Vox clamantis in deserto
The life of Frank Lloyd Wright: Seeking light and harmony in the midst of personal disaster
The Zimmerman House, in Manchester, N.H., one of only five houses in New England designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the only one open to the public.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Frank Lloyd Wright was arguably the greatest U.S. architect so far, designing natural-light-filled, “organic’’ buildings that fit in elegantly with their surroundings. He was also often a superb, if untrustworthy, writer. But his life – especially the first part of his adulthood, was rife with disasters, most horrifically murders and fires, as well as extra-marital scandals and financial bad behavior and distress. The central horror came on Aug. 15, 1914, when a crazed servant set Wright’s already famous Wisconsin residence, Taliesen, ablaze and murdered Wright’s mistress, Mamah Cheney, her two young children and four others with an ax.
Paul Hendrickson, in his new book Plagued by Fire: Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), a thickly researched, passionate and often deeply speculative -- and sometimes overly ruminative biography – brings this huge figure to life in all his genius, arrogance, reckless ambition, contradictions and doubts. Along the way, he also weaves in a great deal of American aesthetic, sociological (including racial) and even economic history. But then Wright got around as he designed more than 1,000 structures, of which 532 were completed. And his family and friends comprised a Shakespearean cast of characters.
Mr. Hendrickson summed up Wright’s gigantic life thus:
“If harmony and order were his great artistic ideals. Wright could find little of them in his own debt-plagued, scandal-wracked, death-haunted history.” We are fortunate that many Frank Lloyd Wright buildings are still around to marvel at.
William Morgan: The utilitarian and the romantic in the Granite State
A 50-cent picture found in a junk store in Warren, R.I., is the ultimate Granite State winter pin-up. On the rear, penned in real ink, is the legend: “Sue Nardi on Snowplow/South Lyndboro, N.H./Feb. 12, 1950’’
Lyndeborough is a small upland village in southwestern New Hampshire, just above where Stony Brook joins the Souhegan River, which provided power for the 19th-Century textile mills at Wilton, N.H.
The image was printed in someone’s basement or in a school darkroom, as the edges of the image are not parallel. My guess is that this is probably a yearbook photograph.
It is more romantic, however, to imagine that the photographer was Sue Nardi’s adoring boyfriend. (Valentine’s Day was just two days away.)
The fetching Italian-American dressed up for this glamour shot. Despite the snow, she is wearing penny loafers and her trousers are seriously ironed. (Feb. 12 of that year was a Sunday, but surely Miss Nardi would have worn a dress to Mass?)
If still with us, Sue would be around 90 – perhaps still treasuring memories of posing against that essential northern New England implement, a snowplow.
William Morgan is an essayist and architectural historian. He is the author of Monadnock Summer: the Architectural Legacy of Dublin, New Hampshire. His next book, Snowbound: Dwelling in Winter, will be published next year by Princeton Architectural Press.
Lyndeborough Town Hall, built in 1846.
Wilton Woolen Co. mill in 1912. There were lots of woolen mills in New England, originally because it was prime sheep-raising country and New Englanders needed wool to keep warm in the region’s long cold season.
New England Merino sheep, famed for the quality of their wool. Merino sheep were introduced to Vermont in 1802. By 1837, 1 million sheep were in the state. But the price of wool dropped to 25 cents/pound in the late 1840s. The state could not handle more efficient competition from other states, and sheep-raising in the Green Mountain State collapsed. Still, it was a bonanza for decades.
Gray, or colorless?
“Thanksgiving,’’ by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe
If months were marked by colors, November in New England would be colored gray.
— Madeleine M. Kunin, diplomat, author and politician. She was the 77th governor of Vermont, from 1985 until 1991.
Jill Richardson: New EPA rule would undermine science
From OtherWords.org
The Trump Environmental Protection Agency wants to introduce a new rule: Its scientists can only use studies that make all of their data public.
The new proposal is crafted to sound like a win for transparency, which is supposed to be a good thing. In reality, the rule will significantly harm public health — and loosen the reins on polluters.
And that, of course, is the idea.
Let me explain. I am a graduate student in sociology, a social science. I study people, which means I collect some kind of data about them. For any scientist who studies people, transparency is important — but so is confidentiality.
Any basic research ethics class includes famous cases of unethical research on people that occurred in the not too distant past. So now, our institutions carefully review each study on people to ensure they are ethical.
