But we’ve moved on
Cleveland Amory and friend.
“The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't — it just keeps you from enjoying it”.
— Cleveland Amory (1917-1998), an American author, reporter, television critic and animal-rights activist. He originally was known for writing a series of popular books poking fun at the pretensions and customs of society, starting with The Proper Bostonians, in 1947. He was a Boston Brahmin himself.
The Town of Nahant peninsula, very close to Boston and was long a favorite summer place for Boston Brahmins. Mr. Amory was born there.
— Photo by Svabo
Finally!
The MBTA’s Green Line extension, which opened last month.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Consider that the MBTA’s Green Line Extension was first proposed in 1991 but only opened last week, or that extending commuter rail to Dulles International Airport from downtown Washington, D.C., was proposed in the ‘60’s but that extension only opened last week!
(Those who oppose spending tax money on creating or improving commuter rail and subway lines should look at the huge taxpaying development that occurs along them. Yes, millions of people want to get out of their cars and use mass transit if it’s close to them and provides frequent and reliable service.)
We could take many lessons from the likes of Western Europe and Japan on how to apply and maintain systems created in part or wholly because of American inventions. In the past few decades, America’s reputation as a place for completing big projects using these inventions has slipped, to no small degree because of too many layers of regulation, too many selfish and politically powerful special interests and runaway litigiousness. Let’s hope that the vast promise of fusion energy helps turn that around.
The invention of the likes of Facebook and Twitter doesn’t seem to have advanced America. But you can join the Metaverse and Cryptoworld, where nothing is real!
‘Landscapes’ in different media
Snakesound” (clay), by Liz Newell, in the group show “Earth, Sea & Sky,’’ at the Umbrella Arts Center, Concord, Mass., Jan. 8-Feb. 11.
— Photo courtesy artist.
The gallery says:
“‘Earth, Sea & Sky’ is a collection of artworks by Suzanne Hill, Liz Newell and Barbara Willis. Each artist approaches the theme of ‘landscapes’ through their own medium. Their unique interpretations of the world around us are woven in fabric or built from, clay, the very Earth itself. ‘‘
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, in Concord, a Boston area town that was one of America’s most important cultural centers in the 19th Century. Many famous people are buried there, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau
— Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel
Not for the love of war
Statue of Rufus Choate, by famed American sculptor Daniel Chester French, at the John Adams Courthouse, Boston.
John Whipple House, built in 1677, in Ipswich, Mass. It looks transplanted from England.
— Photo by Elizabeth B. Thomsen
“The courage of New England was the courage of conscience. It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.“
— Rufus Choate (1799-1859), American lawyer, orator and U.S. senator, in a 1834 address at Ipswich, Mass., of which he was a native. The town calls itself “The Birthplace of American Independence.’’ You can look up why.
A view from Castle Hill of Ipswich’s famously beautiful marshes, beloved of painters.
— Photo by John Phelan
‘Large and small visions of nature’
“Multi-cellular” (watercolor, colored pencil, ink and encaustic medium on Strathmore mixed media paper), by Cambridge, Mass.-based artist Katrina Abbott.
She says:
“Nature, color and climate change inspire my art. By representing the beauty and diversity of the natural world, I hope to inspire viewers to take a closer look at the world around us, and ultimately be more thoughtful and careful stewards of our planet. I bring my background in marine biology and environmental studies and the experience of years spent both on the ocean and in the backcountry to my art. I paint, print and work in wax to represent large and small visions of nature from the earth from space to frogs, cells and diatoms.’’
Cambridge City Hall.
Rachel Bluth: Noise pollution jangles nerves and hurts sleep
Measuring the noise from a leaf blower.
— Photo by fir0002
When there’s a loud noise, the auditory system signals that something is wrong, triggering a fight-or-flight response in the body and flooding it with stress hormones that cause inflammation and can ultimately lead to disease.
— Peter James, an assistant professor of environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
SACRAMENTO
Mike Thomson’s friends refuse to stay over at his house anymore.
Thomson lives about 50 yards from a busy freeway that bisects California’s capital city, one that has been increasingly used as a speedway for high-speed races, diesel-spewing big rigs, revving motorcycles — and cars that have been illegally modified to make even more noise.
About the only time it quiets down is Saturday night between 3 and 4 a.m., Thomson said.
Otherwise, the din is nearly constant, and most nights, he’s jolted out of sleep five or six times.
“Cars come by and they don’t have mufflers,” said Thomson, 54, who remodels homes for a living. “It’s terrible. I don’t recommend it for anyone.”
Thomson is a victim of noise pollution, which health experts warn is a growing problem that is not confined to our ears, but causes stress-related conditions like anxiety, high blood pressure, and insomnia.
