What about in 50 years?

“Nowhere else in the United States of America does the wheel of the seasons turn more brilliantly than in New England. Winter’s blankets of white, the long awaited buds of spring accompanied by the run of maple sap, summer’s bouquets, and the magnificent palette of autumn: all are feasts for the senses, and lead to the characteristic New England feeling of existing in tandem with, and often at the mercy of, the great forces of nature.’’

— From The Most Beautiful Villages of New England (1997), by Tom Shachtman

Alone together

As upgrades made party-lines more popular in the 1940s, local telephone companies ran frequent ads to instill community spirit and personal courtesy in party-line subscribers.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

“Think how we spend our leisure time now compared to 10 years ago: alone with our Netflix, Instagram, Spotify. No wonder our mental health is eroding and we seem to hate everyone else.’’

-- Gerard Baker in his Dec. 20-21 essay in The Wall Street Journal, “Farewell to the 2010s, the Uneasy Decade of Populism’’

A few years ago, we had a nice family to lunch. They’re a very internationalized crew. Anyway, what struck me in almost comic form was that they were spending much of the meal on their new smart phones, making global travel plans and otherwise communicating with the wide world. (The very ugly table around which we sat, by the way, has quite a history: It was made in a French military prison in Lebanon in the 1920s. My wife bought it off the daughter of the French army officer in charge of the prison.)

I thought of that meal the other day when I came upon a story in The Atlantic magazine about land line phones. Before smart phones, most households had one or at the most two phones. Families had to share them, and the phones were generally in such public places as the living room, the kitchen or the front hall. So there was much less privacy than with cell phones and so more communal family knowledge. Now, phones tend to keep us separated. But then, this is part of a broader tendency to eschew physical person-to person communication in favor of communication via screens. By making it easier to avoid having to become habituated to real, face-to-face contact, these digital devices seem to lead to more and more people being anxious when, for instance, being interviewed in person (not on Skype!) for jobs. HR people tell me that some young job applicants avoid looking at their interviewers in the eyes.

I’m old enough to remember when small towns (including the one I lived in, Cohasset, Mass.) had “party lines’’ that enabled operators of what was called “The Phone Company” (a tightly regulated monopoly) to monitor phone calls and do such things as telling pranksters (usually kids) to hang up, or to call an ambulance. It was truly a community service. It wasn’t always a very efficient system but it could be pretty entertaining, and some family disasters were averted through the heroic efforts of operators at their switchboards.=

A cousin of this phenomenon is the dearth of working people taking the time (or being allowed to take the time) to go to lunch with workmates and others; rather, they eat their lunches at their desk. Thus another opportunity for maintaining social skills falls by the wayside.

Maybe a nice New Year’s Day resolution would have been to spend a bit more time with people in the flesh. But cellphones and computers are engineered to be addictive….

To read the article in The Atlantic, please hit this link.

'Like seams of lead'

“Still life with mackerel, lemon and tomato,’’ by Vincent Van Gogh (1886)

“They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.’’

— From ‘Display of Mackerel,’’ by Mark Doty, formerly of Provincetown

Tax-hating New Hampshire bets on more betting

Regarding New Hampshire, whose lottery, started in the 1960s, launched America’s ever-growing state-sponsored gambling sector. The Granite State will do everything it can to avoid imposing broad-based taxes. “Live Free and Bet!”

From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com ):

“New Hampshire state officials have approved a contract with  DraftKings allowing the company to provide sport betting within the state. Based in Boston, DraftKings is a sports-tech and media entertainment platform with daily fantasy sports contests and sports betting.

“Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill in July 2019 authorizing sports betting in the state. DraftKings was selected through a competitive bidding process, offering the best financial package, a highly rated mobile sports app, and a fast implementation timeline. Under the contract, approved by the New Hampshire Executive Council in late November, the New Hampshire Lottery will receive 50 percent of gaming revenue from the sports betting sales. In effort to continue to work closely with the state lottery, DraftKings has plans to open an office in New Hampshire. The state’s launch of the mobile sports betting is expected to occur this month.

“‘We are partnering with a world-class company to provide a first-rate customer service experience,’ Governor Sununu said. ‘With today’s vote, everyone will now be able to bet on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in time for this year’s Super Bowl.’

