‘It’s still the same old story’
“Love and War” (encaustic, rusted paper, old letter, graphite and ink), by Pembroke, Mass.- based artist and honey-product producer Stephanie Roberts-Camello.
The North River, which flows through the Pembroke area.
— Photo by John Phelan
Great Sandy Bottom Pond, in Pembroke.
She writes:
“Discovering a box of old family letters in my family's basement would change the way I painted and how I thought about my work. There were stacks of letters bound i twine according to who sent them. They dated back as far as 1919 through 1946. Many of these letters reference the dust bowl days of Texas and the Great Depression. I come from a family of cattlemen and farmers who were dependent on the weather for their survival. Loss of crops due to droughts and tough conditions in raising cattle are common themes coupled with money problems. These problems are not mine, but I couldn't help relate them to obstacles and set backs that we all have.
“Encaustic is a medium that can be worked flat or sculpturally. One of its many attributes is it can retain any stress mark or scrape once it cools. It has an innate feature for documentation. These letters; represent a period of suffering, loss and endurance in our country, and for me, the intricately-worked encaustic shrouds became metaphors for struggle and change. Layers of wax literally cover up the past. I peel them back to reveal a portion of what once was. Revealed, exhumed, manipulated, up-ended, exposed-all of these actions give me a sense of freedom, and the ability to step outside myself. Seemingly destructive to the surface, the peeling plays a positive role in removing a build up and seeing what has been lying dormant. It holds a stratum of time much like the earths core. The depth created working this way is jarring to me, confrontational, alluring and frightening.There is risk involved, but the presence of this relief work conveys a sense of resilience and life which keeps me returning. It speaks with a boldness and beauty that is also fragile. This opposition between image/content and material is the catalyst for the development of my encaustic relief series. This work continues to evolve as I find new ways to shed light on the past that enlightens and informs the future.’’
A sadistic month
“Anyone who lives in Boston knows that it’s March that’s cruelest, holding out a few days of false hope and then gleefully hitting you with the s@#t.’’
— Stephen King (born 1947), the Maine-based novelist, in his novel Dreamcatcher.
Chris Powell: Gasoline-tax pandering in Conn.
I-95 crossing the Connecticut River in Old Saybrook/Old Lyme, Conn.
— Photo by JJBers Public -
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Are things getting so bad for the Democrats that even Connecticut's senior U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal, is worried about winning re-election this year?
That might have been construed from the senator's silly pandering last week about gasoline taxes.
Blumenthal -- for 20 years the "eternal {state attorney} general" who now, at age 76, is seeking a third six-year term in the Senate -- called for suspending the federal gas tax, which is 18 cents per gallon. Because gas prices have risen dramatically in recent months, the senator said, people need immediate relief. Meanwhile, the senator added, the federal gas tax isn't needed because its revenue is dedicated to highways and the federal government has just appropriated billions of dollars for highways.
Blumenthal's rationale raised some big questions he didn't address.
That is, where did those billions of dollars for highways come from if not from federal gas taxes?
Mostly they were just created electronically from computer keystrokes.
And if finding money for highways is that easy, why has the country bothered with the federal gas tax in the first place -- or, for that matter, with any taxes at all?
While the federal highway fund may not need any revenue, Blumenthal's colleague in Connecticut's congressional delegation, First District U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, might remind him that the Social Security Trust Fund is projected to be insolvent in another decade and might be glad to take whatever money the highway fund doesn't need.
But even if the federal gas tax is suspended as Blumenthal and other members of Congress propose, people still will be paying its equivalent. Most just won't understand how they pay, nor that they are already paying -- through the devaluation of their money, the inflation tax on their wages and savings, which is already running at about 15 percent annually once the government's deceitful skewing of the data is corrected.
This inflation is largely a matter of the imbalance between government's money creation and national and -- since the U.S. dollar is the world reserve currency -- international production. Much more money lately has been created than goods and services have been produced.
Indeed, when it comes to government appropriations there is hardly any discussion anymore of where the money is to come from. It now is widely assumed that money is infinite, even as inflation screams that production is not.
Political responsibility for surging inflation is bipartisan, but since Democrats control the presidency and Congress, they will catch the blame. Blumenthal's pose on the gas tax shows he realizes this and is planning an escape.
A big part of the production problem is entirely a Democratic responsibility -- the Biden administration's crippling of U.S. energy production in pursuit of "greener" energy even as "greener" energy isn't close to being ready to replace the oil and natural gas supplies that are being diminished.
