Repel the roadblockers
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal224.com
“As Columbus announced when he knew he was bounced
It was swell, Isabelle, swell.’’
\
--- From Cole Porter’s 1935 song “Just One of Those Things’’
I’m with Rhode Island Democratic state Sen. Leonidas Raptakis, who wants to make it a felony to block a highway, which is what seven activists promoting “Indigenous Peoples Day’’ and denouncing Christopher Columbus did Oct. 13 in Providence on the north-bound side of Route 95, the main street of the East Coast.
This outrageous act, which might have gained the lawless Trump’s “law and order” campaign some voters, could have caused fatal accidents and have blocked such emergency vehicles as fire trucks and ambulances. These idiots belong in the slammer for a good long time. Nobody has a First Amendment right to block essential public infrastructure.
Also, let’s not romanticize Native Americans. Like the hemisphere’s European occupiers, they inflicted their share of horrific brutality. Tribes would fight each other, as well as invading, land-hungry white people, with awful violence. What they didn’t have was immunity to diseases from Europe and Europeans’ weaponry.
JoNel Aleccia: Should you try Trump-touted drugs?
“You shouldn’t expect that what you’ve heard about on the news is the right treatment for you.”
— Benjamin Rome, M.D., Harvard Medical School
When Terry Mutter woke up with a headache and sore muscles on a recent Wednesday, the competitive weightlifter chalked it up to a hard workout.
By that evening, though, he had a fever of 101 degrees and was clearly ill. “I felt like I had been hit by a truck,” recalled Mutter, who lives near Seattle.
The next day he was diagnosed with COVID-19. By Saturday, the 58-year-old was enrolled in a clinical trial for the same antibody cocktail that President Trump claimed was responsible for his coronavirus “cure.”
“I had heard a little bit about it because of the news,” said Mutter, who joined the study by drugmaker Regeneron to test whether its combination of two man-made antibodies can neutralize the deadly virus. “I think they probably treated him with everything they had.”
Mutter learned about the study from his sister-in-law, who works at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, one of dozens of trial sites nationwide. He is among hundreds of thousands of Americans — including the president — who’ve taken a chance on experimental therapies to treat or prevent COVID-19.
But with nearly 8 million people in the U.S. infected with the coronavirus and more than 217,000 deaths attributed to COVID, many patients are unaware of such options or unable to access them. Others remain wary of unproven treatments that can range from drugs to vaccines.
“Honestly, I don’t know whether I would have gotten a call if I hadn’t known somebody who said, ‘Hey, here’s this study,’” said Mutter, a retired executive with Boeing Co.
The Web vsite clinicaltrials.gov, which tracks such research, reports more than 3,600 studies involving COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. More than 430,000 people have volunteered for such studies through the COVID-19 Prevention Network. Thousands of others have received therapies, like the antiviral drug remdesivir, under federal emergency authorizations.
Faced with a dire COVID diagnosis, how do patients or their families know whether they can — or should — aggressively seek out such treatments? Conversely, how can they decide whether to refuse them if they’re offered?
Such medical decisions are never easy — and they’re even harder during a pandemic, said Annette Totten, an associate professor of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University.
“The challenge is the evidence is not good because everything with COVID is new,” said Totten, who specializes in medical decision-making. “I think it’s hard to cut through all the noise.”
Consumers have been understandably whipsawed by conflicting information about potential COVID treatments from political leaders, including Trump, and the scientific community. The antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, touted by the president, received emergency authorization from the federal Food and Drug Administration, only to have the decision revoked several weeks later out of concern it could cause harm.
Convalescent plasma, which uses blood products from people recovered from COVID-19 to treat those who are still ill, was given to more than 100,000 patients in an expanded-access program and made widely available through another emergency authorization — even though scientists remain uncertain of its benefits.
Regeneron and the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Co. have both requested emergency use authorization for their monoclonal antibody therapies, even as scientists say such approval could jeopardize enrollment in the randomized controlled trials that will prove whether or how well they work. So far, about 2,500 people have enrolled in the Regeneron trials, with about 2,000 of them receiving the therapy, a company spokesperson said. Others have received the treatment through so-called compassionate use programs, though the company wouldn’t say how many.
Last week, the National Institutes of Health paused the Lilly antibody trial after an independent monitoring board raised safety concerns.
“With all of the information swirling around in the media, it’s hard for patients to make good decisions — and for doctors to make those decisions,” said Dr. Benjamin Rome, a general internist and health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School’s Portal program. “You shouldn’t expect that what you’ve heard about on the news is the right treatment for you.”
Even so, people facing COVID shouldn’t be afraid to question whether treatment options are available to them, Rome said. “As a doctor, I never mind when patients ask,” he said.
Patients and families should understand what the implications of those treatments might be, Totten advised. Early phase 1 clinical trials focus largely on safety, while larger phase 2 and phase 3 trials determine efficacy. Any experimental treatment raises the possibility of serious side effects.
Ideally, health care providers would provide such information about treatments and risks unprompted. But during a pandemic, especially in a high-stress environment, they might not, Totten noted.
“It’s important to be sort of insistent,” she said. “If you ask a question, you have to ask it again. Sometimes you have to be willing to be a little pushy,” she said.
Patients and families should take notes or record conversations for later review. They should ask about financial compensation for participation. Many patients in COVID-19 trials are paid modest amounts for their time and travel.
And they should think about how any treatment fits into their larger system of values and goals, said Angie Fagerlin, a professor and the chair of the population health sciences department at the University of Utah.
