration is far more complicated than hearing restoration, due to the high volume of nerve interaction in the structure. According to research from the International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, while loss of smell affects around 5 percent of the general population, there are no proven therapies yet to help restore it.
“Dr. Holbrook said, ‘Our work shows that smell restoration technology is an idea worth studying further.’ He went on to say that while the research is still in its early stages, ‘there’s a high potential for it to actually be a device down the road.’
“We commend Mass. Eye and Ear on this pivotal study and thank them for their dedication to helping people recover their sense of smell.’’
Springfield may have some fiscal lessons for other old cities
Springfield Armory Museum, in the former Main Arsenal of the Springfield Armory.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
‘A piece in Governing.com by Alan Greenblatt may hold some lessons for other financially struggling New England cities, such as Providence. This is about Springfield, Mass., now best known for having a big new casino (which will not help the city in the long run). It’s also well known for the Basketball Hall of Fame (the sport was invented there), as the longtime site of gun making, for both the military and private sector, and as the boyhood home of Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss).
After 18 years of deficits and a deteriorating tax base, a state control board took over Springfield’s government in 2004. The board restructured municipal departments, and, Mr. Greenblatt reports, “laid off employees and ran a rigorous performance program, using data to keep track of what was going on. Mayor Domenic Sarno, first elected in 2007, has helped put into place real-time accounting systems when changes are called for.’’
Thus the city’s finances have been stabilized and its credit ratings have risen.
Meanwhile, law enforcement has been improved, as have the schools, with high-school graduation rates up 56 percent over the past few five years (but how much of this involves “social promotions’’ ?) and, probably more important, the dropout rate has been halved.
And CRRC, a rail-car manufacturing plant, has opened, with about 150 workers, all of them well paid in varying degrees and, unlike the plus-300 and mostly low paid workers at the MGM Springfield Casino, making a useful product instead of a service that spawns crime and other social problems.
Springfield still has plenty of problems, especially poverty, but things are much, much better these days. It has some lessons for other old cities.
To read the Governing.com piece, please hit this link.
Chris Powell: On pot, Conn. and Mass. engage in federal-law nullification
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Should Connecticut legalize marijuana (cannabis) for ordinary recreational use, as neighboring Massachusetts has just done?
To a great extent Connecticut already has legalized the intoxicating weed, since the state has authorized medical prescriptions for it and licensed a few medical dispensaries, and criminal penalties for simple possession have been reduced to irrelevance. As a practical matter for years marijuana use has been so widespread in the state that police and courts didn't bother much with enforcement.
The question in Connecticut isn't so much about legalization itself as about state government's licensing and taxing sales to gain millions of dollars each year. While marijuana use is already heavy in Connecticut, thrusting state government into the dope business this way will increase drug abuse, indolence, intoxicated driving, youthful stupidity, and unplanned pregnancies.
People may find this price acceptable the more they rely on state government for their income. Others may not be as convinced.
But there is also a constitutional reason to avoid putting state government into the marijuana business. That is, marijuana remains prohibited by federal law, so state government's licensing and profiting from its sale would constitute nullification.
There would be no nullification in simply repealing Connecticut's laws against marijuana, leaving enforcement to the Feds, and probably little damage in doing so, state law being so ineffective already. But putting the state into the marijuana business would aggressively contravene federal law, as the state does by issuing driver's licenses and other forms of identification to illegal immigrants.
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SO WHO NEEDS EXPERIENCE?: Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy opposes President Trump's nomination of State Department spokeswoman and former Fox News personality Heather Nauert for United Nations ambassador because of her lack of diplomatic experience. But Murphy has just engineered the election to Congress of former Waterbury teacher of the year Jahana Hayes despite her lack of political or governmental experience. Somehow it was fine with Murphy for Hayes to start at the top without having served even a day on a local school or zoning board.
Indeed, a few days ago, upon the death of former President George H.W. Bush, Murphy, like many others, was celebrating the former president's career and character though Bush was appointed U.N. ambassador by President Richard Nixon in 1971 without any diplomatic experience, just two terms in Congress. Bush got the U.N. job not for any diplomatic skills but as political patronage, a consolation prize after losing a campaign for U.S. senator.
Trump's first U.N. ambassador, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, had no diplomatic experience either but has been widely praised for her work at the U.N.
So experience isn't everything -- unless it can be used against one's political adversaries.