The environmental fanaticism of the Democrats is feeding Russia's imperialism toward Ukraine and the other former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe. Western Europe has crippled its conventional energy production even more than the United States has and long has been heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, which can be cut off if its recipients get serious with economic penalties against Russia.
Meanwhile, since it has hampered its own energy production, the United States is unable to help Europe much at this crucial moment.
Until a few months ago Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, and many Democratic state legislators sought to raise Connecticut's gas tax invisibly through a regional scheme to raise wholesale gas taxes without providing people with any transportation alternatives, though cars are a necessity for most in a state as suburban as Connecticut.
The explosion in gas prices and inflation has prompted the governor and those Democratic legislators to shelve their hidden gas tax idea. But the Democrats long have been Connecticut's tax-raising party and bear most responsibility for making the state so expensive to inhabit -- and for what? Are the state's cities any less destitute and violent? Are its poor any more self-sufficient? Are its socially promoted children any better parented and educated?
Or is inflation the main result of policy on the state level too?
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
Just ignore him
“Thistle” (color reductive link print, oil based ink on arches), by Gloucester, Mass-based artist Coco Berkman, at Concord (Mass.) Art Center, though March 24.
The Wayside, in Concord, home in turn to famous writers Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Sidney
— Photo by Daderot
Wandering and ‘sealed intact’
Elegant alley-like Acorn Street on Boston’s Beacon Hill.
“All day all over the city every person
Wanders a different city, sealed intact
And haunted as the abandoned subway stations
Under the city. Where is my alley doorway?’’
— From “The Day Dreamers,’’ by Robert Pinsky (born 1940), an American poet, essayist, literary critic and translator. This poem is set in Boston, where Pinsky teaches at Boston University.
Old MBTA (formerly MTA) streetcar.
Artfully mapping climate change
“From Rhode Island to South Carolina (Rand Mc-Nally’s The Great Geographical Atlas)” (1991), by Maya Lin (Maya Lin Studio, courtesy of Pace Gallery, photograph by G.R. Christmas), in the show “Maya Lin: Mappings” through Aug. 7, at the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.
The gallery says that Lin's art promotes awareness about climate change as we experience its effects daily. "Using a variety of materials, including steel pins, marble, and bound atlases, Lin distills complicated scientific and quantitative information into resonant objects. These artworks open a dialogue between the artist and the viewer."
On the Connecticut River in Northampton.
John O. Harney: The state of the New England states as COVID winds down (for now?)
Regions of New England:
1. Northwest Vermont/Champlain Valley
2. Northeast Kingdom
3. Central Vermont
4. Southern Vermont
5. Great North Woods Region
6. White Mountains
7. Lakes Region
8. Dartmouth/Lake Sunapee Region
9. Seacoast Region
10. Merrimack Valley
11. Monadnock Region
12. Aroostook
13. Maine Highlands
14. Acadia/Down East
15. Mid-Coast/Penobscot Bay
16. Southern Maine/South Coast
17. Mountain and Lakes Region
18. Kennebec Valley
19. North Shore
20. Metro Boston
21. South Shore
22. Cape Cod and Islands
23. South Coast
24. Southeastern Massachusetts
25. Blackstone River Valley
26. Metrowest/Greater Boston
27. Central Massachusetts
28. Pioneer Valley
29. The Berkshires
30. South County
31. East Bay
32. Quiet Corner
33. Greater Hartford
34. Central Naugatuck Valley
35. Northwest Hills
36. Southeastern Connecticut/Greater New London
37. Western Connecticut
38. Connecticut Shoreline
From The New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE), a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
BOSTON
“This Covid-19 pandemic has been part of our lives for nearly two years now. It’s what we talk about at our kitchen tables over breakfast in the morning, and again over dinner at night. It gets brought up in nearly every conversation we have throughout the day, and it’s a topic at nearly every special gathering we attend,” Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee noted in his recent 2022 State of the State address.
Indeed, that was a consistent theme among all six New England governors’ 2022 State of the State speeches. As were plugs for innovation in healthcare, especially mental health, housing, workforce development, climate strategies, children’s services, transportation, schools, budgets and, with varying degrees of gratitude, acknowledgement of federal infusions of relief money.
