David Warsh: In Mass., a qualifier on social-distancing directive
— Photo by GoToVan
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
On March 20, the World Health Organization officially expressed a preference for the term “physical distancing” as opposed to “social distancing’’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to a question about appropriate behavior on the first day of spring, in Iran in particular, physician Mike Ryan, head of the U.N. agency’s Health Emergencies Program, warned that crowds were to be avoided, whatever the reason. “I think we need to be exceptionally careful… not to bring too many people together too closely at any one time.”
His technical director, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, chimed in: “If I can just add, you may have heard us use the phrase ‘physical distancing’ instead of ‘social distancing’ and one of the things to highlight in what Mike was saying about keeping the physical distance from people so that we can prevent the virus from transferring to one another; that’s absolutely essential. But it doesn’t mean that socially we have to disconnect from our loved ones, from our family…. We’re changing to say physical distance and that’s on purpose because we want people to still remain connected.”
The change came too late. Social distancing has become the standard desideratum at every level of discourse and has proved all but impossible to dislodge. What’s at stake? Perhaps more than you think. Consider an example last week from May Day, in Massachusetts.
After a very cold and wet April, temperatures finally rose above 60 degrees on the first day in May. There was even some sun in the afternoon. Gov. Charlie Baker seized the occasion to issue an executive order requiring citizens statewide to cover their faces outdoors, calling it “common sense.”
“This is going to be basically a way of life,” Baker said. “No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts. If you can’t [socially distance] inside or outside, you’re going to be expected to wear a face covering or a mask.”
Glossed over in those brackets in The Boston Globe’s front page account was the qualifier. Whatever the governor actually said last Friday at the point of what seems to have been an elision, what he meant was “if you can’t physically distance yourself,” at least when you are outdoors. The story seemed to acknowledge as much it its first paragraph.
Millions of Massachusetts residents will be required to cover their faces when they shop for groceries, take public transportation, or even go for a jog if they can’t distance themselves from others, under a statewide order Governor Charlie Baker issued Friday.
It is not just jogging at issue, but walking along sidewalks, paths, or simply standing around. Baker was artful in making it clear, at least by the act of omission. Municipal officials have taken sterner views. Suburban Brookline, Cambridge and Somerville ban pedestrian activity without masks, whatever and wherever the case. Big fines are involved, at least in principle.
The Washington Post reported a few days ago that there were 64,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths in America so far. Massachusetts had the third highest count of cases in the nation and the fourth-largest number of deaths. The number of newly identified cases remains high. More than half of the deaths have been in long-term-care facilities.
There seems to be some widely shared sense of gain from the show of social solidarity among mask-wearers. If it helps slow the virus, whatever the odds, goes the reasoning, it is a small price to pay.
Out enjoying the spring blossoms?
But two kinds of losses are involved when pedestrians are required to wear masks. One has to do with the dismissal of the sense of personal responsibility – to give others a wide berth on the sidewalk (which even the masked-up do automatically these days); to acknowledge one another in passing; to be cheerful. Civility is diminished by masks.
The other thing damaged is trust. Trust in the judgment of officials, when no scientific support is advanced for the effectiveness of new measures of contagion-suppression. Trust for news media that pass along orders without questions.
Instead of reporting the science behind Governor Baker’s decision last week, or the politics that went into his decision, The Globe sent more than 20 reporters and editors around the eastern part of the state to count noses, to produce a story designed to shame pedestrians not wearing masks.
Yes, I admit that I am a habitual walker. No one, as far as I can tell, doubts the wisdom of requiring masks in stores, offices and on airplanes. Vice President Pence seems to have been universally condemned for deliberately flouting house rules when he visited the Mayo Clinic without one. He donned masks for appearances the next day when visiting a General Motors plant.
Much will be learned from this pandemic about the interplay of public health measures, economic activity, and voter confidence. Next time even the most rudimentary integrated assessment models will take account of the difference between social and physical distance.
. xxx
What turned Rebecca Henderson from a leading innovation economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology into the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at the Harvard Business School? As much as anything, it was HBS’s determination not to be eclipsed, as it had been during the financial crisis, when the climate change becomes more of a crisis.
Henderson was hired in 2009 to become the school’s next thought leader. The course she organized, “Reimagining Capitalism,” attracted 28 students in its first year. But word gets around. It now enrolls nearly 300 (when it enrolls at all). And Henderson’s book, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire appeared online last week.
“The key to prosperity for both business and society at large is to understand free markets and free politics as complements rather than as adversaries,” she writes. Fine words, you say, as long as the president, the Congress or the Conference Board doesn’t try to put this into practice.
It might pay to remember, though, that the time before last that HBS made a big bet on a champion was when it hired Michael Jensen away from the University of Rochester, in 1985. Jensen was the most influential apostle of the gospel that maximizing shareholder value was the only way corporations should be expected to serve public purpose.