“What are the pros and what are the cons?” Fagerlin said. “Where would your decision regret be: Not doing something and getting sicker? Or doing something and having a really negative reaction?”
One consideration may be the benefit to the wider society, not just yourself, she said. For Mutter, helping advance science was a big reason he agreed to enroll in the Regeneron trial.
“The main thing that made me interested in it was in order for therapeutics to move forward, they need people,” he said. “At a time when there’s so much we can’t control, this would be a way to come up with some kind of a solution.”
That decision led him to Fred Hutch, which is collaborating on two Regeneron trials, one for prevention of COVID-19 and one for treatment of the disease.
“It was a six-hour visit,” he said. “It’s two hours to get the infusion. It’s a very slow IV drip.”
Mutter was the second person enrolled in the treatment trial at Fred Hutch, said Dr. Shelly Karuna, a co-principal investigator. The study is testing high and low doses of the monoclonal antibody cocktail against a placebo.
“I am struck by the profound altruism of the people we are screening,” she said.
Mutter isn’t sure how he contracted COVID-19. He and his family have been careful about masks and social distancing — and critical of others who weren’t.
“The irony now is that we’re the ones who got sick,” said Mutter, whose wife, Gina Mutter, 54, is also ill.
Mutter knows he has a 1-in-3 chance that he got a placebo rather than one of two active treatment dosages, but he said he was willing to take that chance. His wife didn’t enroll in the trial.
“I said, there’s some risks involved. We’re taking one for the team here. I don’t think we both need to do that,” he said.
So far, Mutter has struggled with a persistent cough and lingering fatigue. He can’t tell if his infusion has been helpful, never mind whether it’s a cure.
“Just no way of telling if I got the antibodies or not,” he said. “Did I get them and that kept me out of disaster, or did I get the placebo and my own immune system did its job?”
JoNel Aleccia is a Kaiser Health News reporter
JoNel Aleccia: jaleccia@kff.org, @JoNel_Aleccia
If it melts
“Melting Pot,’’ by Roberto Lugo, on view March 14 at the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Mass.
Mr. Lugo is an American artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet and educator. The museum says “His work confronts the intertwined complexities of systemic racism, representation and history, while challenging established power structures within the art, craft and design fields.’’
See:
https://fullercraft.org/
and:
http://robertolugostudio.com/
On a jewel of a day
Looking north on the Seekonk River, between Providence and East Providence, on Oct. 19. Narragansett Boat Club is on the left.
For 'ruthless examination'
Connecticut Hall (built in 1750-1753) at Yale, with statue of alumnus Nathan Hale (1755-1776), an American soldier and spy for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission in New York City but was captured by the British and executed.
“Universities should he safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.’’
— Kingman Brewster (1919-1998), president of Yale University, in New Haven, in 1963-1977 and diplomat.
'Sober gladness'
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s grave in glorious Mount Auburn Cemetery, which straddles Cambridge and Watertown, Mass.
With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life’s newness, and earth’s garniture spread out;
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.
There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life
Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned,
And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved,
Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down
By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees
The golden robin moves; the purple finch,
That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds,
A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle,
And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud
From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings;
And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke,
Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail.
O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear.
— “Autumn,’’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), probably the best known New England poet of his time
The Bigelow Chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery. It’s named after Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879), Boston/Cambridge-based physician, botanist and botanical illustrator and prime mover in the creation of the internationally known cemetery, where many New England notables are buried.
David Warsh: Of Nobel Prizes, government auctions and 'technocracy'
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
A handful of developments in research economics in the early 1980s created sufficient excitement to attract the attention of journalists. As the saying goes, there were sovereigns in the air.
Paul Krugman edited a conference volume on strategic trade policy built around new ideas about economies of scale. Thomas Sargent, in “The Ends of Four Big Inflations,” suggested that the Federal Reserve Board’s battle against inflation might be less costly than was commonly thought. Paul Romer began investigating the logic of policies that might stimulate economic growth. Fynn Kydland and Edward Prescott, having already reformulated the terms by which central banking was understood, set out in “Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations” to identify the driving forces behind business cycles.
And in 1982, an eight-page paper contributed by four economists who shared Stanford University connections appeared in The Journal of Economic Theory, “Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma.” Interest in the evolution of cooperation had recently been stimulated by an influential paper by political scientist Robert Axelrod. The authors were concerned with the machinery by which reputations were built and preserved (or not!). Having submitted to the journal rival papers setting out ideas about the analysis of what soon would become known as sequential equilibrium, involving the application of Bayes’ rule, they were persuaded by the editor, Karl Shell, to prepare a short introduction setting out their common ground. They were quickly dubbed the Gang of Four.
Last week two members of the Gang of Four became the most recent of that cohort, most of them having begun their graduate studies in the 1970s, to be recognized by the Nobel Committee for the prize in economic sciences. Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson were cited for their contributions to auction theory, whereupon a collective sigh of satisfaction could be heard among their friends and colleagues. Frustration at the Swedes’ failure to act had grown so great that Milgrom’s students had resolved that, while waiting, they could compile a Wikipedia compendium as a temporary substitute for the citation they hoped to read one day.
The Committee’s paper on the scientific background to the award told the story. Ronald Coase had advocated throughout the 1950s for government use of auctions to establish property rights for regulated public resources – such as broadcast spectrum and natural resources – oil, gas, minerals, timber, fish. As Committee Chairman Lars Werin put it in his presentation speech, “it took some time” for Coase’s insights to sink in. William Vickrey wrote down a pair of seminal papers describing a theory of auctions in 1961 and 1962 – then waited to share the 1996 prize with James Mirrlees for contributions to the analysis of “incentives under asymmetric information.”
