Especially during a pandemic...
An Amtrak Downeaster at the Portland train station
“It appears to be the firm conviction of many of the Maine citizenry that since there’s no legal way to keep people from coming to Maine, the least that can be done is to make it as inconvenient as possible.’’
-- Lew Dietz, in Night Train at Wiscasset Station (1977) on the end of passenger-train service to Maine. Passenger train service has since been restored, first to Portland and then extended to Brunswick.
A favorite summer eatery in Wiscasset
Wiscasset’s Nickels-Sortwell House, built in 1807, after the town had prospered as a shipbuilding and fishing center. There are many grand old houses in the town.
In Stockbridge, Norman Rockwell and civil rights
“The Problem We All Live With” (1963), by Norman Rockwell, at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass.
The museum reports it is offering virtual exhibits with Google Arts & Culture “themed around civil rights and presidential politics. The exhibits are constructed like presentations, with written information and video to supplement the photos and illustrations each exhibit is centered around.’’
Hit this link for more information.
“Norman Rockwell in the Age of the Civil Rights Movement ‘‘ explores some of his famous illustrations in support of civil rights: “The Problem We All Live With,’’ “Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice)’’ and "New Kids in the Neighborhood (Negro in the Suburbs)”.
Meanwhile, “Norman Rockwell: Presidential Elections Illustrated’’ showcases his portraits of presidents and presidential candidates, including John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower and many others. The museum says “Also shown are photographs of Rockwell and the presidents, and notes about his interactions with them. As Rockwell poignantly said, ‘I am no politician and certainly no statesman. But I have painted thousands of people and I should now be a judge of what their faces say about what they are.’’’
Meanwhile, the museum’s show “Presidents, Politics, and the Pen: The Influential Art of Thomas Nast” is a “showcase of the election art of the famous artist, whose politically charged and satirical cartoons often influenced the opinion of the American public, earning him the moniker of ‘The President Maker." ‘
The Austen Riggs Center, in Stockbridge, a psychiatric treatment center famed for its celebrity patients. Norman Rockwell’s second wife was mentally ill, which is a reason that the couple moved to Stockbridge from Vermont.
Stockbridge’s famous Naumkeag Gardens. now part of a museum, around 1908
At Naumkeag, the summer mansion built by powerful New York lawyer Joseph Choate The estate's centerpiece, besides its gardens, is a 44-room, Shingle Style country house designed principally by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White, and constructed in 1886 and 1887.
David Warsh: The Great Depression and the possible 'Coronavirus Depression'
The course of the Great Depression in the United States, as reflected in per-capita GDP (average income per person.
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
People are searching for a way to talk about the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Veteran economic journalist Robert Samuelson wrote last week in The Washington Post, “For the first time in my life, I think a depression is conceivable.” The Financial Times Saturday led the paper with a four-column headline: “Global Economy set for deepest reversal since Great Depression.”
Robert Gordon, a member for more than 40 years of the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, wrote to say: “Thinking ahead to the ultimate data that the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release on the decline in GDP in 2020:Q2, I should look back at my interpolated quarterly data for the 1930s to see what was the largest quarterly decline of GDP during 1929-32 or 1937-38. Will this time be larger than that?”
Even without the BEA data, it seems reasonable to suppose that the next several quarters – and whatever financial fragility is exposed therein – will enter historical consciousness around the world as the Coronavirus Depression. Already the experience is very different from the W-shaped recessions of 1981-82, or the deep recession, lasting from December 2007 until June 2009, that accompanied the slow-fused Panic of 2007-08.
Samuelson listed three distinctive characteristics that distinguished the Great Depression from business contractions before and since: the scale of havoc and economic suffering that occurred; the “intellectual vacuum” that accompanied it, insofar as economists lacked a widely accepted theory to explain it; and the absence of a social safety net to cushion the human costs of collapse.
He might have added its length – two contractions, 1929-1933 and 1937-38 —gave it the shape of a 10-year lazy-W – and the fact that it culminated in a long global war.
But of course the Great Depression has not gone into history as altogether unexplained, even though Keynesians and monetarists continue to argue about it. And while the United States had very little in the way of a safety net at the beginning of the 1930s, many of the features that are cushioning the blow today were in place by the end of the decade – bank-deposit protection, unemployment insurance and the Social Security System.