Then read the first chapter of Henderson’s book: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? {a line from John Maynard Keynes} Shareholder value as yesterday’s idea.” Or watch this half-hour lecture.) Get ready for the era of ES&G (energy, society and governance) investing.
David Warsh is an economic historian and veteran columnist. He is proprietor of economicprincipals.com, where this piece originated.
'Pages of the hillside'
Above and just below, in the Old Burying Point Cemetery, Salem, Mass. It was laid out in 1637.
—Photo by Max Anderson
“The graveyards of New England can be gay or sad, humorous or severe, bleak or beautiful, but they are are always intensely interesting. The spiritual history of our first two hundred years is nowhere written down more clearly than in these slate and granite pages of the hillside, these neglected Americana of the open air.’’
— Odell Shepard, in The Harvest of a Quiet Eye.
Point of Graves Burying Ground, Portsmouth, N.H. It was laid out in the 17th Century.
Rocky reward
In Quoddy Head State Park, Maine.
— Photo by Fredlyfish4
“The passage through all rocky galleries of the Pine Tree State culminates at Quoddy Bay in a masterpiece.’’
— Samuel Adams Drake, in The Pine-Tree Coast
Eastport and Passamaquoddy Bay (1839), by William Henry Bartlett. That was a time of prosperity in extreme Downeast Maine.
N.E. responds: Amgen works on treatment; New Balance repairs masks and more
BOSTON
From our friends at 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 find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our Web site. This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.
Here is the latest (May 1) roundup:
Medical Response
Amgen Testing Potential COVID-19 Treatment – Amgen is testing its psoriasis drug, Otezla, as a potential treatment for COVID-19’s inflammatory symptoms. The biotechnology company is also partnering with other industry leaders to develop antibody treatments targeting the virus. CNBC reports.
New Balance Repairs 50,000 Face Masks for Boston Hospitals – After New Balance halted shoe production to supply hospitals with personal protective equipment, the manufacturer was able to salvage 50,000 masks that had been damaged for Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The company was able to deliver the repaired and fully-functional masks to hospital staff in under a week. WCVB5 has more.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Sees Increase in Telehealth Visits – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) has seen a hundredfold increase in users opting for telehealth medical appointments, from 5,000 to over half a million visits over the last six weeks. Due to the rapid growth of virtual appointments and popularity of the option, BCBSMA has certified almost 400 new providers to keep pace with increasing demand. Read more from WBUR.
Economic/Business Continuity Response
NEC Members Selected for Massachusetts Reopening Advisory Board – Executives from several NEC members, including Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Fidelity Investments, General Dynamics, and Massachusetts General Hospital, have been chosen by governor Charlie Baker (R-MA) to join the state’s Reopening Advisory Board. Composed of business and municipal government leaders, the 17-member board will advise Governor Baker on strategies for reopening the state’s economy in phases based on public health and safety data. Read more in the Worcester Business Journal.
CIBC Launches Online Hub for Financial Advice – CIBC has launched a new online resource center to provide financial information for its clients. Advice for Today delivers insights on personal finance resources, advice for families and individuals on government and market changes, and more. Newswire has more.
Citizens Bank Issues Grants to Small Businesses – 32 small businesses received grants from Citizens Bank to offset operating costs and revenue losses from the pandemic. The businesses, across different industries and the state, all received $15,000 from the bank as part of its $5 million commitment to small business support. Read more in MassLive
Community Response
Boston University Opens Campus Housing to Pine Street Inn Employees – Boston University is offering its now-vacant student housing to employees from Pine Street Inn as they isolate from their families and work long hours serving the homeless population in the city. The buildings offered by the university can house 75 shelter staffers as they work, while accommodating their shifts and reducing commutes. BU Today has more.
Red Sox Establish Fund for Food-Insecure Families – The Boston Red Sox have launched a new initiative, the Red Sox Foundation Emergency Hardship Fund, to aid families experiencing food insecurity by providing grocery vendor gift cards. The fund was established by a $300,000 donation from the Red Sox community and adds to previous donation from the team to causes such as educational relief. More from The Boston Globe
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.12/19/2019 | READ PRESS RELEASE
Some colleges must reopen by the fall or die
The former Southern Vermont College, in Bennington, closed last year. It’s one of several small New England colleges put out of business by changing student demographics. COVID-19 is likely to kill more of them in the coming months.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Kudos to Brown University and some other schools that are making dorm rooms available to house front-line workers in the pandemic emergency. With large parts of these institutions effectively closed, they have plenty of space to offer.