California legislators passed two laws in 2022 aimed at quieting the environment. One directs the California Highway Patrol to test noise-detecting cameras, which may eventually issue automatic tickets for cars that make noise above a certain level. The other forces drivers of illegally modified cars to fix them before they can be re-registered.
“There’s an aspect of our society that likes to be loud and proud,” said state Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Glendale), author of the noise camera law. “But that shouldn’t infringe on someone else’s health in a public space.”
Most states haven’t addressed the assault on our eardrums. Traffic is a major driver of noise pollution — which disproportionately affects disadvantaged communities — and it’s getting harder to escape the sounds of leaf blowers, construction, and other irritants.
California’s laws will take time and have limited effect, but noise control experts called them a good start. Still, they do nothing to address overhead noise pollution from circling police helicopters, buzzing drones, and other sources, which is the purview of the federal government, said Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse.
In October 2021, the American Public Health Association declared noise a public health hazard. Decades of research links noise pollution with not only sleep disruption, but also a host of chronic conditions such as heart disease, cognitive impairment, depression, and anxiety.
“Despite the breadth and seriousness of its health impacts, noise has not been prioritized as a public health problem for decades,” the declaration says. “The magnitude and seriousness of noise as a public health hazard warrant action.”
When there’s a loud noise, the auditory system signals that something is wrong, triggering a fight-or-flight response in the body and flooding it with stress hormones that cause inflammation and can ultimately lead to disease, said Peter James, an assistant professor of environmental health at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Constant exposure to noise increases the risk of heart disease by 8% and diabetes by 6%, research shows. The European Environment Agency estimated in 2020 that noise exposure causes about 12,000 premature deaths and 48,000 cases of heart disease each year in Western Europe.
While California Highway Patrol officials will spend the next few years researching noise cameras, they acknowledge that noise from street racing and so-called sideshows — where people block off intersections or parking lots to burn out tires or do “doughnuts” — has surged over the past several years and disturbs people right now.
Cars in California are supposed to operate at 95 decibels — a little louder than a leaf blower or lawn mower — or less. But drivers often modify their cars and motorcycles to be louder, such as by installing “whistle tips” on the exhaust system to make noise or removing mufflers.
In 2021, the last full year for which data is available, the highway patrol issued 2,641 tickets to drivers for excessive vehicle noise, nearly double 2018’s 1,400 citations.
“There’s always been an issue with noise coming from exhausts, and it’s gained more attention lately,” said Andrew Poyner, a highway patrol captain. “It’s been steadily increasing over the past several years.”
The American Public Health Association says the federal government should regulate noise in the air, on roads, and in workplaces as an environmental hazard, but that task has mostly been abandoned since the federal Office of Noise Abatement and Control was defunded in 1981 under President Ronald Reagan.
Now the task of quieting communities is mostly up to states and cities. In California, reducing noise is often a byproduct of other environmental policy changes. For instance, the state will ban the sale of noisy gas-powered leaf blowers starting in 2024, a policy aimed primarily at reducing smog-causing emissions.
One of the noise laws approved in California in 2022, AB 2496, will require owners of vehicles that have been ticketed for noise to fix the issue before they can re-register them through the Department of Motor Vehicles. Currently, drivers can pay a fine and keep their illegally modified cars as they are. The law takes effect in 2027.
The other law, SB 1097, directs the highway patrol to recommend a brand of noise-detecting cameras to the legislature by 2025. These cameras, already in use in Paris, New York City, and Knoxville, Tenn., would issue automatic tickets if they detected a car rumbling down the street too loudly.
Originally, the law would have created pilot programs to start testing the cameras in six cities, but lawmakers said they wanted to go slower and approved only the study.
Portantino said he’s frustrated by the delay, especially because the streets of Los Angeles have become almost unbearably loud.
“It’s getting worse,” Portantino said. “People tinker with their cars, and street racing continues to be a problem.”
The state is smart to target the loudest noises initially, the cars and motorcycles that bother people the most, Blomberg said.
“You can make every car coming off the line half as loud as it is right now and it would have very little impact if you don’t deal with all the people taking their mufflers off,” he said. “That outweighs everything.”
Traffic noise doesn’t affect everyone equally. In a 2017 paper, James and colleagues found that nighttime noise levels were higher in low-income communities and those with a large proportion of nonwhite residents.
“We’ve made these conscious or subconscious decisions as a society to put minority-race communities and lower-income communities who have the least amount of political power in areas near highways and airports,” James said.
Elaine Jackson, 62, feels that disparity acutely in her neighborhood, a low-income community in northern Sacramento sandwiched between freeways.