Three years of Depression brought about a change in administration, and, after a false start (the National Recovery Administration), President Franklin Roosevelt and the 73rd Congress produced the lasting reforms of the New Deal – public works, safety nets, labor-market reforms and an array of new regulatory agencies. The onsets of both those later “great recessions,” in 1980 and 2008, also brought changes in the White House and Congress. In their respective ways, those elections, too, produced changes in the country’s long-term direction.
What might be expected to result if Democrat Joe Biden is elected in the fall? Whatever his imperfections as a candidate, he is just one among many leaders who would come to the fore. I am just guessing, but perhaps health-care reform would top the agenda once again.
President Trump made yet another attempt to damage the Affordable Care Act last week, when he declined to open enrollment to millions of suddenly unemployed and uninsured workers and ordered Medicare to cover coronavirus treatment fr the uninsured instead.. For a Democratic administration, tackling reform of the health-care system in the wake of the Coronavirus Depression would be the logical place to start.
David Warsh, an economic historian and veteran columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this column first appeared.
Kill everything
Ready for the Apocalypse in Essex, Mass.
—Photo by David Jacobs
Barn in beautiful exurban/suburban Essex, on Greater Boston’s North Shore
Before they fixed Copley Square
Copley Square, Boston, in the ‘50s. It’s much more beautiful, exciting and crowded (except maybe the past couple of weeks!) these days.
Copley Square fountain, with Old South Church tower in distance
— Photo by Caroline Culler
'Wider sunrise in the dawn'
An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, —
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.
— Poem on April, by Emily Dickinson
Amherst in the year that lifelong resident Emily Dickinson (born 1830) died.
Easier than Walt Disney World
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
In a happy reminder of summer, there’s an elderly Cape Cod couple’s uber-charming and kitschy (36-hole) Sandwich Mini Golf, on what used to be a cranberry bog. Construction started on the course back in 1950.
"Even in the winter, he’s repainting," Sylvia Burke said of her husband, Maurice (“Mo’’), who started construction on the course in 1950, when he was 15, reported WBUR’s Gary Waleik back in 2016. "In the evening hours, he’ll be busy carving signs. Every sign that’s on the mini golf is all hand-carved by him." There’s a Mo’s Mountain on the course, by the way. The attraction is squeezed between scenic Route 6 A and a salt marsh. (Salt marshes are the defining characteristic of the Cape Cod Bay side of the peninsula.) A brook flows under the course’s bridges, around a simulated giant lily pad and past a white whale and a lighthouse – all very Cape Coddish.
“I love Sandwich Mini Golf because each time I play there, I feel like a kid. My wife and children seem to love it as much as I do. It’s one of our very happy places,’’ Mr. Waleik wrote.
To read his story, please hit this link.
To see the Sandwich Mini Golf Web site, hit this link.
Sandwich was a famous early glass-making center (lots of sand with which to make it) — “Sandwich Glass’’ — and one of America’s earliest Quaker centers.
Boardwalk in Sandwich marshes
House walls instead
“The Peaceful Use of Walls” #2 (encaustic on panel), by Willa Vennema. She lives most of the year in Portland but summers with her family on Swan’s Island, south of Mount Desert Island, where most of Acadia National Park is.
She says:
“My most recent series of work is entitled ‘The Peaceful Use of Walls.’ This series was in response to the controversy over President Trump’s desire to build a multibillion-dollar wall on our boarder with Mexico. I do not believe a huge wall is the answer to our immigration problems. This series depicts a hopeful, nurturing and peaceful alternative for the use of walls—houses.’’
She’s a member of New England Wax.
See her video by hitting this link.
Squirrels and season
“Squirrels from treetops listen to
pine wind song. Such overtures of
the season come again and again….’’
-- From “Squirrels in Wind Pine,’’ by David Kherdian, who lives in Florence, a village in Northhampton, Mass. Because it had a thriving silk industry in the 19th Century, the village was named in 1852 after Florence, Italy, for its own thriving silk trade.