But what happens next September? Many colleges and universities are now agonizing over whether COVID-19 will let them safely physically reopen. If not, how many students and their parents will be willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to take classes via the likes of Zoom? The claims that online learning is almost as good as in-person classes are laughable. Zoom, Skype, et al., are technically impressive but frankly as a teaching vehicle they suck (to coin a phrase) compared to in-person instruction.
So I’d guess that many students will decide to take a “gap year,” with the idea of entering, or returning to, college in the fall of 2021. The trouble is that there won’t be many jobs available for them in the interim and that some of their colleges will die as the pandemic dries up their tuition and fees revenue.
It’s not clear how Trump’s latest immigration/foreign visitor orders might affect, at least indirectly, many foreign students at American colleges and universities, most paying full freight. The American Council on Education says that more than 1 million foreign students attend U.S. colleges and universities, contributing more than $39 billion to the economy and subsidizing American students.
In any case, a lot of these colleges must physically reopen by the fall or die.
Todd McLeish: First wild lizard found in Rhode Island!
Five-lined skink
— Photo by Kris Kelley
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Rhode Island’s herpetological community is bursting with excitement at the discovery of the first confirmed lizard sighting in the state. A five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) of uncertain origin was found in South County on April 22.
Emilie Holland, an environmental scientist with the Federal Highway Administration and president of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, made the discovery and immediately contacted other National History Survey board members with expertise in identifying lizards.
“I was just poking around when I saw the little guy,” she said. “I thought it was a salamander at first, and I grabbed it really fast. When I opened my hand, I thought it was going to be a mole salamander, but it didn’t move as fast as a mole salamander normally would.”
When University of Rhode Island herpetologist Nancy Karraker received a text and photo of the lizard from Holland, she was in the middle of a virtual meeting.
“My initial reaction was, how quickly can I get out of this meeting and go find Emily to see it,” Karraker said.
The five-lined skink is typically found throughout the Southeast and Midwest, where it’s quite common. Small numbers are also found in the Hudson Valley of New York and into western Connecticut and western Massachusetts. But with the exception of a few unconfirmed observations, they have never been recorded in Rhode Island.
Growing about 6 inches long with distinct brown and cream-colored stripes, the skinks have blue tails as juveniles, and adult males have a reddish throat. The one Holland found was a juvenile.
“The blue tail is a defense mechanism,” said herpetologist Lou Perrotti, director of conservation at Roger Williams Park Zoo. “A predator is going to attack the brightest piece of the animal, and the lizard can drop its tail to get away. It gives them a protection advantage.”
The big question is how it arrived in Rhode Island: Did it arrive naturally on its own, or was it brought to the area by humans, either intentionally or unintentionally? Since it was found near railroad tracks and a lumberyard, many possibilities are being considered.
“Skinks love rocky woodlands where there’s lots of fallen timber,” Perrotti said. “And they love railroad corridors because they’re typically lined with rocks that are great for thermoregulation. Lizards love to climb out on the rocks.
“Was it a stowaway on a train? Was it transported up here in lumber or mulch? We don’t know. We need to find more specimens. Is it possible there’s a population here? Absolutely. But unless you really look for them, they’re really hard to find.”
Scott Buchanan, a herpetologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, has contacted a colleague who studies Italian wall lizards that have dispersed up the Northeast rail corridor, but no skinks are known to have been found along the tracks.
Holland hopes it arrived in Rhode Island on its own.
“The child side of my brain says, ‘How cool would that be,’” she said. “But when I stop to think about it, the likelihood is that it somehow got imported here.”
Karraker agreed.
“It’s not a range extension in the sense that it marched its way east to Rhode Island,” she said. “My immediate thought is that it came in somebody’s mulch — or some eggs did — or in a load of wood. There are enough people like me and Lou and Scott and all my students who are constantly running around Rhode Island looking for stuff, rolling over logs. If they were broadly distributed in Rhode Island, we’d know about it.”
Another possibility is that the skink was released by someone who kept it as a pet.
“Pretty much every animal is in the pet trade, but I’ve spent time perusing Craig’s List and I had my students investigating pet shops this semester, and I don’t think this species turned up in anyone’s records,” Karraker said. “They’re not something that tames easily, they’re very sensitive to people being around, and they hide, so they don’t make a good pet.”
Because the skink probably survived here in the winter, it raises additional speculation. David Gregg, executive director of the Natural History Survey, wonders whether the changing climate may have played a role in its survival in the state.
“If further research shows this is a breeding population and not just a lone escapee, then however this particular population of skinks got to Rhode Island, they never could have survived here before but now they can,” he said.
But Karraker noted that some native populations of the skink in New York are nearly as far north as the Adirondack Mountains, where it’s often colder than Rhode Island, so she isn’t convinced climate change has played a role.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with climate,” she said. “Something got moved and the skink was in it, and Rhode Island isn’t a bad place to be. The skink detected that there weren’t any other lizards here to compete with, and it survived.”