Wilson, this year’s co-laureate, was learning game theory from Howard Raiffa at Harvard College when Vickrey was writing on auctions. When he turned in a paper on the subject at his next stop, the Harvard Business School, for an MBA, he received a failing grade because auctions were thought irrelevant to managerial decision-making. Stanford hired him a year after he obtained a doctor of business administration from HBS, and he has remained there ever since, playing a role second only to Kenneth Arrow in the integration of game theory and economics. Among Wilson’s students, Alvin Roth and Bengt Holmström were previously anointed by the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Wilson had become interested in competitive bidding in auctions where asymmetric information among bidders was the rule. By the 1970s, he was advising governments on the design of auctions of offshore oil and gas leases, and bidders on appropriate strategies. In 1978 his student Milgrom completed a magisterial Ph.D. thesis detailing “the seven main results of auction theory”; he went on to play a role in many of the advances of the 1980s, including, with co-author and fellow Gangster John Roberts (“Predation, Reputation, and Entry Deterrence”), the reformation of theories of industrial organization and antitrust doctrine from which Jean Tirole emerged with a Nobel Prize. When Vickrey died, in 1996, it was to Milgrom that the Committee turned to deliver the ceremonial lecture commemorating him.
In August 1993, President Clinton signed legislation granting the Federal Communications Commission authority to auction electromagnetic spectrum licenses. FCC staff had been arguing for radio-spectrum auctions since 1983, when the FCC hired MIT-trained economist Evan Kwerel away from Yale. Ten years later the FCC hired Milgrom and Wilson to design a complicated auction. For background see Kwerel’s foreword to Putting Auction Theory to Work, Milgrom’s Churchill Lectures (Cambridge, 2004). Or read You Say You Want a Revolution: A Story of the Information Age (Yale, 2011), by FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who had been Vice President Al Gore’s friend since high school. In 1994 Gore exuberantly announced “the greatest auction ever” and the cell-phone era commenced. Sylvia Nasar made the event the climax of A Beautiful Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1998), her prize-winning biography of economist John Nash, since it was Nash’s highly abstract work of 45 years before that had opened the door to auction theory and all the rest – for which he was finally on his way to Stockholm to receive, with two subsequent elaborators of his insights, a Nobel Prize.
The FCC auction and many subsequent others of greater size are proof enough that the technology works. More striking still was the speed with which Google adopted a variant known as a second price auction to permit the near-instantaneous sale of advertising on its search engine, based on the appearance of a keyword in the search. Auctions today are often all but invisible, but they govern an ever-increasing portion of modern life. And where auctions are not present, game theorists have devised countless other ways, most of them contracts, to arrange incentives to increase efficiency. Stimulated by John McMillan’s Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets (Norton, 2002), I set out a dozen years ago to learn more about the transformation of the old-fashioned economics of prices and quantities as the strategists introduced incentives of all sorts to the question. When the financial crisis of 2008 posed what seemed a different and much more intriguing problem, I veered off to pursue that instead. It turned out, of course, to be intimately related.
In the aftermath of last week, there was a widespread sense of jubilation. David Kreps, Wilson’s co-author in the Gang of Four (“Reputation and Imperfect Information”), who continues to work on the wellsprings of cooperation, said Wilson’s impact on the discipline “puts him in the company of giants such as Ken Arrow and Paul Samuelson: He is, as much as anyone, the founder of the School of Economic Theory as Engineering. Milgrom, along with laureates Jennifer Doudna (chemistry) and Reinhard Gentzel and Andre Ghez (both physics), will stream their lectures in December from the Swedish consulate in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, economist E. Glen Weyl kicked up a row over the summer when he asserted on the Web site ProMarket that a complex two-sided auction to reallocate spectrum from broadcasters to mobile communications companies had produced disappointing results. The design has produced hundreds of millions of dollars for private-equity firms, he said, but failed to reallocate as much spectrum as had been hoped, and left the U.S. at a disadvantage in a global competition to develop broadband Internet. Milgrom’s firm, Auctionomics, had been the principal designer; other close associates had been involved. Weyl called for greater transparency. Milgrom responded, in a guest post on Digitopoly, a Web site co-edited by a former student, Joshua Gans, and Weyl replied a couple of weeks later. Weyl, a former member of the economics department of the University of Chicago, now works for Microsoft as a political economist. He is the author, with Eric Posner, of Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society (Princeton, 2018). Expect the argument about the perils of “technocracy” to continue.
Why so long a wait? Serendipity, vicissitudes, fads and fashion surely all played a part. But who could fail to notice that Goran Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, began his streamed remarks announcing the prize speaking several sentences in Swedish? Or that the long citation noted that Stockholm’s 1674 Auktionsverk may be the oldest surviving auction house in the world? Economics was no part of Alfred Nobel’s will, but the Academy committee that now prepares a prize in his memory seems intent on demonstrating to its audience, among others, that their Nobel program accords with the founder’s intent to recognize “discoveries and inventions of greatest benefit to all humankind.”
David Warsh, an economic historian and veteran columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this essay first ran.
Three 'scapes
"Neponset Bay October," by Boston-area painter Joseph Fontinha, in the show “Personal Territories,’’ at Fountain Street Fine Art, Boston, through Nov. 2
The gallery says:
“{The late} Robert Hughes, the fearless art critic some are calling the greatest of our time, once said that ‘Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.’