“‘Our best-in-class mobile sportsbook and several retail locations throughout the state are sure to be a hit with all types of customers as legalized sports betting continues to expand across the country,’ said Matt Kalish, DraftKings co-founder and chief revenue officer.’’

Chris Powell: To fix higher education, fix lower education

Got any ideas that public schools could use to engage alienated students who are at risk of never getting much of an education or dropping out of high school? The Partnership for Connecticut, the organization created by billionaire couple Ray and Barbara Dalio and state government, wants to hear from you. The partnership especially wants to hear from schools about any programs and practices they use that really work.

Of course the inquiry is good but it's a little strange that it didn't start with the state Education Department and the General Assembly's Education Committee. For the problem of alienated students is an old one. But then maybe the partnership realizes that the Education Department and state legislators see education as mainly a matter of appropriating more money every year with most of it used only to increase staff compensation. At least the Education Department and legislators don't seem to have offered any more relevant ideas yet.

It's also a little strange that the Dalios would pledge $100 million over five years and state government would match it without knowing exactly how it would be spent. Could not inquiries about what works with disengaged students have been made and some conclusions drawn before appropriating all that money? Couldn't a few hearings have been held first?

Or was part of the idea of the Partnership for Connecticut to give educators more visions of sugarplums during the holidays?

Instead of searching for ways of remediating the failure of education with alienated students, the partnership might better start by investigating the causes of that alienation. After all, alienation extends far beyond students at special risk of dropping out of high school, since fully half of Connecticut's students graduate without ever mastering the basics.

Indeed, at this month's meeting of the partnership's board of directors, a few members mused about the main cause of educational failure -- that many students lack parents and a stable home life. Looking into this might be worth spending some money as long as the Education Department and the legislature won't do it.

While some teachers and school administrators may be mediocre, as some people in all occupations are, what if this widespread failure in education actually has little to do with education itself?

As the Partnership for Connecticut was announcing its search for ideas to engage alienated students, the Board of Regents for the state colleges and university system was implementing its own idea for improving education: free community college. Free for students anyway.

But free community college may not be as good for students as the board thinks, and at least the board admitted that the plan is also meant to stop the community college system's decline in enrollment and thereby preserve the jobs and compensation of its employees.

The problem with public higher education in Connecticut is lower education. Most students in public higher education must take remedial high school courses because of their social promotion. Their primary education was free and they did not value it, perhaps because schools long ago stopped requiring students to value it by taking it seriously, advancing them even as they showed contempt for it.

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly," Tom Paine wrote to exhort his countrymen to civic virtue 2½ centuries ago. "It is dearness only that gives everything its value."

So how much value should students ascribe to free community college when so much of it is only remedial free high school and elementary school

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Llewellyn King: U.S. takes shenanigans from Zambia lying down

Victoria Falls, Zambia’s most famous site

What does it matter if a U.S. ambassador runs afoul of the administration in a piddling African country where the inhabitants suffer chronic poverty and bad government?

It so happens it matters a lot.

Here is the story: One of our most experienced ambassadors, Daniel Lewis Foote, with a distinguished diplomatic career, often in hot spots like Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, criticized the administration and the justice system of Zambia, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, for sentencing a gay couple to prison for 15 years for having sex. Zambians, who are committed Christians with a fundamentalist slant, were approving. Foote said he was horrified.

The president of Zambia, Edgar Lungu, joined the fray. Homosexuality he told a British interviewer, was unbiblical and unchristian. Foote, who felt that he had been badly treated as a diplomat since his arrival in 2017, was having difficulty in meeting with Lungu despite the $500 million a year that the United States gives Zambia in debt-free assistance.

Then Foote, who also had been seething, apparently, over blatant corruption by Lungu and his family, published on the Internet a strong indictment of the Lungu administration.

That was too much for the Zambian government.

The government made the dispute with the United States public and stirred up the people. Lungu said Foote had to go and, amazingly, the State Department agreed without struggle and Foote was ordered back to Washington.

In his statement, Foote had laid out the situation clearly, “My job as U.S. ambassador is to promote the interests, values and ideals of the United States. Zambia is one of the largest per capita recipients of assistance in the world, at $500 million each year. In these countries where we contribute resources, this includes partnering in areas of mutual interest and holding the recipient government accountable for its responsibilities under this partnership.”