The next step for the group of herpetologists is to search the area for additional specimens to determine how large the local population may be. Buchanan will be screening the first specimen for diseases and conducting a genetic analysis to determine from where it originated.
But for now, the skink lives in an aquarium at Karraker’s house, where she is feeding it termites.
“I didn’t want to release it,” she said. “That’s a decision for DEM to make, not me. So I’m just waiting to make the handoff to DEM to take charge and figure out what to do with it.”
Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog
'The Trout Pool Paradox'
The Housatonic River in Cornwall, Conn., on the edge of the Berkshires
“Right here at my feet is what I’ve come to think of as the trout pool paradox….The trout pool is a place for solitary contemplation, for romantic love, for a sense of reconnection with lost wilderness. And yet paradoxically, the pristine trout pools of western Connecticut nurtured the most noisome and alienating developments of the American industrial revolution – factory towns, foundries, mass production, the modern armaments and aerospace industries.’’
-- From The Trout Pool Paradox: The American Lives of Three Rivers, by George Black. The book explores the histories of the Housatonic River and two of its tributaries — the Naugatuck, which for a long time was a dumping place for toxic industrial byproducts and human waste, and the Shepaug, known for its fine fishing. The editor of this site, Robert Whitcomb, lived near the Naugatuck in the ‘60s and remembers the river often changing colors depending on what the factories along it were dumping and pouring directly into it, much of it poisonous in varying degrees.
Trout fishing with fly rods became popular in New England in the 19th Century even as industrialization began to pollute many of them of the region’s streams.
Boston health heroine stern and generous
—Photo courtesy of Teadris Pope)
From Kaiser Health News’s “Lost on the Frontline’’ series
Rose Taldon
Age: 63
Occupation: Nurse
Place of Work: New England Baptist Hospital, in Boston
Date of Death: April 12, 2020
Rose Taldon was just 5 feet tall. But when she bellowed out the window, her kids ran right home.
“She didn’t take any crap,” said her daughter, Teadris Pope.
Taldon raised three children with her husband on the street where she grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston. She was respected as a strong black woman, earning a nursing degree while working in public transit for 23 years. Described as stern, she still was quick to tickle her eight grandkids.
Taldon was generous: Even as she lay in a hospital in April, exhausted from the coronavirus, she arranged to pay bills for an out-of-work friend, her daughter said.
It’s unclear whether Taldon caught the virus at her hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, designated for non-COVID patients. Hospital officials said three patients and 22 staff have tested positive.
Once her mother was hospitalized, Pope couldn’t visit. On Easter morning, a doctor called at 2 a.m., offering to put Taldon on a video call.
“I just talked until I had no words,” Pope said. “I was just telling her, ‘We’re so proud of you. You worked so hard raising us. … You’ve gone through a hell of a fight.'”
An hour later, her mother was gone.
'On my skin'
Lighthouse in Stonington
“The shades of New England are here on my skin. Brine in the blood, grit in the bones, sea air in the lungs.’’
— L.M. Browning, in Fleeting Moments of Fierce Clarity: Journal of a New England Poet. She grew up in Stonington, Conn., on Long Island Sound
Don Pesci: Abby's Barbershop: A Parable
VERNON, Conn.
G.K. Chesterton somewhere writes that all barbers are would-be philosophers under the skin. The trade has changed over the years. Barbers used to be surgeons at a time before pharmacology and modern medicine branched off and began to produce physicians who knew a little more about human healing than the barbarous barbers who painted their poles red and white. In medieval Europe, barbers, not doctors, performed surgery, and the pole was a sign that indicated the blood and napkins used in their business, the barber’s most frequent customers being soldiers whose bodies had been shattered on the field of battle.
Barbers left off surgery, but not philosophizing.
The philosophizing is a result of customer immobility and peculiar circumstances familiar to every barber and dentist. If you have gone into a barber shop for a haircut and shave, you will understand how much like a confessional or a psychologist’s couch the barber chair is. And the best barbers tend to be on the loquacious side because they wish to keep their customers coming back. Experiencing a haircut and a shave without chatter is too much like waiting for the guillotine to drop. People who are immobilized with foam on their faces and a straight-edge razor glinting above them generally will be in the mood for calming small talk. The best philosophy is small talk writ large, and the good barber, like Socrates, will have had a good deal of experience in chatting up his customers.
So it is at Abby’s Barber Shop. The proprietor, Abby, is gentle, chatty on subjects that do not wound her clients and, above all, agreeable. It is chancy disputing on difficult subjects with someone wielding a scissors and a razor. The secret to success in barberology is to put all disputants at ease, disarming them and so leaving them helpless in the face of the barber’s superior weaponry. Accomplished barbers are practiced in the fine art of agreeing to disagree on disagreeable propositions. It also helps a good deal when the customer is satisfied with the barber’s work, and customer satisfaction generally involves, during the first few visits at least, a good deal of inquiry and negotiation.