Ethical research requires providing participants with enough information that they can give informed consent to participate. It means not taking advantage of vulnerable populations (like prison inmates or mental health patients), minimizing any risk of harm that might come to the people you are studying as much as possible, and disclosing any risk before they agree to participate.
In my case, that means that in any study I’ve done, I’ve promised my participants confidentiality.
With their permission, I might quote them in a publication using a fake name, but only if I can do so in a way that won’t allow anyone to identify them. I don’t want anything they tell me to be used to harm them back in their communities.
In the case of the new EPA rules, the information collected in public health studies can be even more intimate. When scientists study the effects of pollution on people’s health, they may confidentially review people’s private medical records. Obviously, these records should not be made public
When a researcher cannot promise confidentiality, the quality of their research suffers. Fewer people may be willing to participate, which might harm the reliability of the results. Those who do will be less open.
How can we trust studies in which all of the data is not made public? Often, some of the data is made public, or at least made available to others in certain circumstances (such as by request).
Additionally, science is not an individual endeavor. Communities of scientists in each field work together to advance the knowledge within that field. Any new study will be picked apart by everyone who reads it, because that’s what we do to each other. Others will try to replicate your findings — and if they can’t, your conclusions will be called into question.
It’s rough on the ego, but it’s good for science.
Dismissing any study that does not make its data public, on the other hand — particularly when that data has a good reason to remain confidential, like medical data — serves to harm science, not help it.
And when you can’t do good science, you can’t base your public health regulations — your pesticide bans, your pollution controls, your clean water rules, and whatever else — on good science.
Given the track record of the Trump administration on the environment so far, it’s far more plausible that this proposal is intended to eliminate necessary public health regulations, not to promote transparency.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But the mountains aren't high enough
In New Hampshire’s Franconia Range
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.
Oh, 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,
1 sball 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 John 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
Lots of pictures and fun and Christmas gifts
The annual Little Pictures Show at the Providence Art Club is great fun. To learn more, please hit this link.
Crafty crows
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Crows seem to be most excitable in November, at least in New England.
From crows.net:
“This {mid-November to mid-December} is the time when the big communal roosts are forming…arge number of crows will be gathering together in the evenings to spend the night in roosts that may contain anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of crows. Crows from a fairly large geographical area, covering a circle with perhaps a 20 mile or larger radius, will begin flying in the late afternoon or early evening towards a central roost location. It appears that in many cases, crows from various parts of the area served by the roost will stop at one or more staging area along the way where groups of crows gather and remain a short time before proceeding to the main roost. To use a human analogy, one might say that families of crows proceed to staging areas, where the clans gather, before flying on to gather as a tribe at the roost….”
“Although roosts may occur in a wide variety of surroundings, most commonly they are found in areas with large, mature trees not growing to densely, relatively near a water source such as a river or lake. In cities favorite areas seem to be cemeteries, college campuses, parks, malls, railroad yards, and old industrial areas.’’
No wonder they like our neighborhood so much!
They sure drop massive quantities of guano on our cars. But they sure do a great job removing the bodies of car-squashed squirrels from the roads.
Much has been made of recent research showing the high intelligence of crows and ravens, which look like crows but are larger. Parrots and the corvid family of crows, ravens and jays are considered the most intelligent birds.
They can, for example, remember individual humans, count and use tools. This naturally leads people, as they do with, particularly, their dogs and cats, to assign them human qualities. It’s as if we want to expand our human community to include other species as subsidiaries of us, the ruling class. But of course, whatever their range of intelligence, including emotional intelligence, they live in worlds far different from ours. Beware anthropomorphizing them.
To read more, please this link.
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.’’
-- Alexander Pope
Play it again, Shawn
“Musician III” (found material and paint), by Shawn Farley, in his show at the Augusta Savage Gallery, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, through Nov. 26.
The gallery says that Mr. Farley’s mixed-media constructions “apply discarded and found materials to yield soulful results. ‘‘
Poisoning the Merrimack
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The Trump administration doesn’t particularly like environmental rules because they can inconvenience some businesses, whose bosses/owners might be big campaign contributors. It’s been trying to weaken or delete some regulations, meant to protect people and the broader environment.