“Artists in this exhibition focus on three themes that have occupied each of them for a while: the city, the distant landscape, and the lush garden. This collection explores how each theme is distinctly different, exploring emotional ranges of a wildly divergent temperament, while simultaneously unifying them through the language of paint.’’
Besides Mr. Fontinha, the artists in the show are: Jim Banks, Brenda Cirioni, John J. Daly, Catherine Gibbs, Nan Hass Feldman, Chris Plunkett and Marcia Wise.
See:
https://www.fsfaboston.com/
In search of lost time
Something in the news from time to time brings back memories of, er, Rhode Island businessman Raymond L.S. Patriarca (1908-84).
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The complicated, and, I’m sure to many people, boring, if important, trial involving money-laundering charges against political operative Jeffrey Britt got me to watch a GoLocal video on the best known character in the case – Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello. The seedy situation centers on his 2016 campaign for re-election, which he very narrowly and controversially won.
As the video relates, Mr. Mattiello was friends with Joseph Bevilacqua Jr., the son of Joseph Bevilacqua, the late ousted state Supreme Court chief justice who was in bed with the Raymond Patriarca unit of the Mafia. Mr. Mattiello was also pals with Charles “The Ghost’’ Kennedy, another mobster. Not comforting information about someone said to be the most powerful person in his tiny state.
Hearing this took me back to the first time I lived in Rhode Island, in the late ‘ 70s, when the Patriarca mob, based in Providence, was still in force, and everybody seemed to be making mob jokes, some of which I had heard while, just before, as a resident of a Brooklyn neighborhood said to be a favorite of Mafia middle management.
So, as William Faulkner observed, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’’
Jeffrey Britt himself, now of course a resident of Florida, where people like him so often domicile themselves (a “sunny place for shady people’’), is a curious character, not least because of his bizarre muscle-bound appearance, which screams body building and, well, maybe some bio-chemical helpers.
Another interesting character in the case is Shawna Lawton, who briefly ran in the GOP primary race in the speaker’s rather conservative district in 2016 but was defeated by the very smart and interesting Steven Frias, who then narrowly lost to Mr. Mattiello that year. Ms. Lawton is another of those anti-vaxxer Republicans who defy science and in so doing put the health of the public at risk. I wish they would all move to, say, Baffin Island, with QAnon sidekicks.
To see the GoLocal movie, please hit this link.
Don Pesci: Representative government crouched in fear
Painting by Peter Paul Rubens of Cronus devouring one of his children
VERNON, Conn.
The Hartford Courant paper points out the brutal irony:
“Connecticut has averaged 366 new cases a day over the past week or about 10.3 per 100,000 residents, just above the threshold at which states are added to the travel advisory. The advisory, which currently includes 38 states and territories, is updated each Tuesday in conjunction with New York and New Jersey. It requires travelers arriving from those states to either produce a negative coronavirus test result or quarantine for 14 days...
(Connecticut Gov. Ned) Lamont said …he’s considering a dramatic overhaul to the advisory, saying “It’d be a little ironic if we were on our own quarantine list.”
Connecticut’s list of quarantined states has grown by leaps and bounds, very likely because the parameters initially were set too low. The gods of irony will not be mocked. Cronus is now eating his own children.
It is nearly impossible to determine definitively who set the parameters, but we do know that Governor Lamont has been borrowing his Coronavirus defense system from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
In the absence of an advice-and-consent General Assembly whose Democrat leaders, Senate President Martin Looney and House Speaker Joe Arsimowicz, relish pretending that Connecticut’s greatest deliberative body had been sidelined by Coronavirus, Lamont has become the King George of Connecticut, wielding nearly absolute power, and the sharpest weapon in Lamont’s rhetorical arsenal has been – fear of Coronavirus.
The pandemic is not a governor festooned with plenary powers. It is a virus, and viruses cannot suspend the operations of government and businesses across the state. We are where we are because politicians have made the choices they have made.
Gone are the days when President Franklin Roosevelt sought to stiffen American spines, first in the face of the Great Depression and then of the oncoming World War II – by advising his countrymen, “… let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself.”
Americans rose to the occasion. The Great Depression receded, as most depressions and recessions will do in a vibrant free market economy. The United States later officially entered the war on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor -- more than two years after Nazi Germany attacked Poland, in 1939, beginning the war -- and saved Western Europe from the Nazi Hun. Much later during the so-called “Cold War,” beginning in 1946-47, Western Europe and the United States combined to save Western Civilization from the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist beast. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan blew his horn, and the hated Berlin Wall soon came tumbling down, followed in due course by the dissolution of the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.
Since the Founders “brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty,” in Lincoln’s often repeated words, the United States has survived colonial mismanagement – see Sam Adams on the point – an anti-colonialist revolution, various crippling recessions, a Civil War – which we thought, before Howard Zinn’s dyspeptic take on American history began to infiltrate public schools, buried slavery along with “the honored dead” at Gettysburg -- two World Wars, the prospect of nuclear annihilation, and many other disrupting disasters that we had collectively survived.
The government of Connecticut, the “Constitution State”, faced with Coronavirus, has simply shattered. And the merchants of fear among us are still merchandising fear. That irrational fear has all but destroyed scores of small businesses across the state, the prospect of state surpluses, sound state and municipal budgets, public hearings, trials in the remnant of the state’s judicial system, public education as we have known it ever since the General Assembly in 1849 established the first public higher-education institution in the state, now Central Connecticut State University -- and representative government.