Some of Abby’s older customers are abrupt and set in their ways. “What should I do if a customer is rude?” her assistant asked her.
“Put on your most agreeable tone and ask him to move his chin a little to the left. It will not hurt if he glimpses the razor or the scissors.”
After her father died, Abby inherited the barbershop from her brother, 20 years her senior, who had retired early and moved to Tennessee.
Other barbers, and I suppose dentists, sometimes take advantage of their victims' incapacitation.
John the Barber: You’re married right?
Victim: (A hot towel across his face in preparation for a straight-razor shave) Mufftt..
John: Thought so. You probably have children. I’d rather have warts myself. Kids are always a problem, right?
Victim: Mufftalm.
John: Ah, three! Triple trouble. Girls are better than boys, though they are expensive propositions when given away in marriage to loathsome sons-in-law. No decent father wants to give his girl up to such beasts.
This kind of friendly-hostile badinage would never have occurred in Abby's shop, which -- I say it to shame shameless politicians – will be closing before Connecticut’s politicians decide that the 75-year-old barbershop is a necessary pleasantry, even though barbers no longer perform surgery. For that matter, surgeons in Connecticut no longer may perform elective operations in the shutdown-state, because room must be made in hospitals to accommodate empty beds.
Customer: So, you’re closing shop. What a shame.
Abby: Yes, and moving too. But this is not a decision of ours. We have been forced to it by politicians who have never seen the inside of this shop. But that is the nature of politics in the state. When you grow old, the good book tells us, someone will tie a rope around your waist and take you where you do not wish to go.
Customer: That shouldn’t happen.
Abby: No. Some of my customers, the older ones, believe that winter should not happen. But here we are, and the snow is falling outside.
Customer: Some of these people who make laws ….
Abby: We live in a state in which both political parties are divided by a common purpose: how to provide for the common good, and none of them understand that the common good is best served when they are no longer in command. But all that has come to a stop. The legislature, fearing the plague, has put itself into suspended animation, and now all the important decisions are being made behind closed doors by the governor.
Customer: A good man. All this mess was thrown into his lap….
Abby: Well, I certainly will miss our little chats (brandishing her razor). Could you turn your head a bit to the left please? I want to get at your neck.
A subtle barber was Abby. She now has moved to Tennessee, where her brother has opened a barbershop, for the business of scraping necks with straight razors is a lifetime pursuit, full of secret pleasures.
Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) is a Vernon-based columnist
The War Memorial Tower in Vernon
Sort of safe to go in
“Love That Dirty Water,’’ by Nils Johnson, a Lyme, N.H.-based painter (among this accomplished renaissance man’s various talents). The top layer of this painting is oil and the under-painting acrylic.
The title is a reference to a line from the popular 1965 song “Dirty Water,’’ a jovially sarcastic paean to Boston and the then infamously polluted Charles River and Boston Harbor. In the past couple of decades a celebrated cleanup has made it relatively safe to swim in the river. Bless those pesky regulations and state and federal taxpayers.
Mr. Johnson’s Web site is: nilsjohnsonartist.com.
William Morgan: Public art — banality and grandeur
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo commissioned a poster that would honor the dedication, sacrifice and nobility of medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That the Sheppard Fairey poster, entitled "Rhode Island Angel of Hope and Strength," has been maligned by Republicans, who see it as "an image of Communist propaganda,’’ is less surprising than that it was commissioned by the state's canny chief executive.
Workers Monument in front of the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Expo
State-sponsored art is rarely memorable, whether a monument to heroes of the Soviet Union or an official presidential portrait (remember the 1965 painting of Lyndon Johnson by Peter Hurd, which LBJ declared "the ugliest damn thing" he'd ever seen). Our postage stamps and coinage are generally nothing to write home about either.
Official portrait of former Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri, which is so realistic that it looks like a photo; the various trappings of office and private life are displayed, as if the man alone were not enough.
Rhode Island School of Design alumnus Fairey is best known for his now iconic 2008 Obama campaign poster, simply labeled HOPE. The Rhode Island Angel's graphic style comes from a long tradition of jingoistic American posters, particularly those from World War I. (“Hope” is the official Rhode Island motto.)
1918 War Bonds poster.
Our COVID-19 angel is pretty tame, especially compared to the public art produced by totalitarian regimes. Both Fascists and Communists almost always revert to the same sort of school textbook realism.
The similarity of different totalitarian regimes' art: Hitler and Stalin as benign fatherly figures.