Here’s a troubling example of its attitude:
Federal and state environmental officials have renewed a permit letting Turnkey Landfill, in Rochester, N.H., send as much as 100,000 gallons a day of polluted runoff to a Lowell, Mass., treatment plant that empties into the Merrimack River, which provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people a day.
The polluted water has large amounts of highly toxic chemicals known as PFAS, which have been linked to kidney cancer, low infant birth weights and other diseases, reports The Boston Globe, which said:
“The company’s tests showed that the amount of PFAS, known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they never fully degrade, was more than 100 times higher than federal and state guidelines and more than 400 times higher than stricter standards being considered in Massachusetts.’’
“While the Lowell Regional Wastewater Utility treats the landfill runoff before discharging it into the river, the plant lacks the expensive equipment to filter out PFAS. Worse, environmental advocates say, the treatment process can make the chemicals more toxic, enabling them to bind in ways that make them harder to break down.”
Don’t expect the EPA and the Granite State to change their minds (EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is a former coal-industry lobbyist.) You might want to stick to bottled water when you’re in the Lowell area…
To read more, please hit this link.
The Merrimack at sunset in Lowell
'Friendly in the dark chill'
A Leonid meteor streaks across the sky during a meteor ‘‘shower.’’
"The sky is streaked with them
burning holes in black space --’/
like fireworks, someone says
all friendly in the dark chill
of Newcomb Hollow in November,
friends known only by voices.’’
From “Leonids Over Us,’’ by Marge Piercy, a Wellfleet, Mass., poet. Newcomb Hollow Beach is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore.
'Nature in 3-D'
“Mountain View Spring,’’ by Nick Edmonds, in his show at Boston Design Center, through Nov. 29.
His sculptures are made of wood and inspired by Japanese woodworking techniques he learned when he spent eight months in Japan during the 1970s. “Each piece is made of many complex forms, joined together in a single whole. He replicates landscapes and other natural environments for viewers to lose themselves in, creating nature in 3-D,‘‘ the gallery says..
November-looking leaves
Encaustic collage by Jeanne Borofsky, in her show “Jeanne Borofsky: Natural Expressions,” at Creative Connections Gallery, Ashburnham, Mass., through Nov. 30.
The gallery says: “Natural Expressions’’ showcases the encaustic collages of Borofsky, who “finds inspiration in the natural world, utilizing patterns of bark, leaves and water in each piece. Also present in her work are unnatural elements like stamps, maps and electronic odds and ends, which meld seamlessly with the natural to create a complete piece.’’
Ashburnham is a rural/exurban town, with views of Mt. Monadnock to the north and Mt. Wachusett to the north. It’s best known for Cushing Academy, a well-regarded private boarding and day school.
Print of Ashburnham from 1886 by L.R. Burleig with list of landmarks depicted including Cushing Academy.
David Warsh: Societies search for a unifying 'worthy ogre'
View from the West Berlin side of the Berlin Wall, with its graffiti art, in 1986. The wall's "death strip" is on the east side of the Wall.
During the six months I spent in Berlin many years ago, Café November was a frequent destination, often in the company of Thomas Geoghegan, who, predictably, had found it. The dilapidated Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood was becoming evermore gentrified. But Café November had opened in 1993, before Ostalgie set in. November was fraught with significance in memory; it was the month of the Armistice that ended World War I and in which the Kaiser abdicated, 1918; of Kristallnacht, in 1938; in which the Nazi Army became encircled at Stalingrad, in 1942; in which Berlin was first partitioned East and West, in 1945; and, of course, the month when partition ended, in 1989.
In all the stories I read the other week about the 30th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall, the single article that seemed to me most thoughtful was an interview with Wolfgang Hübner, editor of Neues Deutschland. Once the official paper of the East German Communist Party, controlled by its central committee, ND has seen its circulation decline from 1.1 million in 1989 to around 25,000 readers today. Under the headline German Paper that spoke for GDR still fights for socialism, Hübner told Financial Times correspondent Tobias Buck:
Our readers expect us to look back [at the falloff the Wall] in a way that does justice to their own experiences and to their memories of the GDR. They don’t wish the GDR back the way it was, and they mean that. There is a widespread feeling that things went wrong. But they also think there were some basic ideas [underpinning the socialist system] that should be back on the agenda. People say: the GDR never took part in a war. There were no homeless. There was no unemployment…. But the paper as it appears today could not have been published in the GDR.