Here are links to the full New England State of the State addresses, highlighting some key points from the beat:
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s 2022 State of the State Address
“Our budget invests 10 times more money than ever before in workforce development—with a hyper focus on trade schools, apprentice programs and tuition-free certificate programs where students of all ages can earn an industry-recognized credential in half the time, with a full-time job all but guaranteed.
This investment will train over 10,000 students and job seekers this year in courses designed by businesses around the skills that they need.
This isn’t just about providing people with credentials; this is about changing people’s lives.
A stay-at-home mom whose husband lost his job earned her pharmacy tech certificate in three months and now works at Yale New Haven Hospital.
A man who was homeless was provided housing, transportation, a laptop and training. He’s now a user support specialist for a large tech company.
These are just two examples of opportunities that completely change the course of someone’s life.
We are working with our partners in the trade unions to develop programs for the next generation of laser welders and pipefitters. Building on the amazing partnership between Hartford Hospital and Quinnipiac University, we are also ramping up our next generation of healthcare workers.
I want students and trainees to take a job in Connecticut, and I want Connecticut employers to hire from Connecticut first! To encourage that, we’re expanding a tax credit for small businesses that help repay their employees’ student loans. More reasons for your business to hire in Connecticut, and for graduates to stay in Connecticut—that’s the Connecticut difference.”
Maine Gov. Janet Mills’s 2022 State of the State Address
“It is also our responsibility to ensure that higher education is affordable.
And I’ve got some ideas to tackle that.
First, I am proposing funding in my supplemental budget to stave off tuition hikes across the University of Maine System, to keep university education in Maine affordable.
Secondly, thinking especially about all those young people whose aspirations have been most impacted by the pandemic, I propose making two years of community college free.
To the high school classes of 2020 through 2023—if you enroll full-time in a Maine community college this fall or next, the State of Maine will cover every last dollar of your tuition so you can obtain a one-year certificate or two-year associate degree and graduate unburdened by debt and ready to enter the workforce.
And if you are someone who’s already started a two-year program, we’ve got your back too. We will cover the last dollar of your second year.”
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s 2022 State of the State Address
“We increased public school spending by $1.6 billion, and fully funded the game-changing Student Opportunity Act.
We invested over $100 million in modernizing equipment at our vocational and technical programs, bringing opportunities to thousands of students and young adults.
We dramatically expanded STEM programming, and we helped thousands of high school students from Gateway Cities earn college credits free through our Early College programs.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s State of the State Address
“Our way of life here in the 603 is the best of the best.
We didn’t get here by accident—we did it through smart management, prioritizing individuals over government, citizens over systems, and delivering results with the immense responsibility of properly managing our citizens tax dollars.
As other states were forced to buckle down and weather the storm, we took a more proactive approach in 2021. In just the last year, we:
• Cut the statewide property tax by $100 million to provide relief to New Hampshire taxpayers
• Cut the rooms and meals tax
• Cut business taxes—again
• Began permanently phasing out the interest and dividends tax
And while we heard scary stories of how cutting taxes and returning such large amounts of money to citizens and towns would ‘cost too much’, the actual results have played out exactly as we planned, record tax revenue pouring into New Hampshire, exceeding all surplus estimates, allowing us to double the State’s Rainy Day Fund to over $250 million.”
Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee’s State of the State Address
“We all know that the economy was changing well before the pandemic. A college degree or credential is a basic qualification for over 70 percent of jobs created since 2008. Although we have made great progress over the last decade, there’s more to do.
Let’s launch Rhode Island’s first Higher Ed Academy, a statewide effort to meet Rhode Islanders where they are and provide access to education and training, that leads to a good-paying job. Through this initiative, which will be run by our Postsecondary Education Commissioner Shannon Gilkey, we expect to support over a thousand Rhode Islanders helping them gain the skills needed to be successful in obtaining a credential or degree.
Having a strong, educated workforce is critical for a strong economy—and Rhode Island’s economy is built on small businesses. Small businesses employ over half of our workforce. As these businesses continue to recover from the pandemic, we know that challenges still persist. That’s why in the first several weeks of my administration, I put millions of unspent CARES Act dollars that we received in 2020 into grants to help more than 3,600 small businesses stay afloat.
My budget will call for key small business supports like more funding for small business grants, especially for severely impacted industries like tourism and hospitality. It will also increase grant funding for Rhode Island’s small farms.
As our businesses deal with workforce challenges, I’ll also propose more funding to forgive student loan debt, especially for health-care professionals, and $40 million to continue the Real Jobs Rhode Island program which has already helped thousands of Rhode Islanders get back to work.”