Lungu’s response to Foote’s statement was clear, too, “We do not want him here.”

And the State Department conveniently obliged, even while regretting that the government in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, had effectively declared Foote “persona non grata.”

The effect across Africa and in other small nations may be to embolden them to silence ambassadors. Lungu has kicked sand in the eyes of the mighty United States and we have run. American values will not be on the table.

Tibor Nagy, the assistant secretary of state for Africa, tweeted lamely, “Dismayed by the Zambian government’s decision requiring our Ambassador Daniel Foote’s departure from the country.”

Yes, there is room for dismay; and it is dismay with the way this issue has been handled in Washington. A stellar career ambassador appointed by President Trump has been pushed out of his post by a government that has been dependent on foreign aid both in cash and advice. Foote also pointed out in his statement that the “American people have provided more than $4 billion in HIV/AIDS support in the last 15 years. Working closely with the Ministry of Health, we currently have well over 1 million Zambians on life-changing antiretroviral medicine, touching close to half of the families in the country.”

If things had gotten too sticky for Foote to continue in Lusaka, he could have been reassigned and a new ambassador appointed. One way or another, he should not have been put in the position of leaving at the behest of Lungu, who is trying to drive Zambia back toward the kind of authoritarian government that has bedeviled it since independence from Britain in 1964.

During the height of the Cold War, Zambia had some strategic importance to the United States as a major producer of copper. Since then the economic fortunes of Zambia have risen and fallen with the copper price and attempts to diversify the economy have faltered. Tourism, dependent largely on the Victoria Falls and recreation on the world’s largest water impoundment, the Kariba Dam, called Lake Kariba, is faltering because of persistent drought leading to historical low flows in the Zambezi River.

Over the years Zambia has done better than, say, neighbor Zimbabwe, where bad government has destroyed the once-prosperous country and reduced it to a kind of subsistence existence without so much as a national currency. Zambia has never been as rich as Zimbabwe was at its independence in 1980, but it has managed somehow to survive.

In his statement, Foote saluted the warmth and friendliness of the Zambian people. In my experience, he is right. I lived in Zambia for a while many years ago and the people were tops. As a very young journalist, I interviewed Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda, when he was a young independence leader. He is now 95.

Kaunda, too, was to have his problems with diplomats. He curbed the press, but he loved press conferences and he ordered the diplomatic corps to show up and ask friendly questions. That did not go too well either.

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. He grew up in what was then called Southern Rhodesia, a British colony, but is now called Zimbabwe.

Linda Gasparello

Co-host and Producer

"White House Chronicle" on PBS

At PCFR, Dr. Fine and beyond

The next dinner of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com) comes on Wednesday, Jan. 8, with Michael Fine, M.D., the speaker. He'll talk about his novel Abundance, set in West Africa, and the challenges of providing health care in the developing world. He’s also a short story writer and essayist.

Dr. Fine has been an advocate for communities, health-care reform and the care of under-served populations worldwide for 40 years. He is a former director of the Rhode Island Department of health.

His career as a community organizer and family physician has led him to some of the poorest places in the United States, as well as dangerous, war-ravaged communities in third-world countries. He is a former director of the Rhode Island Department of health.

Please let us know if you're coming to the Jan. 8 event by registering on our Web site, thepcfr.org, or emailing us at pcfremail@gmail.com. You may also call (401) 523-3957.  

Please go to thepcfr.org, or email to pcfremail@gmail.com or call (401) 523-3957 for information on how to join the PCFR. (It’s very simple.)

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And for the rest of  the PCFR season, subject to the vagaries of weather, flu epidemics and so on:

On Wednesday, Feb. 5: We will welcome Cornelia Dean, book author, science writer and former science editor of The New York and internationally known expert on coastal conditions. She’ll talk how rising seas threaten coastal cities around the world and what they can do about it.

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On March 18 comes Stephen Wellmeier, managing director of Poseidon Expeditions. He’ll talk about the future of adventure travel and especially about Antarctica, and its strange legal status.