The issue here is not really one of a partisan polemic (workers of all political stripes wear similar jackets and caps) but the unfortunate tendency of governments to support a flaccid realism.
Irish Famine Memorial in downtown Providence is a tribute to banality – the most simplistic imagery.
— Photo by William Morgan
It may be that government-supported public art, particularly statuary, is oxymoronic. But if we are going to have it, it needs to rise above triteness — for example, of the proposed Dwight Eisenhower monument in Washington — and at least aim for something noble or transcendent.
Proposed statuary for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington. This D-Day tableau is modeled after a photograph, but this lacks that famous image's immediacy and poignancy.
Red Army Memorial in Sofia, Bulgaria. This has a lot more life than the proposed Eisenhower statute; It’s Soviet Realism at its powerful best.
The curse of such memorials is a sense of literalness, although we get some credit for quickly abandoning the European precedent of portraying our leaders in classical garb.
George Washington in the North Carolina Capitol, by the Italian neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova, 1821.
— Photo by William Morgan
It seems unlikely that the sort of politico that conflates flag waving with patriotism will actively encourage any sort of abstraction, as so unlikely but did brilliantly happen with the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.
In an age of all kinds of visual media, perhaps it is time to search for more eloquent and sophisticated expressions of commemoration and grief.
Until that time, we can remember the golden age of public art in this country, the period from the Civil War (which demanded a lot of statuary) to the Great War.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Shaw Memorial, Boston, 1884-97.
— Photo by William Morgan
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, arguably the greatest sculptor whom American has produced, understood the difference between verisimilitude and a powerful naturalism. Saint-Gaudens's monument to Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment opposite the State House in Boston remains one of the most moving works of American art.
Shaw Memorial, detail.
— Photo by William Morgan
Saint-Gaudens also designed the so-called "double eagle" $20 gold piece at the behest of his friend Theodore Roosevelt. Liberty depicted on the coin – and soaring above Colonel Shaw – is the distant ancestor of the Rhode Island Angel of Hope.
William Morgan is a Providence-based architecture writer. His next book, Snowbound: Dwelling in Winter, will be published by Princeton Architectural Press this autumn.
Llewellyn King: The case for continuous scientific research
Oxford’s Jenner Institute laboratories seen from the atrium
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
There is something fabulously exciting about watching science riding to the rescue. The gloom about the coronavirus pandemic began to lift dramatically in the past several days as good news about vaccines came out.
Out front Oxford University, with a well-established history in vaccines, announced that it had started trials on people and that it might have a vaccine by September. It has a manufacturing partnership with AstraZeneca, a giant European pharmaceutical company, and it is hoped that a million doses can be produced by September, even as there is not absolute certainty that it will work. Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford’s Jenner Institute, says she is “80 percent” certain that it will.
Incidentally, some of tests on rhesus macaque monkeys were done at the National Institutes of Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories, in Hamilton, Mont.
Labs in all major countries are in close pursuit of Oxford. What does seem certain is that the time when a viable vaccine can be brought to market is shrinking. The next challenge will be to manufacture proven vaccines in the hundreds of millions of doses needed.
To me the big thing is not who finds a vaccine, but rather how science answers the call to arms when the challenge is there – and financial support is provided. Much critical research in many of the coronavirus vaccine efforts has been provided not by governments, but by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
There is reason to wonder why Gates has been out in front of many governments, including the United States. This points to government failure to adequately support research and to prepare non-military defenses. Not every threat a modern nation faces comes from national armed forces.
Across the spectrum of research, private money is raised to do the work which should be in the government’s purview. Money for science is a struggle: There are competing philosophies, political and scientific, about research. To begin with, all research is messy. The scientific method, as Michael Short of MIT reminded me recently, is based on try, fail, try again; test, prove, then proceed.
Conservatives have tended to be skeptical about a lot of science, pooh-poohing the study of obscure microbes and what they see as dubious investigation. They have consistently demanded quantifiable results from the government’s scientific establishment, looking for practical applications and unhappy about research for its own sake. They have forgotten the real driver of all science: to know.
Liberals have favored, as you would expect, the social sciences over the hard ones. They are more prepared to treat social studies as science than high-energy physics.
What is lacking is something which we used to have in Congress: the Office of Technology Assessment which was the scientific equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office. As with the often-quoted CBO, the OTA was a tool for members of Congress; a means for them to get complex scientific issues right and help them to understand the budgeting for those.
The OTA was created in 1972 and looked to be a firm part of the support system of Congress. But the Newt Gingrich-led House axed it in 1995. There have been several attempts to bring the OTA back in the House; last year a bill was introduced that would have reestablished it at a modest $6 million, but no action was taken.
The OTA provided a valuable service in saving members of Congress from themselves; advising them when they come back from their constituencies believing hearsay as scientific fact -- the same thing that has bedeviled President Trump in his briefings on the COVID-19 crisis.