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JUST OPEN JUVENILE COURT: Police throughout Connecticut are complaining about repeat juvenile offenders who seem to have realized that Gov., Dannel Malloy administration's criminal-justice reforms mean that there are no longer any consequences for their crimes short of murder. Defenders of the reforms either dispute the police or complain that the reforms were supposed to be accompanied by social services for the young offenders but haven't been.
There will be no telling who is right until Connecticut opens its juvenile court proceedings to the public.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
Erin Harrington: The 'Timberdoodle' is in trouble
A notably well-camouflaged American woodcock.
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Bog sucker. Labrador twister. Night partridge. Timberdoodle. No, these aren’t the names of ’90s alternative punk rock bands. This list is in fact an assortment of nicknames affectionately given to one odd bird, the American woodcock. Or, if you’re a scientist, Scolopax minor.
In the words of a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island, Stephen Brenner, “There’s not too many birds in North America like the woodcock.”
The Timberdoodle is unique for many reasons. This rotund shorebird has a long sandpiper-like beak, short, stubby legs, and arguably the silliest sounding mating call known to mankind. Its eyes are oddly placed near the top of its head, which allows it to simultaneously keep a lookout for predators while also probing for food in the forest soil. It uses its long beak to feel around in the dirt for earthworms, often rocking its body back and forth in a dance that would rival that of an Egyptian, of The Bangles’ persuasion.
While this all sounds fun and silly, unfortunately, the woodcock is in trouble. In fact, for the past four decades, the woodcock population has been decreasing range-wide at roughly 1.2 percent annually, in part because of a lack of open space that the woodcock requires for its mating dances in the sky.
Graduate students and researchers in Scott McWilliams’s lab at URI are trying to figure more out about why the population is in decline and what can be done about it.
What scientists have found out about woodcock so far is that they require early-successional forest. The term seems like a mouthful, but McWilliams said the concept is fairly simple.
“Early-successional forest is an area that has only very young trees and lots of shrubs but would be mature forest if left alone,” he said.
Previous research teams have already found that one main reason why the woodcock population seems to be declining is a continuing loss of their habitat. But the fact of the matter is we still have only a vague idea of what woodcock habitat needs actually are, especially in southern New England.
Tracking habitat preferences
Former URI Ph.D. student Roger Masse was able to use tracking devices on woodcock to determine their movement patterns, and from that data, develop what is known as a “resource selection function.” This model uses sophisticated statistical analysis to analyze woodcock movement data and tell us what components of forest habitat are most important for woodcock given what is available in the area.
Brenner’s research builds off what Masse learned and takes it to the next level. The main question trying to be answered is: Does habitat quality influence the species’ willingness to stay and the movements thereafter once the bird decides to stay?
To answer this question, researchers are swapping woodcock from two different landscapes of two different management qualities and using radio transmitters to track their movements.
“If they’re in good quality habitat, they should be more likely to stay,” McWilliams said. “Whereas, if they’re in poor quality habitat, birds should be more likely to move and go back to where they came from. In short, we're asking the woodcock to tell us which type of landscape they prefer to inhabit.”
By conducting these experiments in forests that are already specifically managed for woodcock habitat needs, scientists and forest managers can come up with more specific plans for increasing numbers of other early-successional species, such as cottontail rabbits, shrubland birds like eastern towhees and prairie warblers, and even flying squirrels. But scientists and forest managers can’t do this work alone.
Recruiting landowners to help
For the past seven years, Bill Buffum’s work at URI has included supporting the RI Coverts Project, a collaborative effort between government and non-governmental organizations to address the need for more early-successional forest in Rhode Island by getting private landowners involved in forest management.
According to Buffum, a research associate in URI’s Department of Natural Resources Science, the biggest challenge for communicating with landowners is that they aren’t easily convinced that clear-cutting is beneficial for wildlife.
“A clear-cut is ugly for a couple of years … it looks like a bomb went off,” Buffum said. “But after about three or four years, the vegetation starts to grow and people start saying, ‘Wow, I’m already seeing the impact. I’m seeing birds I never saw before on my property.’”
Ultimately, the work of the McWilliams lab is important not just because it may help increase the woodcock population, but also because it may help many other species that require early-successional forest habitat. This is why the timberdoodle is referred to as an “umbrella species,” or a species that, once properly managed for, can be beneficial to many other types of species that use the same habitat.
“Whatever kind of critters we’re talking about, species depend on a variety of different habitats,” McWilliams said. “We’ve interfered with the natural sources of disturbance such as beavers and forest fires, and so part of what we have to do is help to recreate that kind of early-successional habitat and provide for those species that especially depend on it.”
Erin Harrington, a Ph.D. student in the Biological and Environmental Sciences program at the University of Rhode Island, runs Project Timberdoodle.