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News to come about an early-April speaker

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On Wednesday, April 29 comes Trita Parsi,  founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council, author of Treacherous Alliance and A Single Roll of the Dice. He regularly writes articles and appears on TV to comment on foreign policy. He, of course, has a lot to say about U.S. Iranian relations.

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On Wednesday, May 6, we’ll welcome Serenella Sferza, a political scientist and co-director of the program on Italy at MIT’s Center for International Studies, who will talk about the rise of right-wing populism and other developments in her native home of Italy.

She has taught at several U.S. and European universities, and published numerous articles on European politics. Serenella's an affiliate at the Harvard De Gunzburg Center for European Studies and holds the title of Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia conferred by decree of the President of the Republic for the preservation and promotion of national prestige abroad.

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On Wednesday June  10,  the speaker will be Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou, who directs the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy, and is visiting associate professor of conflict resolution, at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.  She titles her talk "God, Soft Power, and Geopolitics: Religion as a Tool for Conflict Prevention/Generation".  She was originally scheduled for Dec. 5 but had to postpone because of illness.

In a Berkshires schoolhouse, a sudden knowledge of bigotry

Marker at the site of the long demolished house in Great Barrington, Mass., where W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963) spent his early childhood.

Great Barrington, in the Berkshires, is the birthplace of W.E.B. DuBois, — co-founder of the NAACP; editor of its journal; author of The Souls of Black Folk, as well as founding works of black history, sociology and political theory; essayist; novelist, and civil-rights campaigner.

From The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”:

“It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards–ten cents a package–and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, — some way.’’

- From L.R. Burleigh

The lovely downtown of Great Barrington in the spring. There are lots of nice restaurants and art galleries..

— Photo by Anc516

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Pay the companies bribes AFTER they create jobs?

Waterbury, Conn., once famous for the manufacture of brass products, clocks and watches. But as with all of the state’s cities, most manufacturing has departed, taking a lot of well-paying blue-collar jobs with it. The train station’s Italianate tower is at the left.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

David Lehman (perhaps unfortunately a former Goldman Sachs partner) has some interesting ideas about how to boost still rich Connecticut’s economy and, particularly, how to lift its troubled cities. Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, has named Mr. Lehman to be commissioner of the Nutmeg State’s Department of Economic and Community Development. He may have some lessons for Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Some of his ideas are predictable, such as improving commuter rail service and the roads, more and closer partnerships with colleges and universities and boosting job-training for growing occupations, such as health care, software and engineering.

But what has jumped out is that instead of handing out tax breaks and other financial incentives to get companies to move to, or expand in, the Nutmeg State, he’d have the state hand out these goodies only after they created well-paid jobs. Bloomberg News noted that would be a gamble in the current relentless arms race among states and localities to lure jobs. But Connecticut, with its location between the two thriving (at the moment) economic powerhouses of New York and Boston, might be better placed than most states to succeed with this new strategy.

Mr. Lehman also wants to encourage a resurgence of the state’s cities, which, with exceptions in some parts of them (e.g., the area around Yale in New Haven) are in poor shape. He wants policies that would double the populations of its cities -- which now range from 100,000 and 150,000 -- over a 25-year period. He told Bloomberg: “We’ve got the suburban and rural thing covered.’’ New economic growth will be “in these higher density transit-oriented developments.” Note that as in Massachusetts (and a lesser extent in Rhode Island) the growing emphasis is on using mass transit to maintain and spur prosperity.

Back when I lived in Connecticut, in the ‘60s, its cities still had large and stable middle-class populations, in large part because of a still thriving industrial sector. Mr. Lehman will be a hero if he can bring the middle class back to these places.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric continues about masses of millionaires said to be fleeing Connecticut and other high-tax states to move to Florida. Of course, some people do move because of taxes but the phenomenon is exaggerated (I know a bunch of these folks.) As this commentary from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy notes:

“most millionaires are married, are more likely to have children, and are economically and socially tied to where they made their money. {In Connecticut’s case many in nearby Manhattan} They benefit from where they are living because they have ‘home field advantage’: they know the area, have connections, and most are ‘working rich’ and moving could actually set them back in their career and productivity. There is a reason they chose to live there in the first place, whether that be career opportunities, the education and public services offered, or overall quality of life. By the time they are making enough to think about moving to save on their taxes they are already deeply embedded into their communities and living comfortably enough that the state tax savings at stake would not fundamentally change their quality of life even if they somehow did find a way to continue earning a very large income in a new locale.’’