That sense of loss seems central to German’s political problems today. The generous terms of reunification are recounted in this well-balanced article from The Economist last week, along with the relative upheaval suffered by citizens of the former GDR during the long, slow process of matching the development of West Germany. “On October 4, 1990 [the day after reunification], after a night of partying I carried on my life as normal,” a senior Berlin bureaucrat told the magazine. “Not a single East German had the same experience.” Immigration has exacerbated a situation that had already become testy.
The desirability of paying attention to the experience of others was emphasized elsewhere in connection with the years since 1989. In 1989 Wasn’t the End of History After All, political scientist Yascha Mounk explained, in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) how the motivations behind the rebellion against communism in Eastern Europe were always more mixed than the Western triumphalist narrative suggested.
Those brave protesters in the streets of Dresden and Gdansk, Budapest and Sofia, were united by a hatred of their communist regimes. But they were far less unified in their aspirations for the future. A great number did seek to realize the core values of liberal democracy. But others primarily wanted to liberate their nations from Russian domination, to revive the influence of their ancestral religion or to give free rein to nationalism. In that light, today’s battle against liberal democracy by populists like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski is not so much a betrayal of the revolution of 1989 as a civil war among its protagonists.
Civil war is sometimes mentioned in connection with the U.S., too. I’ve long believed that domestic policy in America was shaped by foreign policy at least since 1939, and that the Cold War imposed a discipline on American discourse that lasted for most of forty years, It eroded during the 1980s and was lost altogether when the Soviet Union dissolved. Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh concisely made that argument last week, in What the US lost when the Berlin Wall fell, that the U.S. requires an external enemy to serve as a “binding agent.”
“As long as the country was menaced from the outside, there was a natural limit on its internal squabbles.” Since 1989, partisanship has grown rampant. Citing the writer Peter Beinart, he notes that George H.W. Bush was the last president whose election was universally recognized as legitimate. Since then, Bill Clinton was dogged by accusations of Arkansas scandals, George W, Bush was said to have been installed by friendly judges, Barack Obama was accused of lacking citizenship, and Donald Trump to have been elected thanks to Russian interference.
When the wall fell, wrote Ganesh, “so did a certain kind of US nationhood.” Islam didn’t do as a unifying enemy. Neither will China. “The partisanship that followed will endure until the next worthy ogre comes along.” The columnist ended on an especially dire note.
It is as though hatred obeys the first law of thermodynamics. Like energy, it can be transferred but never destroyed. The less of it a nation directs outward, the more it must channel at home. America’s victory in the Cold War was a feat of strategy and patience that should be saluted this weekend. It just happens to be a victory from which it has never recovered.
Not yet, anyway. True, the divisions today seem very deep. But the 2020 presidential election offers fresh hope that a young, moderate Midwesterner may be elected. (I have grown partial to Pete Buttigieg and look forward to the Iowa caucuses.)
As for the next “worthy ogre,” global warming will play that role for decades to come. If you believe the science, there can be no doubt that a long, taxing, dangerous struggle lies ahead. If you believe, with Henry Adams, that “Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds,” then expect growing personification of atmospheric polluters.
. xxx
New on the EP bookshelf:
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, by Anne Case and Angus Deaton (Princeton, March 2020)
David Warsh, an economic historian and veteran columnist, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, based in Somerville, Mass., where this column originated.
Getting off before the mountains
On the Massachusetts Turnpike in skidding season
“Once, just west of Framingham on the Worcester Turnpike or Route 9 in Massachusetts, I caught a ride in a truck that had worn brakes. The driver, a jolly red-nosed individual with a white beard who could have passed as Santa Claus, suggested that I might want to get out considering the situation regarding the truck’s brakes. Not wanting to turn down a ride in the middle of the night, I rode it out with the driver. Going uphill was all right, but coming down was decidedly hairy. The driver knew what he was doing and used his engine to slow himself down, but he had to depend on his emergency brake if he wanted to, or had to, stop. At one traffic light, which was on a downhill slope, he couldn’t bring his rig to a stop and just blew through the intersection, horn blowing, weaving past the cross traffic. …. He relied on his loud air horn, which sounded even louder in the dark of night. Fun was fun and eventually we got to Worcester, where I was glad to get off in one piece. I hope that he got his load to where it was going, but I knew that the farther west on Route 9 he went, the more mountainous the terrain would become and I didn’t want any part of that. Besides, this was where I needed to get off. My next leg would take me through Sturbridge and then on to Connecticut.’’