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s State of the State Address
“The hardest part of addressing our workforce shortage is that it is so intertwined with other big challenges, from affordability and education to our economy and recovery. Each problem makes the others harder to solve, creating a vicious cycle that’s been difficult to break.
Specifically, I believe our high cost of living has contributed to a declining workforce and stunted our growth. As we lose Vermonters who cannot afford to live, do business or even retire here, that burden—from taxes and utility rates to healthcare and education costs—falls on fewer and fewer of us, making life even less affordable.
With fewer working families comes fewer kids in our schools. But lower enrollment hasn’t meant lower costs and from district to district, kids are not offered the same opportunities, like foreign languages, AP courses or electives. And with fewer school offerings, it is hard to attract families, workers and jobs to those communities.
Fewer workers and fewer students mean our businesses struggle to fill the jobs they need to survive, deepening the economic divide from region to region.
And for years, state budgets and policies failed to adapt to this reality. …
Let’s start with the people already here and do more to connect them with great jobs.
First, our internship, returnship and apprenticeship programs have been incredibly successful, not only giving workers job experience, but also building ties to local employers. To improve on this work, the Department of Labor assists employers to fill and manage internships statewide and we’ll invest more to help cover interns’ wages.
And let’s not forget about retired Vermonters who want to go back to work and have a lot to offer. I look forward to working with Representative Marcotte and the House Commerce Committee on this issue and may others.
Next, let’s put a greater focus on trades training. And here’s why:
We all know we need more nurses and healthcare workers. And as I previewed with {state} Senator Sanders and {state} Senator Balint earlier this week, I will propose investments in this area. But if we don’t have enough CDL drivers, mechanics and technicians, hospital staff won’t get to work; there will be issues getting the life-saving equipment and supplies we need; and we will see fewer EMTs available to get patients to emergency rooms. If we don’t have enough carpenters, plumbers and electricians, or heating, ventilation, air handling and refrigeration techs, there are fewer to construct and maintain the facilities in our health-care system or build homes for the workers we are trying to attract.”
John O. Harney is the executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.
Solid and plane geometry
“Geometry 101” (encaustic and mixed-media collage on panel), by Southboro, Mass.-based artist Catherine M. Weber.
Ms. Weber, a member of New England Wax (newenglandwax.com) says:
“My earliest memories are of homesteading on our family farm, where I learned how to use the materials in nature to create art, and where the landscape was often my subject matter. These influences have lead me to feature trees prominently in my work, directly or indirectly, including work that uses slices of trees as a substrate, print making of logs, and photograph trees and the recreation of lichens, which often grow on trees.
“I achieve this using encaustic medium and paint, photography, textiles, Japanese papers, and found objects to make harmony of my world and communicate thoughts and emotions.
“I’ve studied many mediums and continue to be a voracious learner, pursuing an independent study, self-directed ‘MFA’ exploring a wide variety of medium including natural dye making, mosaics, printmaking, macro photography, and sewing. It is my goal to use whatever technique or medium can achieve my vision of illuminating nature and inspiring others to cherish the natural world.’’
In Boston suburb Southboro, which has a few high-tech companies but might be best known as the home of the elite, mostly rich kids boarding school St. Mark’s School and the prep-school feeder the Fay School, for younger students.
Hancock’s words evoke the brave Ukrainians
John Hancock, painted by John Singleton Copley in 1770-1772.
Paul Revere's 1768 engraving of British troops arriving in Boston was reprinted throughout the colonies
"There is a heartfelt satisfaction in reflecting on our exertions for the public weal, which all the sufferings an enraged tyrant can inflict will never take away; which the ingratitude and reproaches of those whom we have saved from ruin cannot rob us of. The virtuous asserter of the rights of mankind merits a reward, which even a want of success in his endeavors to save his country, the heaviest misfortune which can befall a genuine patriot, cannot entirely prevent him from receiving."
— John Hancock ( 17370-1793), an American Founding Father, merchant, statesman and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution.
He was president of the Second Continental Congress and the first and third governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term “John Hancock’’ or “Hancock” is a nickname in the United States for one's signature.
Hancock's memorial in Boston's Granary Burying Ground, dedicated in 1896
St. Vladimir's Cathedral, a Ukrainian Catholic cathedral in Stamford, Conn. It is the seat for the Eparchy of Stamford. The parish was established in 1916, and the simple brick Romanesque Revival-inspired church building was completed in 1957. There are many Ukrainian-Americans in New England.