There is not a single politician in Connecticut familiar with Aristotelian causality, the living root of most modern science, who would testify under oath that a virus, rather than cowardly politicians, is the efficient cause of all these problems. The Coronavirus fear, like Cronus of Greek legend, is now devouring its own children.
Roosevelt rallied the nation to stop hiding under the bed. But the Coronavirus governors, who through their negligence are responsible for the majority of nursing-home deaths associated with Coronavirus in their own states, want representative government to remain crouched in fear under the bed. They want no public hearings, no votes on gubernatorial dicta by a full General Assembly, no attacks by columnists on their own criminal delinquencies, no suits in a crippled court system, and no contrarian opinions in editorial pages. They will tolerate no effective opposition. And should minority Republicans in Connecticut engage in reasoned opposition, they will be denounced by everyone hiding under a bed of complicity with President Trump who, despite his glaring vices, still is not Hunter Biden’s dad.
Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon.
But a constitutional monarch
“King on Throne,’’ by Scot Borofsky, in his show “Gritty Streets to Green Mountains,’’ at the Bennington (Vermont) Museum through Dec. 31
The museum says:
”This exhibition illustrates the development of Borofsky's work over the last 40 years, ranging from early NYC street art, to his more recent paintings created in his Brattleboro (Vt.) studio, which incorporate an evolving language of complexly layered symbols and the gestural language of paint. ‘‘
The remarkably large museum for a small town like Bennington. See: https://benningtonmuseum.org/
The Bennington Battle Monument, which commemorates the Aug. 16, 1777 American victory there in the Revolutionary War
Downtown Brattleboro (where Mr. Borofsky has his studio) as seen from a walking trail across the Connecticut River, in New Hampshire. There are many miles of scenic trails in and around the town, where Rudyard Kipling lived for a time in the 1890s.
'Missed desires'
“This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.’’
—From {Putting Up} “Storm Windows,’’ by Howard Nemerov (1920-1991). A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, he taught at various colleges, including Bennington College, in Vermont.
It got better -- before the pandemic
The old John Hancock Tower and Boston skyline as it appeared in 1956, before the proliferation of skyscrapers in “The Hub’’.
“Boston is not a small New York … but is, rather, a specially organized small creature with its small-creature’s temperature, balance, and distribution of fat. In Boston there is an utter absence of that wild, electric beauty of New York, of the marvelous, excited rush of people in taxicabs at twilight, of the great avenues and streets, the restaurants, theaters, bars, hotels, delicatessans, shops. In Boston the night comes down an incredibly heavy, small-town finality. . . . There is a curious flimsiness and indifference in the commercial life of Boston. The restaurants are, charitably to be called mediocre; the famous sea food is only palatable when raw. . . . Downtown Boston at night is a dreary jungle of honky-tonks for sailors, dreary department-store windows, Loew’s movie houses, hillbilly bands, strippers, parking lots, undistinguished new buildings. . . . The merchandise in the Newbury Street shops is designed in a high fashion, elaborate, furred and sequined, but it is never seen anywhere. Perhaps it is for out-of-town use, like a traveling man’s mistress.’’
— Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007; critic, short story writer and novelist), in the December 1959 Harper’s Magazine
William T. Hall: On his island, one last time for my father
While watching the recent movie Midway, about the Battle of Midway and the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, I heard a sad familiar sound that reminded me of my father’s funeral. It was the sharp report of seven rifles being discharged all at once. It is unforgettable.
“BLAM”!
Then a slight pause...
Then again...
“BLAM”!
Then one last time...
“BLAM”!
Must we punctuate tragic moments with such a horrid sound?
The answer is...
Yes we must.
The shad in bloom
— Photo by Kevin Weaver
Preparations for a Memorial
My mother and I carefully picked a day in early May 2000 to inter my father, William Hall, in the cemetery on his ancestral home, Block Island. It was our best guess when the shad tree bloom would be in full array.
Until his last breath, at age 74, he had asserted that he’d not missed being on the island for “The Shad” since World War II.
It’s a spectacle of nature. It’s a moment in a living dream when large parts of the island look like swirls of white butterflies. It creates a cirrus-cloud wisp of magic and myth. Throw in some Hollywood-style ecclesiastical lighting and you’ve got the picture of my father’s romance with “The Shad”.
It was no matter to him that this heavenly show for the rest of the year could be easily described as just woods.
What Everyone Knows
A normal burial on Block Island is handled as a package deal.
The grieving party whose just-deceased relative (or friend) is “from away’’ agrees to a final price covering shipping the loved one in a hearse to the island on the ferry boat. The price includes the homey funeral service at the Harbor Baptist Church, the short procession to the burial site and the post-burial “coffee-klatch” back at the church.
Then after a few hours - and in the middle of hugging relatives and meeting new spouses of forgotten cousins -- starts the panicked reality of the late hour, and the dash to make the last boat back to the mainland. Luckily, the ferry docks are within sight of the church and the captains tend to wait for every last grieving straggler.
To avoid anonymity in death those Block Islanders who have drifted off the island need to be reintroduced to it so that they can be remembered before being forgotten up in the cemetery. Even the descendants of the original English settlers, named prominently on Settlers Rock, have to go through a process of re-emergence during a well-choreographed day-of-burial. It’s like reestablishing their original footprints in the snow after they have long been obliterated by a lifetime of snowstorms. To achieve island quasi-immorality it only takes this one day, with its own special down-homeyness.