― Captain Hank Bracker, from his book Seawater One
Negin Owliaei: Billionaires, media and stealth politics
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post
From OtherWords.org
Bill Gates wants you to know that he pays taxes.
“I’ve paid more than $10 billion in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes,” Gates told journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. “But when you say I should pay $100 billion, OK, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over.”
Supposedly Gates was talking about a wealth tax 2020 candidates have supported. But no plan yet proposed would seize $100 billion from the philanthrocapitalist anytime soon. Even if it did, he’d still be one of the richest men in the world, with $7 billion left over.
Gates isn’t the only billionaire who’s worried. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon also has concerns about the rising resentment towards his fellow elites.
“I think you should vilify Nazis,” Dimon told Lesley Stahl, “but you shouldn’t vilify people who worked hard to accomplish things.” Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman, who’s become a fixture on CNBC, recently teared up while complaining about the “vilification of billionaires.”
Why do the feelings of the 600 Americans that constitute our billionaire class suck up so much media attention?
For one thing, billionaires literally own the news. Buying up media companies is a new rite of passage for the ultra wealthy, such as the purchase of the Washington Post by Amazon head Jeff Bezos, or TIME by tech CEO Marc Benioff.
They’ll say they’re all about editorial independence, but the truth is billionaire ownership can affect news output. When billionaire Joe Ricketts found out the staff of DNAinfo, a network of city-based news sites he owned, was unionizing, he promptly shut down the entire venture out of spite.
There are more subtle ways in which the rich buy media access. The Gates Foundation, for example, has poured millions in donations into the media over the last several years to raise awareness around the foundation’s philanthropic goals — including its controversial funding of charter schools.
Not all billionaire power is publicly broadcast, however.
In their book Billionaires and Stealth Politics, researchers Benjamin Page, Jason Seawright and Matthew J. Lacombe document how economic elites have banded together to lobby for extremely conservative policies, such as cutting estate taxes, opposing regulations on the environment and Wall Street, and gutting social programs
Because these moves are highly unpopular, they’ve done this work in the background.
That means there’s a network of billionaires aligned with the Koch brothers, who’ve poured hundreds of millions of dollars into anti-labor policies. And Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who changed the media landscape with Fox News. And casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who’s spending his billions shaping U.S. foreign policy.
Their enormous wealth offers them an outlandishly oversized role in our democracy. It’s poisoning both our politics and our media.
So how about a ban on billionaires? Let’s tax away their wealth, but let’s get them off our airwaves, too. Imagine what we’d learn if corporate media didn’t devote entire news cycles to the whims of the rich.
You may not have heard, but for the last several months, the sanitation workers at Republic Services have been fighting for higher wages. “I haven’t had a raise since 2004,” Demetrius Tart told The Guardian. Meanwhile, the company is making a killing from the 2017 tax cuts, and returned more than $1 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks.
The company’s largest shareholder? Bill Gates. Workers took their fight directly to the billionaire, protesting outside a Gates Foundation event in September with signs that read, “Bill Gates treats his workers like garbage.” He ignored them.
Maybe these sanitation workers could get the airtime instead.
Negin Owliaei is an inequality researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org.
Accidental electronic art
“Broken Television 300” (unique digital print), in Patty deGrandpre’s show “Broken Television,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, through Dec. 1. The show presents digital prints of bad TV signals.
New chances for Fall River
Kennedy Park in Fall River, with the famous towers of St. Anne’s Church in the background.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It was good news indeed that Paul Coogan defeated the twice-indicted incumbent mayor, Jasiel Correia, and City Administrator Cathy Ann Viveiros, a Correia ally running as a write-in, and will be the new mayor of troubled Fall River. Mr. Coogan, a member of the city’s school committee, is well respected and holds promise to be an honest and steadying force for the city, which has faced far too much corruption, as well as socio-economic challenges.
Sleaze alert: The (Fall River) Herald News published a leaked video of a secret meeting where Mr. Correia told supporters that he couldn't beat Mr. Coogan, head to head, but that at least one person (presto -- Ms. Viveiros!) would launch a write-in campaign, helping him by dividing the vote. Luckily for the city, the scheme failed. Mr. Coogan won with 79 percent of the vote, with Mayor Correia, getting only 7 percent. Clearly the voters want a big change!