I was well acquainted with the OTA and I always thought its greatest value was not in its formal advice, but rather in its informal help to members -- who often confuse what they are told by sources as disparate as their children and lobbyists -- from saying something about science that did not hold up.
As it is, we are all standing where we can see the scientific cavalry saddle up and ride out. This is heart-pumping, reassuring and confirms that science should not be neglected for budget or other reasons. To have a viable scientific infrastructure is to be defended from non-military attack, ranging from cybersecurity to a virus. Scientists agree on this: There will be more.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Meeting as a 'restatement'
Polaroid 80B Highlander instant camera, circa 1959
“I find each new person whom I meet a complete restatement of what life and the world are all about.’’
— Edwin Land (1909-81) inventor and the founder (in Cambridge, Mass., in 1937) of Polaroid and long considered the leading statesman of New England technology
Wise watercolor
“The Sentinel’’ (watercolor), by Jeanette Fournier. It’s part of her show scheduled for The Gallery at WREN, in Bethlehem, N.H., Sept 4-29. We’ll see if the pandemic lets it happen.
Ms. Fournier is a watercolor painter and graphite artist whose work is driven by a love of nature and the creatures that live in it.
She says: "The compositions of my work are meant to be intimate, close-up portraits of the animals, birds and other creatures with which we share this world," especially those she sees around her Littleton, N.H., studio and in the nearby White Mountains.
Her Web site:
In Bethlehem, looking toward the snow-capped White Mountains.
— Photo by Stevage
The Littleton Public Library, with statue of Pollyanna
— Photo by Doug Kerr
Children's Hospital to study COVID-19 mystery; Assumption College holds to plan to train PA’s
Boston Children’s Hospital
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 find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our Web site. This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.
Here is the April 29 roundup:
Medical Response
Boston Children’s Hospital Launches Study on COVID-19 in Pediatric Patients – To better understand why few children infected with COVID-19 become severely ill, Boston Children’s Hospital has initiated a national study of 800 infected children. The study will examine patients with varying levels of symptoms to identify what protects children from severe symptoms that older patients lack. WBUR has more.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Deploys 100 Employees to Support Boston Response – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) is re-assigning 100 of its employees to aid Boston’s response to the pandemic. Workers from BCBSMA will support the city’s contact tracing efforts and care efforts at Boston Hope field hospital. Read the press release here.
Massachusetts General Hospital Partners with Boston to Identify Asymptomatic Residents – Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the City of Boston have partnered to launch new initiative to evaluate community exposure to COVID-19 using antibody testing and. MGH and the city will randomly select residents in the hardest-hit parts of Boston to guide future allocation of resources. Read more from WBUR
Economic/Business Continuity Response
Assumption College Continues Developing Physician Assistant Program – Despite the pandemic suspending most plans, Assumption College is moving forward with its new physician assistant program. Leaders of the new program are hoping the outbreak can even inform the new program’s focus on care during a pandemic. The school is still planning to enroll students in January 2021 while awaiting accreditation and building clinical partnerships. Read more in MassLive.
Partners HealthCare Requires Rapid COVID-19 Testing on Admission in Hospitals – At all of its acute care hospitals, Partners HealthCare is requiring all admitted patients to undergo a COVID-19 test. The new regulation is designed to gather data about the spread of the virus within the provider’s facilities to inform decisions surrounding protective equipment orders and floor layouts—as well as to protect patients and staff. Read more from WBUR.
Community Response
Tufts Health Plan Announces $345,000 in Funding for Relief Efforts – As part of its commitment to support relief measures targeting older people, Tufts Health Plan has pledged $345,000 to organizations focusing on housing insecurity in New England. The organization is also accelerating payments to current community partners and matching employee donations, raising an additional $55,000 for the organizations. Read more.
Holy Cross Uses Day of Giving Funds to Support Students Affected by Pandemic – The annual day of giving at the College of the Holy Cross raised $2.47 million to support current students and staff at the school. The school community prioritized donations to causes—such as its Emergency Relief Fund to offset short-term costs for unanticipated technology, housing, and travel costs for students—that will support those at the school most significantly impacted by the pandemic. Read more 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.
View of the entry to Assumption College and of the Blessed Virgin from the La Maison building
'Lives because it dies'
Ragged Mountain as seen from Mount Kearsarge, in central New Hampshire, where Donald Hall lived in the tiny town of Wilmot.
“Ragged Mountain was granite before Adam divided. Grass
lives because it dies. If weary of discord
we gaze heavenward through the same eye that looks at us,
vision makes light of contradiction:
granite is grass in the holy meadow of the soul’s repose.’’