“The people who do tend to move most frequently are young college graduates and the lowest income residents looking for higher pay and a better quality of life, and state tax rates are not central in these groups’ decision making.’’

Of more interest to me is what the long-term impact of all these people moving to Florida will be on the Sunshine State’s taxes. Will a growing demand for services lead it to impose an income tax to pay for them? And what will be the effect of rising seas from global warming on property values (and property-tax collections) there?

To read more about Mr. Lehman’s plans, please hit this Bloomberg link.

To read more about high-end tax refugees, please hit this link.

Being cool in Vermont

The Mad River, in Vermont

“I'm from Vermont, where to be stylish and cool is to have a dirty pair of hiking boots and know how to change a tire, hang drywall, and bale hay. Those people are my home, and every time I come home, it reminds me that there's something to be said for being in the spotlight, but it can never be a whole part of me.’’

— Grace Potter, singer, songwriter and actress. She’s from Waitsfield, in the Mad River Valley.

Downtown Waitsfield, Vt. It’s busier in the winter because of two nearby ski areas, Mad River Glen (whose motto is “Ski It If You Can’’) and the much bigger and fancier Sugarbush.

For three decades, the nonprofit Friends of the Mad River, created to protect the recreational, ecological and aesthetic resources of the Mad River Valley, has performed water-quality monitoring, river restoration, land conservation, public education and outreach on behalf of the watershed.

At the vertiginous Mad River Glen

The huge and rather fancy Sugarbush resort

Todd McLeish: Finding rare species in Marine Monument off N.E.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

A team of scientists from the New England Aquarium, in Boston, has been conducting periodic aerial surveys of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, some 130 miles off Nantucket, and has documented an impressive list of marine mammals and fish that illustrates why conservation organizations have been advocating for its protection for years.

A late-October survey, for instance, documented three species of rare beaked whales, three kinds of baleen whales, four species of dolphins, several ocean sunfish — the largest bony fish in the world — and two very unusual Chilean devil rays

“We’re out there documenting what’s out there to show that the area is important and should continue to be protected,” said Ester Quintana, the chief scientist of the aerial survey team. “Every survey is different, and you never know what you’re going to see, so it’s always exciting.”

The beaked whales were particularly notable, since they are rare and difficult to observe. Beaked whales are deep-diving species that can remain under water for more than an hour and only surface briefly to breathe.

“If you’re not at the location where they come to the surface, then you’re not going to see them,” Quintana said. “There are probably more of them out there that we were just not seeing.”

The survey team observed two Cuvier’s beaked whales, three Sowersby’s beaked whales, and four True’s beaked whales, the latter of which hadn’t previously been documented in the 4,900-square-mile monument during an aerial survey, though a ship-based group of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had seen several there last year.=

Also observed were large numbers of Risso’s dolphins, plus groups of bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins and striped dolphins, along with nine fin whales, two sperm whales, and one humpback.

“We didn’t see many individual whales, but that’s just the difference between an October survey and the surveys we’ve done in the summer,” Quintana said.

Of special note were the two Chilean devil rays observed, the first time Quintana had ever seen the species.

“Last year we saw a big manta ray, which was a surprising sighting because we were unaware that they could be sighted this far north,” she said. “So when we saw the Chilean devil ray at the site, it was another unexpected ray. They’re not that uncommon, but in the seven surveys we’ve conducted, it was the first we saw at the monument.”

About the size of Connecticut, the only Atlantic Ocean marine monument includes two distinct areas, one that covers three canyons and one that covers four seamounts. (NOAA).

Chilean devil rays can swim about a mile deep, and since they don't have to come to the surface to breathe, it’s unusual to see them.

The survey team flies transect lines back and forth over the three underwater canyons in the monument — Oceanographer Canyon, Gilbert Canyon and Lydonia Canyon — with most of the wildlife observed at Gilbert and Lydonia canyons. As soon as team members observe wildlife to document, they depart from their transect and circle the animal to identify and photograph it. The plane is equipped with a belly camera that takes photographs every 5 seconds during the survey in case the two observers miss anything.