Someone Special
So went my father’s last trip back to Block Island, there to be quietly eulogized as one of those island kids who for one reason or another fell into “Off-Islander“ status somewhere along the line.
Human time can be defined in waves. In my father’s case he would be counted among the World War II veterans, Pacific Theater, brand of survivors. At the funeral he would be praised for being a successful businessman, a good husband and a good father, but none of his fishermen relatives or old island cronies would be left to nostalgically tell mourners stories about “that kid” known as a star harpooner of swordfish.
My father had started commercial fishing in 1936, at 10 years old. That’s when he got permission from his father, Allen Hall, to climb the mast and sit on the cross tree of the Edrie L. From that perch, 24 feet above the deck, he was to try his hand at spotting swordfish on his Uncle Charlie’s boat. He excelled because of his excellent eyesight and precise directions given to the helm to find the fish. Soon he was recognized for his accuracy with a harpoon.
By 14 he was the youngest “boy” harpooning swordfish in the fleet and was earning a full share of any fish he spotted or harpooned. This minor local notoriety ended when he was drafted into the Army and shipped out to the Pacific.
That war took many islanders away from Block Island, some to pay the ultimate price of liberty and some to find their way to a more expansive future than could be hoped for on the island, where few returned to live. My father’s war experience did not scar him and he lived a fruitful life, including raising a family and prospering in another part of New England far away from the coast. Although he visited his island family often over the decades his relationship with the place became increasingly remote - and more that of a tourist.
The reality was that the family was thinning out. This hit him hard during the funeral of the oldest Hall elder on the island and it gave him a feeling of a fading heritage. Now more strangers were waiting on the dock meeting the ferry boats when not so long before there had been a receiving line of loving relatives and friends, each shaking his hand, hugging him and calling him by his childhood nickname, “Billy”.\
The island’s identity was shifting. My father was a realist and his life was changing with the times, which he accepted as inevitable. He just didn’t welcome the change with a joyful heart.
This was the man in the shiny hearse rolling off the ferry to return to the island he loved so much. He’d soon be back with his family and relatives for good.
A Good Life
At the funeral service we confirmed through loving remembrances that my father’s life had been by all accounts a good one. The funny tales softened the sorrow.
Everyone at the Harbor Church service agreed that we had all been blessed by his 74 years with us. Meanwhile, as we eulogized him, it became evident that something big was happening outside. There was something at the edge of our senses that suggested that there was a chance that this simple memorial for my father might turn into “A Perfect Block Island Funeral”. It might enter a world where bad was good.]
The first sharp clap of thunder boomed even before we saw the lightning. We realized that what we had sensed had been rolling thunder for some time. The stained-glass windows, organ music, prayers, songs and laughter had masked the storm that was now creeping up on us from the southeast side of the island.
The room was getting darker but it was 11 in the morning. As the wind whipped at a tin gutter somewhere on the roof, the pastor’s wife quietly tiptoed around the room clicking on a few floor lamps and wall lights. People watching her nudged each other quietly. Looking around the room we saw that the local mourners (from the island) were dressed in rain gear. They had rain hats stuffed in their pockets and waterproof footwear ready under their seats; one even had unbuckled galoshes on over his shoes.
In contrast, the mourners “from away” (non-islanders) looked unprepared in their comfortable spring sweaters and dresses. Luckily, they at least had designer-styled trench coats on the hooks in the coatroom. But rain hats, boots and umbrellas for a muddy gravesite ceremony were not evident anywhere in this crowd.
The second thunder clap brought everyone to attention and a slight whimper was heard. Flinching erupted in attendees with over-active startle reflexes. Those who seemed prepared for bad weather were rolling their eyes with wonder as if asking, “Don’t these people from away listen to their local weather reports”?
The weather had changed from undecided to absolutely bad. The modest stained-glass windows rattled with wind gusts and pelting rain. The warm sidelights that the pastor’s wife had switched on were soon augmented with the big overhead lights. Everyone was getting the message that it was going to be stormy at the gravesite.
The Road to Valhalla
No one is more aware of the changes in the island’s social make-up than those who consider themselves “Real Block Islanders”.
“Real” was defined generations ago as “born on Block Island” and of course eventually buried on Block Island. That was the perfect life’s arch of a true islander. Very few can claim that distinction any more.
Evolving medicine and more reliable ferry service have nullified the “island-born” stipulation. In 1926 my father was born in Newport and the next day started his life on Block Island as a “Real Block Islander”. In spite of being hospital-born he met the requirements then needed to be “Real”.
He was born prematurely and had to be kept warm for his first four weeks wrapped in moist towels perched on the edge of an open oven door. My grandmother’s kitchen became Block Island’s first premie ward. My father was attended by every mid-wife and aunt on the island and he soon became everyone’s community property. Thus began his neventful life.
By when I was born, in 1948 ( sadly not on the island), things had changed. It had become a tourist spot. A popular promotional motto was being targeted at people discovering Block Island for the first time. It went like this: “Block Island, come for the day and stay a lifetime.’’ The enthusiasm of first-time visitors on seeing the island’s beauty began to create a new social structure on the island. The newcomers, some of whom became summer residents, brought new ideas, new talents and new personal objectives, but no matter how extraordinary their efforts, they could not line up in that parade of Original, True and Real Islanders. They would never be on that path to immortality and obscurity that leads eventually to Block Island’s cemetery.