For the leaked-audio story, please hit this link.
Fall River has much poverty and plenty of drug problems, but also some great strengths, including notably hard-working residents, a spectacular hilly site at the head of Mount Hope Bay and some beautiful structures, especially (to me) those old stone mill buildings that look so beautiful as you drive on Route 195, particularly as the sun comes up and sets. Further, Massachusetts’s South Coast Rail project will restore commuter rail service between Boston and southeastern Massachusetts, with stations in Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford; service is expected to be restored by the end of 2023. These are currently the only major cities within 50 miles of Boston lacking commuter rail access to Boston. South Coast Rail will boost the region’s economy by connecting it much tighter with rich Greater Boston. This will include luring more refugees from the sky-high housing costs up there to seek affordable digs in Fall River.
For a long time, New Bedford, which has long been twinned in the public mind with Fall River, has had much better mayoral administration than the Spindle City. Let’s hope that Mr. Coogan’s victory evens that out.
Llewellyn King: How to attack cancer with data mining
NASA’s Omar Hatamleh
The word is exaptation. It will change the future, and it may save your life
It is a word traditionally used in evolutionary biology. But now in scientific and high-tech circles, it is used to describe finding and adapting processes and compounds to uses for which they were not originally intended.
In biology, exaptation is used to describe how an evolving species uses a trait in a new way.
The classic cited example of exaptation is prehistoric creatures that developed wings to keep warm. A later iteration in the same species finds wings can also be used to fly.
In today’s use of the word, it means cross-fertilization of old discoveries with new technologies; extant remedies applied in new ways.
For example, a medicine that was created to treat one disease may be used effectively for another. A drug destined for a specific cancer may be used to treat an immune disorder such as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A material developed for space travel may be ideal for strength and lightness in an automobile.
All this takes on much greater importance in the age of mega data and computer capacity to delve into it and find treasuries of new uses.
Today’s machine learning enables the data to be squeezed and pummeled into yielding extraordinary applications and solutions.
“The challenge is to break down silos and to get companies to democratize their data internally and externally,” says Ryan Caldwell, CEO of MX, a financial technology company.
Now a forward-thinking NASA engineer wants to put this approach -- this multidisciplinary, multi-material, multi-compound, multi-procedural, multi-operational data approach -- on a fast track, accelerating cures and solutions.
He is Omar Hatamleh, chief innovation officer, engineering, at the Johnson Space Center (in Houston) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and executive director of the Space Studies Program at the International Space University. Hatamleh, a polymath with a fistful of degrees, is establishing Infinity Institute, a new kind of think tank that will accelerate cross-industry innovation over the whole spectrum of discovery and application.
Think discovery and rediscovery as the findings of the past are linked to the needs of today, and as findings in one technology can pollinate unrelated technologies. Essentially, it is the story of NASA and the collateral developments from the space program. Exaptation at work.
The genesis of the Infinity Institute is to be found in a series of four annual NASA cross-industry innovation conferences -- the last just concluded.
They were notable for what was not on the agenda: no large discussions of money or the lack of it; no whining about government or regulations, or court decisions. Just a world of science, ideas and the bond between the seemingly incompatible, which when brought together inform each other. A cellist, Jennifer Stumm, described the math in Bach and what that means for science. A NASA scientist, Steve Rader, described how to find affinity ideas through the Internet of Things. An animated filmmaker, Charlie Wen of Marvel Studios, revealed synergies with industrial design.
In the last of these conferences, data expert Caldwell described how he used the very kind of data management and interrogation Infinity Institute has in mind to save the life of a colleague at MX.
When Brandon Dewitt was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his lungs and face at age 33, and given six months to live, Caldwell went to work to break down the medical silos, which enclose so much medicine and hide so many research results. A new treatment being tested in Oregon, which he found, shrunk multiple tumors in Dewitt’s lungs and cheek and saved his life.
When Caldwell’s 2 ½-year-old daughter Chloe was given the wrong medicine in an emergency room, her heart stopped cold. Doctors said would live only a short time without a heart transplant. Caldwell and his wife went to work: They established a war room with computers and whiteboards and bored into the research. A therapy was found and Chloe, now nearly four, is doing well.
Hatamleh’s first target for the new, sweeping concept of exaptation is cancer.