Getting around
Morning Commute, Shanghai (oil on canvas panel), by Ellen Leader, in her show “Through the Eyes of a Traveler: Paintings by Ellen Leader,’’ at New Art Center, Newton, Mass., Jan. 10-Feb. 23.
'As dancers in a spell'
“I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.’’
From “Year’s End,’’ by Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), a New England-based poet.
Don Pesci: Sandy Hook massacre revisited and reanalyzed
Roses featuring images of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
VERNON, Conn.
Documents just released years after a shooter murdered 20 students, 6 teachers and his mother, and then killed himself, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, have been made available to Connecticut politicians and the general public in answer to a legal action brought by a persistent Hartford Courant.
The documents had been carefully tucked away for five years and clearly point to the social and mental deficiencies of the shooter.
All reports should have been released soon after the shooter’s suicide, because none of the information contained therein could have prejudiced any legal action. It is impossible to put a dead mass-shooter on trial for murder. In the absence of the necessary data unearthed above, a public trial of sorts, some of it sprinkled with absurd speculations, was conducted entirely in the mass media, and eventually one of the weapons used in the mass slaughter, an AR15 semi-automatic rifle, was pronounced guilty and banned in Connecticut.
Arguing that “something must be done” to prevent such slaughters in the future, decision makers in Connecticut banned some weapons, aspersed the state with their emotional solidarity with the victims, passed hastily constructed anti-gun legislation and congratulated themselves on their moral acuity.
The released documents, the Los Angeles Times noted, “which had been kept from the public until now, were part of the mass of writings, records and computer files seized by detectives from the Lanza's home after the killings. The Courant mounted a five-year quest to obtain the unreleased documents, eventually winning an appeal before the Connecticut Supreme Court.”
Even though we know that the Devil resides in details, not everyone was thrilled with the release of the documentation. The story, one letter writer noted, could not be justified because it “exalted the killer” and the rest of the country, the writer mused, “are looking for articles that uplift, as well as inform and educate.” Another writer slammed the paper for “choosing the sensational low road to infamy by publishing on page one… the Newtown killer’s writings, thoughts and other tripe… The killer has no place in our collective memory – ever.” Yet another writer winced, “We do not need to know.”
In an editor’s note, The Hartford Courant pointed out, “Understanding what a mass killer was thinking not only paints a clearer picture of the individual, it helps us identify and understand red flags that could be part of a prevention formula for future mass shootings.”
Several weeks after the shooting, Connecticut Commentary noted, “Everyone in Connecticut whose hearts have been bruised by the loss of life in Sandy Hook -- that is, everyone in Connecticut – is praying for solutions that solve the problems of people who have been bludgeoned by reality. A political milking of the crisis helps only the milkers.”
Those solutions were not forthcoming for a number of reasons: The Devil managed to hold the details close to his chest. Some politicians were, it turned out, very much interested in milking the Sandy Hook cow in such a way as to clamp restrictions on firearms, thus benefiting their future political prospects; and Connecticut’s media, though it tried mightily, had failed to wrest from the Devil the details upon which a real solution to a real problem might have been proposed. The so called “red flags” flourished by the Courant in its own attempt to uncover pertinent details were fluttering six years ago, when the psychotic shooter murdered the children and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary School.
We know now – and knew then – the red flags that signaled mental distress.
PsychDrugShooters.com provides a detailed list of school shootings connected to shooters who have taken drugs. Their brief report on the Sandy Hook shooter notes that “While Lanza’s toxicology report showed no traces of anti-psychotic medications, sources say he was prescribed the antidepressant Celexa by the Yale Child Study Center in his early teens. Lanza also took Lexapro for a short time as a teen, but stopped after his mother reported symptoms such as dizziness, sweating, slurred speech and the inability to open his cereal box.”
A piece in the New Yorker, which draws on an interview with the father of the shooter, asserts that the shooter took no further psychotropic drugs following his reaction to Lexapro. Indeed doctors and nurses who treated the shooter speculate that the shooter's psychosis worsened because of his refusal to take therapeutic drugs.
Clearly, the shooter was anti-social and mentally disturbed. The father believes that his son’s Asperger diagnosis, though it may have been correct, masked a more dangerous psychosis. Neither the father nor the mother of the shooter, who had retreated into an impenetrable shell, expected violence from their son.
They were wrong. But the data suggest an that people who thought that the myriad of gun restrictions imposed after the murders could prevent further instances of this kind were also wrong.
Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon, Conn.