Quintana said the team was unable to survey the waters around the monument’s four seamounts (underwater mountains), because those sites are farther away and their small plane can’t carry enough fuel to reach them.

The wide variety of marine life observed during the survey are attracted to the monument because of its diversity of habitats.

At a lecture last February describing the monument, Peter Auster, senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium, in Mystic, Conn., said: “Those canyons and seamounts create varied ecotones in the deep ocean with wide depth ranges, a range of sediment types, steep gradients, complex topography, and currents that produce upwelling, which creates unique feeding opportunities for animals feeding in the water column.”

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was designated by President Obama in September 2016. It’s the only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean. Early in President Trump’s administration, he threatened to revoke the site’s designation, despite uncertainties as to whether he could legally do so. Those threats triggered efforts by conservation groups to document the value of the site to wildlife.

The next aerial survey by the New England Aquarium team will take place as soon as the weather cooperates. Conditions must be calm to allow for a safe flight and smooth seas so conditions are optimal for observing marine life.

“We’ve never done a survey in the winter because it’s hard to plan one because of the weather,” Quintana said. “No one has ever done a survey there in the winter, so we don’t know what to expect once we get there.”

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.

A beaked whale

Tearing up

“Tears Along the Edge” (installation detail) (acrylic on cut and molded Tyvek), by Susan Emmerson, M.D., at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through Feb 2.

She explains on her Web site:

“My work is an exploration of the picture plane; it delves into that surface between wall and the environment and expands that surface for the viewer to follow. My drawings and paintings rise off the wall into three dimensions, forming shadows and caverns which in turn incorporate themselves into the the work itself. Using surfaces of paper, Tyvek (a plastic paper), and canvas I explore below these surfaces and expand them outward by heating, sanding, cutting, gluing and plastering and incorporating the structure into the imagery. I use unexpected materials to examine our emotional connection to both the external built environment and the internal environment of the human body.

“In my most recent body of work my imagery is that of creating and destroying; of depicting the horrible violence that natural storms, worsened by human mistakes, can do to our structural environment and to our fellow humans. My wall sculptures depict disheveled, broken surfaces where Tyvek painfully peels away like paint or skin, exposing a raw inner core. Everyday objects become precious; I use their bits and pieces as signifiers of the lost reassurance of a safe and intact home. I manipulate Tyvek so that it jumps off the wall to become an object; its organic shapes echo waves, wind, and the contortions of the earth as visits another storm on its human inhabitants. My work exists in the space between image and object; between the picture and the palpable.’’

'All day long on the coast of Maine'

Rockland around 1908. It was Edna St. Vincent Millay’s birthplace.

“If I could see the weedy mussels

  Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,

Hear once again the hungry crying

  Overhead, of the wheeling gulls;

Feel once again the shanty straining

  Under the turning of the tide,

Fear once again the rising freshet,

  Dread the bell in the fog outside,

I should be happy!—that was happy

  All day long on the coast of Maine.

I have a need to hold and handle

  Shells and anchors and ships again.’’

— From “Exiled,’’ by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950), a native of the Maine Coast

'An example to the world'

Quincy Market

— Photo by Back Boucher

"Citizens of Boston! ..... Consider your blessings; consider your duties. ..... Let New England continue to be an example to the world of the blessings of free government, and of the means and capacity of man to maintain it. ..... In all times to come as in all times past, may Boston be among the foremost and the boldest to exemplify and uphold whatever constitutes the prosperity, the happiness, and the glory of New England.''

— Speech in 1830 by Josiah Quincy III (1772- 1864), member of the U.S. House (1805–1813), mayor of Boston (1823–1828), and president of Harvard University (1829–1845). The historic Quincy Market in downtown Boston is named in his honor.

What will be the black swans of 2020?

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

“Past performance is not indicative of future results.’’

-- Mandatory warning in investment documents

About New Year’s predictions: Many of them are based on creatures called the “conventional wisdom’’ or “the general consensus’’. Most turn out to be wrong in varying degrees because there are so many variables in real life.

Although we have computers that process data at astonishing speeds, they obviously can’t fully account for the effects of people acting unpredictably and/or irrationally, which, in varying degrees, is how they often (usually?) act. And that there are more people than ever adds to the complexity. Then there’s that Nature does its thing without consulting us. What if Hurricane Dorian, which hit the Bahamas with winds up to 220 miles an hour, had moved only slightly west and hit South Florida head on? The, say, $200 billion or more in damage would have hammered the U.S. economy.