A classic breakfast-all-day diner in Florence
...And a refuge for rich New Yorkers fleeing (they hope) COVID-19
Gingerbread cottages in Oak Bluffs, on The Vineyard
“Once one puts in any amount of time here, one becomes gradually addicted. Eventually, living on the (Martha’s) Vineyard becomes a passionate obsession, a religion, a personal identity and a raison d’’etre.’’
— Peter Simon (1947-2018) in On the Vineyard II (1990)
The famous colorful clay cliffs on Gay Head
'Joy shivers in a corner'
“Northeaster,’’ by Winslow Homer (1836-1910). Much of his work was inspired by the New England coast.
Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast
Of love that you will hear them at a feast
Where demons would appeal for some repose,
Still clamoring where the chalice overflows
And crying wildest who have drunk the least.
Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.
“New England,’’ by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935). The famed poet grew up on the Maine Coast.
April 3 update from N.E. Council on COVID-19 response
Harvesting cranberries in the fall in southeastern Massachusetts
Ocean Spray is raising wages and making donations to farm regions in the crisis
April 3 update from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):
As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak. Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region. We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.
You can also check our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar for information on upcoming COVID-19 related programming – including Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members.
Medical Response
Boston Convention & Exposition Center Become Commonwealth’s First Field Hospital – Amid predictions that Massachusetts cases of COVID-19 could arrive next week, Governor Charlie Baker (R-MA) announced that the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC)—owned by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority—will become the commonwealth’s first field hospital. Officials plan for 1,000 beds total, split evenly between the city’s homeless population and overflow patients from area hospitals. WBUR has more.
Partners HealthCare Brings Mask Sterilizer to Massachusetts – Confronting an impending shortage of protective equipment and other personal protective equipment for healthcare workers, Partners HealthCare has entered into a partnership to bring a machine that can sterilize up to 80,000 respirator masks a day to Massachusetts. The device, described as a “game changer” for the region’s response, could reduce strain on dwindling supplies and possibly serve all hospitals in New England, according to the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association. Read more in NBC.
Sanofi Prepares to Produce Millions of Doses of Potential Treatment – Should a now-famous malaria drug prove effective in combatting the coronavirus, Sanofi has confirmed it has the potential to produce hundreds of millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine. In addition, the pharmaceutical company has ensured its supply chain remains stable. Read more in The Wall Street Journal.
Economic/Business Continuity Response
Duane Morris Offers Guidance on Employment Retention Assistance – A guide to the options businesses have for assistance under the recent stimulus package provided by Duane Morris gives the business community clarity on eligibility, the scope of the package, and limitations of assistance. Read the guide in Forbes.
Ocean Spray Increases Wages, Donates Meals to Farmer Regions – To support its employees who continue to work despite personal safety concerns, Ocean Spray is increasing wages and providing an extra week of vacation to front-line employees. In addition to the wage increases, the company also plans to donate 100,000 meals to its farm regions across the country. Fox Business has more.
Dell Provides Resources for Remote Work Transition – As businesses of all types and sizes navigate an abrupt transition to remote work, Dell is offering a host of online materials to support and expedite the move. Webinars from senior executives on employee flexibility and posts highlighting the importance of cybersecurity are just some of the services Dell is offering for the business community. More can be found here.
Community Response
American Hospital Association Successfully Urges Administration for Direct Assistance to Hospitals – After pressure from lawmakers and healthcare organizations across the country, including a letter from the American Hospital Association (AHA), the Trump Administration is now planning to pay hospitals to treat uninsured patients with COVID-19. The letter from AHA calls for direct aid as well as the expansion of infrastructure investment assistance, among other things. The Wall Street Journal
Endicott College President Profiled on Leading a College Through Crisis – NEC Board Member Steven DiSalvo, president of Endicott College, was profiled in the Boston Business Journal highlighting his leadership during a pandemic that has sent his students home and grinded daily operations to a halt. DiSalvo discussed the school’s commitment to fully pay employees through June, and the potential benefits the switch to online learning could provide for its online graduate offerings. Read the profile here.
Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.
College Hall at Endicott College, in Beverly, a former industrial town part of which is a rich Boston suburb with old Brahmin as well as new money.
Danger! Don't eat!