Distribution of Ukrainian-Americans, as a percentage of the population, according to the 2000 census. The red spots have densest population of this group.
Local but national, too
Road salt distribution center
Odds and ends from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Providence and some other communities are dumping far too much salt on some streets, some of which were bright white with it last week, amidst drifts of salt pebbles. This is toxic to plant life and pollutes water supplies. More care, please.
xxx
Is it fair to make teachers at, say, Barrington High School have three COVID shots as a condition of employment while a few dozen students are allowed to attend completely unvaccinated?
While at work, he makes a neighborhood miserable.
Kudos to Rhode Island state Sen. Samuel Zurier, of Providence, for introducing a bill to phase out those shrieking and intensely polluting gasoline-powered leaf blowers that make life miserable for humans and other animals for weeks at a time. They’re often wielded by hard-working illegal aliens with no ear protection working for yard crews. Somehow we survived quite well without them for millennia.
Besides the much quieter electric leaf blowers, there’s that revolutionary device called the rake. A few decades ago, I and other teens made extra spending money raking, lawn mowing and hedge-clipping. Where oh where did those healthy gigs go? Why do so many affluent people feel that they must hire a “landscaping company.’’
‘Boundaries/Borders’ in Boston
“River Elbe: Bridge to Nowhere’’ ( archival digital print), by Boston-area-based fine-art photographer Bonnie Donohue, in the show “Boundaries/Borders,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston), through March 27.
The gallery says:
“What does it mean to exist within a border? How do we define the hard lines or soft edges of boundaries and the liminal spaces around and between them? Exhibiting the work of Kingston Gallery members Ilona Anderson, Bonnie Donohue, Susan Greer Emmerson, Randy Garber, Meagan Hepp, Ponnapa Prakkamakul, Luanne E Witkowski, ‘Boundaries/Borders’ displays a multitude of interpretations of boundaries of all kinds: geopolitical, psychological, environmental, spatial, and more.
“A border can exist as an invisible geopolitical line between countries and across time. Bonnie Donohue's seminal work takes viewers to the site of the Berlin Wall and the European Green Belt, a completely demilitarized green space along the Iron Curtain that nonetheless remains a visible boundary line. Exploring the boundaries between outer surface and inner reality, the natural world and human relationships, Susan Greer Emmerson's distressed Tyvek sculptures reveal the poignant edge between trash and beauty. The combination of manufactured hard and organic soft edges of her materials and surfaces offer Luanne E. Witkowski a means to question the boundaries in nature by combining paint and wood in multiple layers. Ponnapa Prakkamakul's stereographic collages based on the view through the Atacama Desert observatory telescope imagine a new, alien landscape, beyond the bounds of Earth.
“Artists also engage with psychological and emotional realms, breaching liminal spaces barely perceived by the mind. Meagan Hepp's watercolor paintings of disco balls explore a playful relationship with color and light, imaginatively filling physical spaces left barren by the pandemic. Randy Garber investigates perception and how meaning is deciphered. Her prints evoke both a sense of order and orderly growth gone awry. In a similar vein, Ilona Anderson's digital animation uses the medium of time to explore the arising and dissolving of forms and space, questioning the boundary between the two. Learn more.’’
Or a mushroom cloud
“The Tree” (etching), by Marguerite Thompson Zorach (American, 1887-1968), at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Mass. For a while a Californian, she later lived in New York City and in her family’s summer house in Georgetown, Maine.
Five Islands, Georgetown, Maine, from a circa. 1906 postcard published by G. W. Morris.
The museum says:
"Marguerite Thompson Zorach is best known for her early modernist paintings and late embroidery creations. One of the first women to be admitted to Stanford University, in 1908, she was invited to study in Paris by her aunt, which changed the course of her career. There she met Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). She attended the avant-garde school La Palette, where she met her future husband, artist William Zorach. During this time, she created etchings like this delicate rendering entitled “The Tree,’’ thought to be an olive tree with olive pickers resting nearby.’’
To read more please click here.
Mountainous conception
Part of Avon Mountain, in Connecticut. It’s known for its microclimate.
“The night you were conceived
your father drove up Avon Mountain {near Hartford}
and into the roadside rest
that looked over the little city,
its handful of scattered sparks.’’