In spite of the obstacles to membership in this coveted club of Real Islanders those with the strongest desire for acceptance are still drawn to try to break into the line.
Any deceased islander with an army of mourners headed for the Harbor Church can cause quite a stir, especially when the forecast is for stormy weather and high seas.
When the shiny black hearse carrying my father’s remains crossed the gangplank onto island ground, the island’s grapevine heated up, leading to calls to the church for information.=
Meanwhile, the appearance of a large group of mourners not properly attired for the coming deluge meant that the person about to be buried was probably an “Off Islander,” but scuttlebutt had it that there would also be a rather large island contingent at all or part of the proceedings.
Source Number One
Besides the church, there were other sources of solid information.
Block Island cabdrivers meet every ferry from May 1 to the end of the following November. Only well-established islanders can obtain one of those coveted cab licenses, the possession of which is a channel for a wealth of information about what’s happening on the island. The parking area for the cabs is within plain view of the ferry landing. If you know one of these cabbies you can get first-hand, inside information about what is unfolding at the dock, as well as stuff from any dark corner of the island and the usual sketchy and juicy daily gossip.
I surmise that an inquiry from an island newbie to a cab driver about my father’s hearse might have resulted in a conversation like this:
“Hi, Ed, How you doin?’’
“Good.’
“Hey, who’s that they’re rolling off the boat in the hearse?’’
“Oh Yah, that’s Billy Hall. Yep. He grew to the Sou-East. In the house where Jacobs live now. ‘’
“Lots of well-wishers, eh? I guess he must’a been well known?’’
“Oh, Yah. Billy was a good man. Good family - all fishermen. His mother was a Milliken. Yep, we’re – cousins, I think?’’
“Whad he do for a livin?’’
“Not sure – he moved way af-ta th’war. (pause), but when he was young he could really stick a swordfish. Yessiree. Few better.”
“Oh...?’’ (so on and so on )
And at the Airport
Traditionally, additional information could be obtained at the Block Island Airport lunch counter. It was where the cabbies sipped coffee all day between fares and mingled with passengers waiting for their flights.
On days of big funerals, cabbies, counter girls and mourners from the island and off it exchanged hugs, jokes and news. It was a clearinghouse for information and gossip -- and pie. Everyone seemed related and soon you suddenly felt related to them also.
If newbies liked what they had heard about the deceased in the hub-bub at the lunch counter it would not be unreasonable for them to attend the funeral and go to the gravesite to see whom they might know there. In this way even a newbie might develop a fast, if remote, link with the mourners.
One point was understood. Newbies had to stay for the entire event, no matter how bad the weather. If you invested in saying goodbye to an old Block Islander you were in it for the full course, probably including the coffee-klatch after the burial. This could be important social collateral years later if the deceased name’s came up in conversation. If you had shown up to pay your respects, you could say:
“Yes. I know I was there!”
It was like attending a Viking funeral so you’d know the way to Valhalla.
When Bad Is Good
The wind blew hard and the pouring rain came at the mourners horizontally and from three directions at the gravesite. The lightning, thunder and rain were relentless. The oldest ladies sat in folding chairs under wet tarps and plastic drop cloths with grandchildren squeezed in between them.
Things flew away never to be recovered, but no one left and the ceremony was not rushed. The general mood was sad, but with mourners’ sense of satisfaction that they were joining in a celebration of a life well lived. The hundreds of flags on the veterans’ graves all around snapped in the “Moments of Silence” requested by the pastor.
At the time of my father’s funeral many veterans were being laid to rest every day of the week all over America. Due to the large number of burials, it was nearly impossible to get an honor guard or an official bugler to attend individual funerals. I could not emotionally accept this situation but nor would I complain. My father would not have complained.
On Block Island we have one rule, “We take care of our own”.
Our cemetery is neutral ground, outside of the bounds of daily disputes. This hallowed ground is where we commune with the past and honor individuals whom we respect dearly no matter how long away -- or how recently arrived.
We made an arrangement to honor my father in a way he’d have enjoyed. In a gesture of respect to our family and to the many other veterans whose flags flapped together with his in the wind, a dear family friend and well known federal official provided us with the most memorable final note that my mother and I could have hoped for.
He was to be my father’s one-man honor guard.
Observing the usual safety measures, the honor guard loaded a blank shell into my father’s 12-gauge shotgun, left the mourners at the gravesite and walked slowly and ceremoniously to the top of a small rise.
We could see his hat fluttering and his coat whipping in the wind. His silhouette against the dark sky evoked heroism and the shad bloom around us. As he mounted the shotgun’s stock firmly to his shoulder we could see that his shooting glasses were being pelted by the rain. Time stood still for just a moment. We waited for the sound that gun would make -- one last time.
Blam!
The wind and the rain muffled the report.
White smoke hung in the air above the shooter, and then disappeared downwind into the white cloud of shad trees in the distance=
At my side my mother, inside father’s old raincoat, whispered:
“Perfect.”
William T. Hall is a painter, illustrator and writer based in New England, Florida and Michigan.
Sent by a wind from Cautantowwit
"{Indian summer} comes after the early frosts, when the wind is southwest, and the air is delightfully mild and sweet. The sky is then singularly transparent, pure and beautiful, and the fleecy clouds are bright with color. The Indians believed the season to be caused by a wind that was sent from the southwestern god Cautantowwit, who was regarded as superior to all other beings in benevolence and power, and the one to whom their souls went when the departed from the earthly body.''