You would think that cancer is well-researched, but Hatamleh believes the exaptation route is the way to go: “We want to break down barriers, go across industries and identify emerging technologies from various industries and explore their application in other fields.”
He believes he can half the death rate from cancer in 10 years by cross-pollinating technologies and therapies and using the kinds of techniques and ideas on display at his unique innovation conferences.
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.
3 new industries for New England?
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Biochar
Herewith three products that might produce some economic and environmental benefits for New England—and the world. One is something called biochar, a charcoal that can increase soil fertility and resistance to some diseases affecting crops and reduce farm runoff into waterways. Perhaps most interesting is that it has been researched as a carbon-sequestration product to fight global warming.
And bioochar can be made from wood chips, as well as straw, husks, landscaping waste, manure and even sewage sludge. It’s being used around the world. New England, much of it being heavily forested, is a very good source of wood chips.
Threads plucked from a Saffron flower to be dried and used for various purposes
Then there’s the possibly highly lucrative potential of growing saffron (a flower that’s a member of the crocus family) in Rhode Island. As the wonderful local nature writer Todd McLeish writes in phys.org:
“Saffron is the world's most expensive spice, selling for about $5,000 per pound at wholesale rates, and 90 percent of the global saffron harvest comes from Iran. But University of Rhode Island agriculture researchers have found that Ocean State farms have the potential to get a share of the market as demand for saffron in the United States grows.’’ Saffron is also used for food coloring and fabric dye (think Buddhist monks’ robes}, and some have touted its uses against cancer, depression and age-related macular degeneration.
“The URI experimental saffron plot yielded 12 pounds of saffron per acre last year, compared to about 5 pounds per acre in {mostly arid} Iran in the second year of growth,’’ Mr. McLeish’s article said.
Another attraction: "It's a fall flowering plant and isn't harvested until late October, so it extends the season for farmers whose growing season is mostly over by now," Rahmatallah Gheshm, a URI postdoctoral researcher who moved to Rhode Island after being a vegetable seed producer and saffron grower in Iran, told Mr. McLeish.
To read the article, please hit this link.
The interior of a quahog shell
Then there’s Brendan Breen, who has figured out how to culture pearls in quahogs, something he learned how to do starting at an aquaculture class at the University of Rhode Island. By the way, reminder: Shellfish aquaculture cleans water. Given that Rhode Island is a major center of the jewelry business, this development is particularly good news.
The Newport Daily News ran a good story a while back on Mr. Breen’s efforts. Hit this link to read it.
Shefali Luthra: Warren's projection of out-of-pocket health-care costs holds up to scrutiny
“If we make no changes over the next 10 years, Americans will reach into their pockets and pay out about $11 trillion on insurance premiums, copays, deductibles and uncovered medical expenses.”
— Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in an Instagram post about her “Medicare for All” plan.
Promoting her much-discussed plan to create a single-payer “Medicare for All” health system, Sen. Elizabeth Warren emphasized a striking figure.
“If we make no changes over the next 10 years, Americans will reach into their pockets and pay out about $11 trillion on insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles and uncovered medical expenses,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in an Instagram video posted Monday.
This fact check was produced in partnership with PolitiFact.
The Democratic health-care debate has been full of competing analyses and estimates about what Medicare for All might cost, what it might save and who would bear the brunt of paying for it. But this precise number was new to us.
If true, it would be a figure both staggering and significant to the unfolding debate, as Americans try to understand how Warren’s brand of a single-payer health system could affect their pocketbooks. So we decided to dig in.
A Reasonable Estimate
We contacted the Warren campaign, which redirected us to a report from the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank, as well as to federal estimates of household out-of-pocket expenses and premium costs over the next decade.
The Urban report doesn’t include the $11 trillion figure. But economist Linda Blumberg, who authored the paper, told us the statistic is “perfectly consistent” with the analysis.
If anything, she said, the number is a lowball figure. When Blumberg and her team crunched the numbers, they found that, under the existing health-care system, Americans can expect to pay $11.7 trillion between out-of-pocket costs — the co-pays, deductibles and uncovered medical expenses — and premiums over the next decade. That calculation comes from Urban’s model for projecting what individual households might expect to spend, factoring in inflation, on these types of health costs.