— From “Breaking Silence — For My Son,’’ by Patricia Fargnoli (1937-2021), an American poet and psychotherapist. She grew up in Connecticut and later moved to Walpole, N.H. (best known as the home of TV history-documentary maker Ken Burn’s Florentine Films) and on the Connecticut River. She was the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from December 2006 to March 2009.
Walpole’s public library in 1906. The famous and highly literary and reformist Alcott family, connected to the Concord, Mass.-based Transcendentalists, lived there for a time in the 1850s, as have other writers and painters, drawn by the region’s great natural beauty. The abundant lilacs in the town inspired Louisa May Alcott (who wrote Little Women) to write the 1878 book Under the Lilacs.
David Warsh: Putin the drunken grandfather goes on rampage and changes everything
“Drunken Noah,’’ by Michelangelo
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
Russia has experienced a difficult thirty years searching for its place among nations. The U.S. hasn’t made it easier, inducting the former East European satellites of the USSR into NATO, bullying Russia’s former client-states along the country’s southern rim and around the Mediterranean. China, which maintained Communist Party control while opening its economy to the world, has rocketed past its rival.
Boris Yeltsin anointed Vladimir Putin as his successor because the former KGB officer-turned-politician was “thoughtful, democratic, and innovative – yet steadfast in the military manner.” And for 22 years, Vladimir Putin has done a pretty good job of rebuilding the social fabric, economic infrastructure and military forces of his country, while navigating the narrow corridor between authoritarian rule and anarchy – until last week.
{Editor’s note: In 2005, Putin said: “We should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the {20th} Century.’’
But as New York Times Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski wrote Thursday:
His attack on Ukraine negated that image, and revealed him as an altogether different leader: one dragging the nuclear superpower he helms into a war with no foreseeable conclusion, one that by all appearances will end Russia’s attempts over its three post-Soviet decades to find a place in a peaceful world order.
The war on its neighbor Ukraine is a tragedy, for all involved, most all for Russia. Fred Weir, of The Christian Science Monitor, a special correspondent and long-time Moscow resident, supplied the clearest view. The assault “amounts to a war of regime change,” patterned on America’s war against Iraq. Weir wrote:
Very few Russian security analysts were picking up their phones Thursday. It seems many have been blindsided by the speed with which Mr. Putin has acted after spelling out his grievances in a lengthy speech officially recognizing two east Ukrainian rebel republics barely three days earlier.
But those who did claimed that the operation – which none will call an “invasion” – was going well, that Russia has established dominance in the air, that much of Ukraine’s military and command-and-control infrastructure had already been greatly reduced, the Ukrainian army in the Donbass region surrounded, and many strategic points seized by Russian special forces.
That doesn’t square with reports on the ground from the first three days of the war. Ukrainian soldiers and citizens have put up determined resistance. The U.S. invasion of Iraq isn’t parallel for a variety of reasons. Besides, that war was a disaster. The arguments about NATO encroachment that Putin had used before to good effect, in 2007 and 2014, didn’t work this time; instead the four-term Russian president sounded demented.
No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.
Nor did domestic propaganda and suppression of dissent make his case stronger. Evoked instead are memories of East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Berlin in 1961, and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
It all makes it seem more likely that something has happened to Putin’s judgment. Speculation is rampant about what might have led to an elevated appetite for risk. Alexei Navalny, the Russia dissident who has been sentenced to two years in prison (with more trials yet to come), remains free enough to have tweeted that Putin’s conduct resembles that of a drunken grandfather who spoils family celebrations. (See the bottom of a very good story by Robyn Dixon and Paul Sonne of The Washington Post.)
The problem of U.S. swagger is more widely recognized today, at home and aboard, even though its sources have yet to be carefully examined. Now the question of succession, in Russia, as in the US, has become the more interesting story.
xxx
Giving up on someone for whom you’ve had a fair amount of sympathy for a long time years is dispiriting. Putin gave a speech on Thursday, as expected; some of the grievances he enumerated were real enough, at least in some degree; in no way do they justify the measures taken. There is absolutely nothing to be said, at least for Putin’s decision to wage war against Ukraine.
David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Sokeconomicprincipals.com
And ‘at the mercy of’
“Four Seasons,’’ by Alphonse Mucha (1897)
“Nowhere in the United States of America does the wheel of the seasons turn more brilliantly than in New England. Winter’s blankets of white, the long-awaited buds of spring accompanied by the run of sap, summer’s bouquets, and the magnificent palette of autumn: all are feasts for the senses, and lead to the characteristic New England feeling of existing in tandem with, and often at the mercy of, the great forces of nature.’’