“Climbing Oysters” (watercolor and pastel), by Carolyn Newberger, in her two-person show, “Nature and Abstraction,’’ with Philip Gerstein at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, now closed to the public.
Chris Powell: Too much stress from 'high-stakes' school testing? Get used to it!
“Anxiety’’ (1894), by Edvard Munch
Parents and educators alike increasingly complain that "high-stakes” testing in school causes too much stress for students and fails to provide a complete measure of their learning.
A few weeks ago at a meeting of the New Haven Public School Advocates organization, a city Board of Education member and pediatrician, Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, said the prospect of final exams and mastery tests gives students headaches and insomnia. "High-stakes testing does not take into account the social well-being of children,” Jackson-McArthur said, adding that she does not permit her children to take such tests. She echoed calls for less formal and more opinion-based measures of learning.
Of course, there now may be far more stress on everybody than an occasional test imposes, what with school suspended everywhere amid the virus epidemic and children stuck at home all day with parents or relatives, who in turn are stuck with them all day. But if those “high-stakes” tests are abolished and there are no test scores, just a teacher's evaluation of whether a student did well with book reports or a science fair project, the tendency may be to conclude that, as in Lake Wobegon, all students are above average.
For without "high-stakes” tests there will be no verifiable and comparable measures of learning in basic subjects. Teachers are already under great administrative and political pressure not to fail anyone, and Connecticut's main educational policy long has been social promotion. School systems no longer have the political strength to uphold standards.
While students may get anxious as a "high-stakes” test approaches, why shouldn't they become so? Life itself sometimes involves high stakes and requires an ability to handle stress. Gaining that ability is what growing up is about, since Mommy and Daddy won't be around forever.
Besides, in a system of social promotion, how much stress can there really be? It may be impossible for any Connecticut student to get to third or fourth grade without realizing that his learning or lack of it has no bearing on his advancement. By high school most students have realized that not only will they be graduated even if they learn nothing but also, if they desire it, they will be promoted to a community college or state university where they can take remedial high school courses, just as most freshmen in Connecticut's community colleges and state universities do.
Mastery tests, college entrance examinations, and other standardized tests are not perfect but they are probably the most comprehensive educational measures possible. These measures long have been conveying poor performance, and if the risk of stress to students is to be eliminated, what incentive will many students have to perform any better?
That so many high school and even college graduates these days are skilled for little more than menial employment argues powerfully for more anxiety in education, not less.
Of course, it is easy for those who have already endured the trials of school and growing up to disparage the anxiety of today's students. But not all of today's grown-ups are as educated as they should be.
They may remember Alice Cooper singing (screaming, really) decades ago, "School's out forever!” Amid the virus shutdown they may wonder: Why couldn't they have done it before we got too old to enjoy it
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Partly non-virus-related!
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
With many newspapers shrinking unto death, all they seem to have room for is COVID-19 stuff; there are many other important things happening around the world that aren’t being reported. As the late Bill Kreger, a news editor to whom I reported at The Wall Street Journal once observed: “Sometimes the most important story starts out at the bottom of Page 37.’’ What might we be missing?
Well, The Boston Guardian reports that property and violent crime is down in its circulation area (the Back Bay, Beacon Hill , downtown and Fenway) this year. But maybe that’s a virus-related story? As newly unemployed people run out of money will property crimes increase?
Then there’s an inspiring little item from the March 24 Wall Street Journal: Voters in Mexican border city of Mexicali have admirably told the U.S. company Constellation Brands not to complete a $1.4 billion brewery there because the facility would take so much water that it could jeopardize the irrigation-dependent agriculture in the region.
In other heartening, if mostly symbolic, news, the U.S. has indicted Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and some sidekicks for drug trafficking and is offering $15 million to those who aid his capture. Don’t expect Maduro to appear any time soon in a federal court, but the move is apt to make him nervous.
And there’s the important unhappy news that the world’s greatest coral reef, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, had just suffered another mass bleaching caused by global warming, whose associated increase in carbon dioxide makes sea water more acidic. For more information, please hit this link.
Update from New England Council on region's response to COVID-19 crisis
Headquarters building of the Stop & Shop supermarket chain, in Quincy, Mass. The company is donating food to health-care workers.