Some readers might remember the “black swans’’ made famous by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: He looked at how it’s impossible to get at the probability of some rare events that are beyond normal expectations in science, finance, technology and history

Mr. Taleb is an essayist, scholar, statistician, former options trader and risk analyst who has deeply studied randomness, probability and uncertainty. Read his 2007 book The Black Swan.

Consider the black swan called 9/11, which changed so much: It caused wars, reduced our civil liberties, made travel more difficult and encouraged already dubious U.S. fiscal and monetary policies that helped create the Crash of 2008 and the Great Recession, which helped set the table for Donald Trump.

And digitization continuously speeds up changes, which affects all of life. Back in the ‘60s, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was quoted as saying “a week is a long time in politics.’’ Now you can say that a day is a long time in politics, in the economy and elsewhere.]

2020 will feature lots of dramatic headlines and near-hysterical “breaking news’’ on electronic media. Most of it will end up forgotten in days, except by a few people most directly affected, such as relatives of those killed in plane crashes. The vast majority of such headlined stories have no effect on the course of history. The article that may turn out to have the most long-term significance might be buried on the bottom of page 13 of a newspaper.

I always liked the crazy poet Ezra Pound’s remark that “literature is news that stays news.’’

Olivia Alperstein: LNG poses grave risks

A member of the Coast Guard escorts an LNG tanker into Boston Harbor in 2016

From OtherWords.org

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a potential disaster in the making. That’s the conclusion of a new report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, which surveyed an abundance of research on LNG’s threats to public health.

LNG is natural gas that is filtered and supercooled to -260° F, turning it from gas to liquid. That makes it easier to transport in special cryogenic tankers when pipelines aren’t an option, such as for overseas shipping.

But while the fracking that extracts the gas, and the pipelines that often move it, have generated well-deserved controversy, the risks of LNG haven’t gotten as much attention. They deserve more.

The new report finds significant risks from the extraction process (including gas leaks and air pollution), further pollution from the liquefaction process, and serious risks of fires and explosions.

And I mean serious. A full LNG tanker carries the energy equivalent of 55 atomic bombs. If one caught fire or exploded in a populated area, it could make an oil spill look like a picnic.

Even without exploding, the gas poses serious risks to our climate and healt

LNG is primarily composed of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 84–87 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, which makes it a major contributor to climate change. And the fracking process, the report adds, injects a further “slurry of chemicals” into the surrounding environment. Many are known to contribute to strokes, cancer, and asthma.

LNG export facilities are often located in areas already plagued by dangerous levels of pollution from energy and industrial facilities — often areas with mostly African American, Native American, Hispanic, or low-income families. Facilities may also be sited close to schools and nursing home

“Such proximity, often reflecting these communities’ lack of political power, intensifies the impact on vulnerable populations and people with pre-existing health conditions,” the report notes. These communities are also more likely to lack the resources to address environmental health concerns.

Despite these dangers, there has been a boom in LNG production in the United States over the past 15 years. According to federal regulators, there are over 110 LNG facilities operating in the United States.

The United States is exporting record amounts of LNG to the global market right now, and there are plans to expand LNG facilities in many parts of the country. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pushing an ill-advised proposal to transport LNG by rail.

Expanding these projects would increase pollution, put human health at risk, and increase the risk of catastrophic fires and explosions. It would also sink billions of dollars into infrastructure that would lock the United States into greenhouse emissions for decades to come.

Thanks to the Trump administration’s systematic rollback of critical health and safety protections, we simply don’t have the safeguards to protect ourselves or our planet from fracking, pipelines, or LNG

As PSR’s new report makes clear, LNG poses a grave risk to our planet, our health, and our future. Instead, we need to demand healthy solutions for our communities. Our health needs to come first — before fossil fuel corporations’ bottom line.

It’s time for decision-makers at all levels to protect their constituents, before it’s too late.

Olivia Alperstein is the media relations manager at Physicians for Social Responsibility.