-- By Sidney Perley, in Historic Storms of New England (1891)
Cautantowwit was a deity of the Narragansett Indians
Panorama of chaos, fear and joy
“Definitions Across All Spectrums,’’ by Norajean Ferris, at the 2020 Biennial of the Center for Maine Contemporary Arts, in Rockland, through next May 2
.
Where they were
White-tailed deer
“i see nothing over there
but a hollow in the long grass
like the places where deer have been lying,
and the only thing I hear
is shallow water maklng excuses to stone.’’
— From “Where the Deer Were,’’ by Kate Barnes (1932-2013). A Massachusetts native, she lived in the latter part of her life in Appleton, Maine. She served as Maine’s poet laureate.
Appleton is in red.
Ya gotta live there
Spring view of the Sherman, Conn., end of Candlewood Lake with Candlewood Mountain
“The country towns here in New England all bear a family resemblance to one another, but they also have individual characters that can be learned only by living in them.”
— Malcolm Cowley (1898-1989), in “Town Report 1942,’’ in The New Republic. He was an American editor, historian, poet and literary critic. He was a resident of the western Connecticut town of Sherman for the latter part of his life. The town was rural then but now is more exurban.
Llewellyn King: The right judge at the wrong time
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
It’s not a trial. But last week’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court seemed like one.
This juror’s verdict: Guilty as charged in one liberal indictment and a toss-up in the other. Judge Barrett seems destined to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But on the Affordable Care Act, which is of more immediate concern to more Americans, she may parse her judgment and endorse the doctrine of selectivity.
Two big things about Barrett: Her opposition to abortion is, one concludes, founded in her devout Catholicism and in her experience among lawyers of the right, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked.
The other thing about Barrett is that she has seven children, two adopted from Haiti. She used this before the committee as a shield, a defense, and a statement, which said by implication, “See, I’m human, empathetic, caring, and maternal.”
This is important. As Barrett, who almost certainly will be confirmed, matures on the court, her family may be a moderating force, softening her otherwise rigid conservative views. As her children grow and experience the vicissitudes of life, she is likely to trade some of her harsh doctrines for a more humane ambiguity.
Take former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne. Their conservatism, devotion to the right, was never in question. But when their daughter Mary came out as gay, their view of that part of the social-political landscape softened.
It has been declared throughout the struggle to confirm Barrett that somehow it is not nice to bring in her religion.
This juror avers: It is.
When the religion of a public servant, affects political decisions, it has ceased to be a private matter. We’ve come a long way from the days when President John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism was cited in his election. Anti-Catholicism was then alive and well in parts of the political spectrum. Kennedy remained a committed Catholic, but he didn’t bring it into his governance of the country. That was as it should be.
Going forward, as the United States gets more diverse and when we can contemplate a time when Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other believers will take their place in national life, it is more, not less, necessary to ensure that separation of church and state is adhered to in everything, especially the Supreme Court. Ergo, it can be argued that Barrett should recuse herself from Roe v. Wade. How much stature she would gain if she did! But it’s most unlikely.
If the Democrats romp home with the White House and both houses of Congress, they would be in a position to legislate at least a quick repair to the Affordable Care Act and to start the process of legalizing abortion by federal law, not constitutional interpretation. But it will continue to fuel the culture wars.
It is not certain how much the Democrats will gain in the election and, as a longtime observer of Washington, I don’t believe long term a Democratic sweep would be good. A bit of tension in Congress is a net benefit. So, the Barrett nomination and confirmation weighed heavy as we watched her parry the Democratic questioners.
Extenuating fact: The judge is much smarter, more personable, and more in charge of her facts than expected. She charmed. She is a power to be reckoned with. Many observers expected to get a candidate who would simply channel Scalia, her old mentor, and that we could know her mind from his writing -- the way we can predict the attitudes of Justice Clarence Thomas.
That, it became clear, is not to be the case.
The verdict of this juror then is: After a rocky start on two difficult issues, Barrett will grow to be a serious, thoughtful justice. Possibly, with time, even a humane one.
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.
Website: whchronicle.com
Seniors often excluded from COVID-19; forecasting outbreaks in counties hosting pro football games
View from the 32 floor of One Beacon Street, Boston, with the dome of the State House at the left and Charles River Basin and Cambridge further out.
— Robert Whitcomb
The most recent COVID-19 roundup from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):
UMass Study Finds that Seniors are Often Excluded From COVID-19 Trials – A University of Massachusetts Medical School affiliated study has found that seniors, who are often the most at risk for COVID-19, are excluded by more than half of COVID-19 clinical trials. The study made recommendations for future trials, in including more patients in this demographic. Read more here.
Harvard Medical School and Mass General Publish Study on Protective Antibodies – Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have found that protective antibodies in patients who survive serious COVID-19 infections may provide longer protection against the virus. The study offers further insight into how long antibodies may remain in the system and provides recommendations for further antibody testing. Read more here.
Beth Israel Medical Center Launches Clinical Trial for Antiviral COVID-19 Treatment – Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has launched a new study on antiviral treatment for patients at home with COVID-19. The TREAT-NOW study is being conducted in tandem with Vanderbilt University and the University of Colorado to see if a well-known antiviral drug can help prevent or mitigate serious COVID-19 symptoms. Read more here.
New Tool Developed at Mass General Helps Predict Outbreaks in Counties that Host Pro Football Games – Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have expanded the scope of their COVID-19 Outbreak Detection Tool to incorporate NFL and NCAA football games as potential super-spreader events.
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