Update from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):
As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak. Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among council members throughout the region. We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.
You can also check our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar for information on upcoming COVID-19 related programming – including Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members.
Here is the April 2 roundup:
Medical Response
Northeastern University Models Used in White House Response to Virus – The White House coronavirus response team has been using models produced by the Network Science Institute (NSI) at Northeastern University to project how varying mitigation strategies could “flatten the curve” of COVID-19. The models allow policymakers and members of the response team to visualize the effects of policies being considered, such as specific travel restrictions and staggered school closings. Read more.
Boston Scientific Begins Work to Produce Ventilators, Protective Equipment – To confront the growing need for medical equipment, Boston Scientific is collaborating with public and private partners to bring necessary devices to market. From making more affordable and portable ventilators to producing face shields and reusable protective equipment, the company continues to use innovation to address some of the most pressing problems facing healthcare workers. Read more.
Abiomed Expands Remote Training for Medical Providers – Medical device manufacturer Abiomed is expanding its utilization of its online physician community to provide expanded physician education and training. The company has plans to launch its largest interactive educational site in its history in April. More information can be found here.
Economic/Business Continuity Response
Proctor & Gamble Increases Production During Crisis – In the wake of shortages of some of its most common products—including napkins, paper towels, and diapers—P&G has increased production of all paper goods at its factories. The company is also manufacturing face masks to help alleviate the increasing demand of protective equipment. USA Today has more.
M&T Bank Provides Hardship Assistance – M&T Bank has created an impact form for its clients to identify their need for a variety of assistance options, including late fee suppression and changes to loan payment plans. In addition to case-by-case measures, the bank is offering unsecured personal loans, suspending negative credit reporting, and more. More information can be found here.
Community Response
Stop & Shop Donates Daily Meals to Healthcare Workers, $500,000 for Research – Using its expansive food production and delivery network, Stop & Shop (owned by Ahold Delhaize) will provide 5,000 meals daily to health-care providers in the greater New York City and Boston areas. In addition to the daily meals, the grocer is providing $500,000 to Boston Children’s Hospital for research on a potential vaccine. Read the press release here.
DraftKings Announces New Charity Initiative, $500,000 Donation – DraftKings has created its own charity initiative, #DKRally, to mobilize sports fans to donate to relief efforts. In addition to an initial $500,000 donation, the betting service will match up to a total of $1 million from contributors. The donations to the initiative will be distributed to United Way to support relief efforts across the country. US Betting Report has more.
Holy Cross Student-Run Nonprofit Raises Over $23,000 for Response Fund – Working for Worcester, a student-run nonprofit founded at the College of the Holy Cross, has raised more than $23,000 for the Worcester Together COVID-19 emergency response fund. The money was raised in just five days as part of a blitz from the school’s alumni and students. The Worcester Together fund provides money for immediate needs and to support local community organizations. The Worcester Business Journal
Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.
Elms' gorgeous tunnels
Lafayette Street in Salem, Mass., from a 1910 colorized postcard — an example of the high-tunneled effects of American Elms planted along streets in New England towns. Most of them were gone by the 1950s.
“The elms of New England! They are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.”
— Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87)
Then came Dutch Elm Disease
'Bright with April's buoyancy'
On the summit of Monadnock
Photo by Shiva shankar,
Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
The little lesser hills which compass thee,
Thou standest, bright with April’s buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call
Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy
And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,
Above thy snowy crevices where fall
Pale shrivelled oak leaves, while the snow beneath
Melts at their phantom touch. Another year
Is quick with import. Such each year has been.
Unmoved thou watchest all, and all bequeath
Some jewel to thy diadem of power,
Thou pledge of greater majesty unseen.
— “Monadnock in Early Spring,’’ by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
And that was before they cleaned it up
Spectacle island in Boston Harbor. Behind it is Thompson Island.
— Photo by Don Searls
“America, the new world, compares in glamour and romance with the old, and Boston Harbor is one of the most delightful places in America.
— From The Islands of Boston Harbor (1935), by Edward Rowe Snow (1902-82), historian and prolific author.
Edward Rowe Snow memorial plaque on Georges Island, in Boston Harbor
Georges Island is dominated by Fort Warren, built in 1833-61.