Tom Shachtman (born 1942, Connecticut-based writer and filmmaker), in The Most Beautiful Villages of New England (1997)
In Lexington, Mass., after April 16, 2021 snowstorm.
With affordable gondolas?
The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston’s increasingly flood-prone Seaport District
Edited from a New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com) report
BOSTON
“The Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) has seen significant interest from developers for a residential project with an affordable focus that the authority wants to build on land off D Street in Boston’s Seaport district. Massport has reported that nine teams have expressed a serious interest in the project.
“Massport estimates that its 27,000-square-foot site, adjacent to its South Boston parking garage, could accommodate a tower with as many as 18 stories and 200 apartments. The bidding teams are: Beacon Communities and RISE Together, The Community Builders and Menkiti Group, Cruz Development Corp., L&M Development Partners, The Michaels Organization and Boston Partnership for Community Reinvestment, Preservation of Affordable Housing and DREAM Development, Standard Communities, the Cronin Group, and the Caribbean Integration Community Development, Trinity Financial and the South Boston Neighborhood Development Corp., and Winn Companies and Catalyst Venture Development. Massport is expected to issue a formal request for proposals in the late spring or early summer.
“The New England Council commends Massport for working towards building affordable housing in the Seaport.’’
‘Symbols of the Dreamtime’
“Dreamtime-Rendevous” (encaustic monotype), by Acton, Maine-based artist Ken Eason.
Mr. Eason writes:
“Several years ago, vacationing in Australia with family, I was introduced to Aboriginal Art and was fascinated by the technique, symbolism and variety. Aboriginal Art is centered on telling the ancient stories of the Aboriginal peoples using symbolism and metaphor. The imagery is described as symbols of the ‘Dreamtime,’ which is the Aboriginal understanding of nature and the world.
“This series explores my own personal ‘Dreamtime’ where I can be physically at home but mentally, spiritually and emotionally away. I use line as symbol of path, thought, or journey. These lines tend to overlap in many layers, each curve signifying a decision point, change in direction or choice.’’
— Photo circa 1920
Edited from a Wikipedia entry:
“{Acton, which is west of Portland} was first settled in 1776, by Benjamin Kimens, Clement Steele and John York, all from York, Maine. In 1779, Joseph Parsons built a gristmill on the Salmon Falls River, near Wakefield, N.H. Other mills followed at Acton's various water power sites, including sawmills, gristmills, a hemp mill, a carding mill, a felt mill, a tannery and a shoe factory. In 1877, silver was discovered near Goding Creek. Prospectors dug mines during the 1880s, after which the enterprise declined.’’
That was then
The front entrance to a mall in Milford, Conn.
— Photo by JJBers
"When I was growing up, in the 1950s, my grandparents had a farm outside Hartford, {on} one of the four corners of a crossroads. The farm was surrounded by orchards, and there was a skating pond for the winter and blueberry bushes for July and August picking. By the time I was a teenager, the three other corners were being filled in, and there were supermarkets and gas stations standing on old farmland. By the time I got out of college, my grandparents’ farm had become a regional shopping mall.’’
-- Robert Yaro, as quoted in Tony Hiss's The Experience of Place (1990).
Population density in the Northeast megalopolis.
Spraying the slopes; curling isn’t actually silly
Mount Snow, in Dover, in southern Vermont. The ski area has long had one of America’s biggest “snow’’-making operations.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
I wonder how long ski areas will be allowed to take so much water to use to make artificial snow to spray on trails even in areas with water shortages. And as the fake snow melts, it increases erosion on slopes. Further, at some ski areas, chemical additives are used to boost “snow’’ production. (China claims it hasn’t used additives in its fake-snow making at the Beijing Olympics. Beijing, by the way, has suffered water shortages for years.)
As the climate warms, this will be more and more of an issue.
Speaking of The Olympics, what other sport combines so weirdly decorum and seeming silliness as curling, which originated in Scotland? Players slide heavy polished granite stones on ice toward a target area segmented into four concentric circles and use brooms to reduce friction in a stone’s path. It’s rather hard to watch without chuckling.
I had an aunt on Cape Cod who was a curler. After I joked about it, she responded with dignity: “No, no, it’s a real sport. Lots of skill.’’
“Curling—a Scottish Game, at {New York’s} Central Park” (1862), by John George Brown