— From “Granite and Grass,’’ by Donald Hall (1928-2018)
What I 'expected Maine to look like'
Downtown Rockland in the summer, when it’s a major tourist center
“Catawamteak,” meaning “the great landing,” is what the Abenaki Indians called the early settlement that became Rockland, Maine. Thomaston and Rockland can be bypassed by Route 90, an eight-mile shortcut which I frequently used as a midshipman, but our bus stayed on the main road and stopped to let passengers on and off in both places. At one time Rockland was part of Thomaston, called East Thomaston, but the two towns have long since separated, having very little in common. In the beginning, Rockland developed quickly because of shipbuilding and limestone production. It was, and still is, an important fishing port. Lobsters are the main export and the five-day Maine Lobster Festival is celebrated here annually. The red, three-story brick buildings lining the main street of Rockland, give it the image of an old working town. I have always been impressed by the appearance of these small towns, because to me this is what I had expected Maine to look like.’’
— Capt. Hank Bracker, in his book Salty & Saucy Maine: Sea Stories From Castine
Rockland in 1908
The Silver Age
Looking across the head of Narragansett Bay to Providence from the East Providence shoreline.
— Photo by William Morgan
Don Pesci: Is Blumental holding off Biden endorsement on principle?
Sen. Richard Blumenthal
VERNON, Conn.
As of April 28, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, has not yet endorsed his party’s likely presidential nominee, Joe Biden. Blumenthal’s continued non-endorsement cannot be the result of an oversight. Most prominent Democrats, even those engaged in the Democratic primary – including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders – have offered their endorsements. Former President Obama, after a little hectoring from bigwigs in his own party, has issued a late but fulsome endorsement.
No one seems to know for certain what may be holding up the Blumenthal endorsement, but theories are making the rounds.
May 11 will mark the one year anniversary of the publication of a piece that appeared in the New York Post titled “The troubling reason why Biden is so soft on China” written by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, the author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.” Some are nursing the theory that Blumenthal may have speed-read the piece and, a man of conscience, it disturbed his political equipoise.
How could any self-respecting Democrat endorse as president and the nominal head of the Democratic Party a politician who is “soft on China,” particularly now when China is importing stolen, proprietary data from companies in the United States that supply military equipment to the arsenal of democracy while exporting Coronavirus to the Western world?
Schweizer believes that the all but certain presidential nominee of the Democratic Party may be soft on China in part because China may have purchased his affections by providing money and golden opportunities to his son, Hunter Biden. The devil, we are told, is in the details. In the Schweizer piece the Devil’s details are hauled out of the shadows.
“In 2013,” Schweizer writes, “then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China. The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion. In short, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president.”
The Post piece dots all its “i’s” and crosses all its “t’s” with a superfluity of details. It is, as we sometimes say in the business, convincing – absent an equally convincing response from Biden.
One of the Devil’s details cited by Schweizer stands out like a sore thumb. “Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit,” Schweizer writes. Twelve days after Hunter Biden “stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing, his company [Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC] signed a historic deal with the Bank of China, the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government. The Bank of China had created a first-of-its-kind investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, one of its founding partners was none other than Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.”
Rosemont, the Biden-Archer firm, became “increasingly involved with China. Devon Archer became the vice chairman of Bohai Harvest (BHR), helping [to] oversee some of the fund’s investments…. In December 2014, BHR became an ‘anchor investor’ in the IPO of China General Nuclear Power Corp. (CGN), a state-owned energy company involved in the construction of nuclear reactors. In April 2016, the U.S. Justice Department would charge CGN with stealing nuclear secrets from the United States — actions prosecutors said could cause ‘significant damage to our national security.’”
Asked what he knew and when he knew it concerning the China/Hunter Biden connections detailed by Schweizer, Joe Biden implausibly claimed he and his son never discussed Hunter Biden’s business relations. The Schweizer piece, some note, will have been in the public stream for a year in May and yet has not proven an obstacle to Biden’s march to the White House. None of the details were discussed during the sometimes contentious Democrat Primary, and the media has devoted little attention to it.
Why should we not suppose it is a dead letter – old news?That is always possible, but not likely in mano a mano debates between President Trump – who, whatever his failings, knows how to make news – and Biden who, most will acknowledge, is not William Jennings Bryant on the stump.
However, the question immediately before the house is: Why has Blumenthal not yet endorsed Biden? The answer to that question most flattering to Blumenthal may be: Perhaps Blumenthal is a man of strong ethical principles after all. Given the Schweizer analysis, which has not been disputed by Biden or Blumenthal, how it is possible to maintain a view that Trump is too cozy with China, roughly Blumenthal’s position, while extending a hearty endorsement of Biden, whose son Hunter has been woven into the Chinese tapestry in a fashion some might consider compromising?
Don Pesci is a Vernon-based columnist.