“Talking about the amount of money we expect households to be spending over time is a very important part of trying to educate people on what single-payer would do, and what the tradeoffs are for them,” said Blumberg, who previously advised the Clinton White House on health policy. On the numbers, “they’re roughly in the right neighborhood,” she added.
We consulted other analysts, too, and as far as we can tell, no one else has done a similar calculation.
Experts told us that Urban’s estimate — and the Warren campaign’s use of it — checks out, based on what we know about American health care spending.
Cynthia Cox, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation and expert on the Affordable Care Act, pointed to what a typical American family currently spends on health care: about $5,000 per year, when you look at out-of-pocket costs and premiums combined. Extrapolating from there, she said, Warren’s claim seems reasonable. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)
“Over the course of 10 years, when you add it up — that sounds about right,” Cox said. “The reality is, people do spend a lot on health care out of their pockets, and there’s a lot spent on their behalf by employers or taxpayer-funded programs that they never see.”
Under Warren’s health-care plan, Americans would pay nothing directly out-of-pocket — no premiums, copays or deductibles — for health care. So that $11 trillion would disappear from the cost side of the ledger.
The figure Warren sited also tracks with national health expenditure projections for out-of-pocket health costs and health premium growth.
The Bigger Picture
Still, there are serious questions about the financing such a shift would require.
And Warren’s Medicare for All plan has been under intense scrutiny since she unveiled it earlier this month, with many critics suggesting it’s too optimistic in its estimates of how much money a single-payer system would cost.
Warren suggests the federal government would need to come up with $20.5 trillion — well below Urban’s estimate of $34 trillion. The difference comes largely from assumptions about how much the government could save, as well as decisions about how much to pay doctors and hospitals.
Warren’s financing structure includes cracking down on tax evasion, new taxes on financial institutions and the wealthiest Americans, and maintaining what many employers currently pay into the system. Critics say that could yield its own inefficiencies.
For instance, the way employer payments are structured could disproportionately harm small businesses, or lower-wage workers, noted Paul Ginsburg, who directs the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy. He also argued that doctors and hospitals —represented by powerful lobbying organizations in Washington — could successfully battle any effort to pay them less, driving up what the government needs to spend.
Still, those disputes are separate from the question of this particular statistic. Here, Warren’s on firm ground.
Analysts also said the $11 trillion number gets at a larger point. Americans currently pay a lot out-of-pocket on health care. Certainly, some might see a tax hike under Warren’s proposed reform, or see downward pressure on their salaries.
Still, others could experience major pocketbook relief.
To be sure, Medicare for All is not the only approach to ameliorating what families pay for health care. Other, more incremental proposals — such as building on the ACA’s coverage expansions or pursuing a “Medicare for all who want it” approach touted by former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor — would cut into the $11 trillion as well, Cox said.
While it wouldn’t eliminate that household cost burden, it would require less in taxes to finance.
“There’s a lot of ways to bring down what people spend on health care,” Cox said. “Any expansion of the role of public programs is likely to bring down individuals’ costs. It’s just a question of how much taxes have to go up to pay for that.”
Our Rating
In her explanation of how she would structure and finance Medicare for All, Warren highlighted what Americans currently pay for “insurance premiums, copays, deductibles and uncovered medical expenses.”
The $11 trillion figure is staggering — and it checks out. Whether and how to address that issue is fiercely controversial, but on this particular stat, Warren’s statement is accurate. We rate it True.
Shefali Luthra is a reporter for Kaiser Health News
Shefali Luthra: ShefaliL@kff.org, @Shefalil
SOURCES:
Instagram, “Medicare for All” post, Elizabeth Warren, Nov. 4, 2019
Medium, “Ending the Stranglehold of Health Care Costs on American Families,” Elizabeth Warren, Nov. 1, 2019
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “NHE Fact Sheet,” April 26, 2019
The Urban Institute, “From Incremental to Comprehensive Health Reform: How Various Reform Options Compare on Coverage and Costs,” Oct. 16, 2019
Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, Household Health Spending Calculator, Nov. 5, 2019
Email Interview with Warren 2020 presidential campaign staff member, Nov. 4, 2019
Telephone Interview with Linda Blumberg, institute fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute, Nov. 4, 2019
Telephone Interview with Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation and director for the program on the ACA, Nov. 4, 2019
Telephone Interview with Paul Ginsburg, director of USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, Nov. 5, 2019