But everyone is out of place

“A Crying Shame’’ (acrylic on canvas), by Johh Murdock, in the show “Out of Place,’’ at Fountain Street gallery, Boston, Jan. 2-Feb. 2

The gallery says that the show “reveals and repositions what it means to belong. Twenty-eight artists offer an expansive interpretation of the theme—spanning several mediums, scales, and forms. The work featured in ‘Out of Place’ could easily be construed as disparate or fragmented. Yet, presented together, these artists contend with structure, familiarity, and acceptance while pushing the boundaries of what it means to belong.’’

'Happy Feast of the Circumcision!'

Mt. Washington from the Wildcat Mountain ski area, near Jackson

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

Back when I was around 12, my parents, a couple of my siblings and I spent the New Year’s weekend in Jackson. N.H., in the White Mountains, where we skied (clumsily) a bit and stayed at a B&B (but called an inn). The place was owned by an Episcopal minister. He was quite funny. On New Year’s morning he greeted everyone with a boisterous “Happy Feast of the Circumcision!” But it was clear how hard the couple had to work to keep their little business going, ministering, so to speak, to the almost 24/7 needs and desires of their about 15 guests – e.g., directions to local ski areas and other attractions, drugstores and doctors, cocktails (but not too many) for the adults and huge breakfasts for all. It was an early introduction to the challenges of running a small business.

But it's already there

The section along Allens Avenue in the Port of Providence has been an industrial and port area for a couple of hundred years. Now Allens Providence Recyling LLC wants to put a facility there to process and recycle construction and demolition materials, such as asphalt, wood, concrete and gypsum, in the industrially zoned area, which already hosts other materials-processing plants. It would also process solid waste. The processing work at the site, which the company has been clearing of contaminants, would take place entirely indoors and include, as with such facilities in general, dust-suppression systems. Not that anything is perfect…

As usual with such projects, there’s understandable neighborhood pushback, which reminds me a bit of the past opposition of homeowners near T.F. Green Airport, in Warwick, R.I., to a long-needed runway extension, which has since been built. The airport has been there since 1928 -- long before most or all of the complaining homeowners moved in. Surely they knew that airports tend to expand. And the proximity of the airport had probably made it cheaper to buy their houses in the first place – in part because of the noise.

The Allens Providence Recycling project is another example – and apparently an environmentally responsible one – of the sort of enterprise that has long been in that industrially zoned area, made attractive to certain kinds of companies by the proximity of water, road and rail transport and by the simple fact that the area has long housed such businesses.

Recycling (which is good for environment) and other materials processing has to be done, of course under rigorous oversight. And there are well-paying jobs in this industry.

A healthy local economy depends on having a mix of service and industrial jobs, in manufacturing and such functions as recycling.

— Robert Whitcomb

Homelessness and grapes in ConcordC

“She4She” (shadowboxes made of reclaimed wood, metal and plexiglass, acrylic paint), by Pauline Curtiss and Rose Leitner, in the show “She4She’’ in the Umbrella Arts Center, Concord, Mass., through Jan. 2

This installation was inspired by Heading Home, a homeless-serving agency that serves individuals and families. The gallery says the artists used the contrasting dark and bright colors of the installation to reflect the struggles and triumphs experienced of the women at Heading Home.

Since Concord is a rich Boston suburb you don’t often think of homelessness in connection with it.

Besides its fame as site of a battle that helped launch the Revolutionary War and a center of intellectual life in the mid-19th Century, Concord is also where In 1849 Ephraim Bull developed the  Concord grape (beloved of grape-juice fans) at his home on Lexington Road, where the original vine still grows. Welch's, the first company to sell juice made from Concord grapes,, is headquartered in the town. 

The Boston-born Bull developed the grape by experimenting with seeds from some of the local native species. On his farm, down the road from the the literary households of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Alcott (as in Louisa May Alcott and the new movie version of Little Women), he planted some 22,000 seedlings before producing the ideal grape. But he never made much money from them.

In 1853, his grape won first place at a Boston Horticultural Society exhibition. It was introduced to the market in 1854.  The Rev. Thomas Bramwell Welch developed the first Concord grape juice in 1869. Through pasteurization, the juice did not ferment into wine. That was important to him because he opposed drinking alcoholic beverages, including at the Holy Communion table.

Concord grapes