On weekends, sideshows and traffic noise keep her awake. Her nerves are jangled, she loses sleep, her dogs panic, and she generally feels unsafe and forgotten, worried that new development in her neighborhood would just bring more traffic, noise, and air pollution.
Police and lawmakers don’t seem to care, she said, even though she and her neighbors constantly raise their concerns with local officials.
“It’s hard for people to get to sleep at night,” Jackson said. “And that’s a quality-of-life issue.”
Rachel Bluth is a Kaiser Health News reporter.
Don’t rush them
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894)
"Knowledge and timber shouldn't be used until they are seasoned.’’
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. A polymath, he was a pioneering Boston-based physician as well as a poet. His son, OIiver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935) became a famed member of the U.S. Supreme Court and legal scholar. Like his father, he was famed for his witty and pithy remarks.
Agents of the king marking New England white pines to be used by the Royal Navy as masts in the 18th Century.
David Warsh: Support Ukraine but study the path to war
"The Chateau" at St. Basil College, in Stamford, Conn., was originally a college dormitory and now houses the Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford.
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
I have lived with the possibility of war in Ukraine for a long time, first as a newspaper columnist, then as a newsletter writer (and a long-ago war correspondent). I wrote against further NATO enlargement soon after Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were admitted – gingerly at first, more firmly once I began covering the Harvard-Russia scandal in the mid-’90s.
Boris Yeltsin’s selection of Vladimir Putin to be his successor didn’t seem surprising. Unlike Hillary Clinton, I was not shocked when, in 2012, Putin took back the helm from Dimitri Medvedev. Putin wasn’t a czar, but by then he was steering Russia’s course.
The events of 2014 did alarm me – Putin’s plans for a gradual takeover of Ukraine, foiled by US-supported demonstrations in Kyiv’s Maiden Square, followed by Russia’ stealth repossession of the Crimean peninsula. In 2016, expecting that Clinton would be elected, I began writing Because They Could: The Harvard-Russia Scandal (And NATO Expansion) after Twenty-five Years (Create Space, 2018)
Instead Donald Trump was elected. His longstanding relationship with Russian government and various Russians put the matter on hold. Joe Biden defeated Trump four years later and the momentum of NATO expansion was seamlessly reasserted, notably with signing on Nov. 10, 2021 of a U.S.-Ukraine Charter of Strategic Partnership. Barely three months later, Putin attempted his ill-fated blitzkrieg. The subsequent invasion was mostly turned back, except in the eastern Donbass region.
What’s done is done. The issue seems to me to have been decided, mostly by the citizens and soldiers of Ukraine. The U.S. may or may not bear responsibility for having fomented the war by pressing the boundaries – and the culture – of NATO ever closer to Russia, but having reached this point in Putin’s war on Ukraine, America has no honorable alternative but to stay the course until Putin stands down. He will do so only after more defeats on the battlefield; after taking account of the devastation he has caused, no less to his own country than to Ukraine; and to Russia’s reputation forever. His pursuit of restoration of Russian status as a superpower was a pipedream.
What is next? Partition is apparently what the Pentagon expects, once Russia’s spring offensive grinds to a halt. That makes sense to me. Russia gets to keep portions of Eastern Ukraine that it already possesses. Ukraine retains what it has already recaptured; remains independent; and gradually becomes a member of NATO and the European Union.
In the meantime, continued support for Ukraine is about to become a matter of partisan politics in the 2024 presidential election campaign. So much the better: it will be one more litmus test with which to separate the real Republican Party from Trumplican rear-guard. The war in Ukraine offers an opportunity to begin to put US politics together again.
It is time to begin to gather assessments of America’s behavior in world affairs during the last thirty years. Historian M. E. Sarotte has made an especially good start with her most recent book, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post- Cold War Stalemate (Yale, 2021), but, as she notes, her account covers only the beginning; it ends in 1999. Her next volume presumably will cover the years to 2016. By that time, today’s war will be over, and the saga of the post- Cold War world ripe for a third volume.
Frank Costigliola’s biography Kennan: A Life between Two Worlds (Princeton, 2023) adds some details to the story of diplomat George Kennan’s famous op-ed piece opposing NATO expansion, “A Fateful Error,” in The New York Times, in 1996, but we will have to wait some time for a dispassionate biography of Strobe Talbott, President Clinton’s old Oxford friend, the architect of NATO expansion. Newspaper journalists, Peter Baker of The Times foremost among them, can be expected to begin to illuminate some shadows.
The change of heart about the war that I’m describing – putting aside for now the idea of joint responsibility in favor of rendering sufficient support to Ukraine, whatever it costs, until independence and peace are won – has been a long and painful time in coming. America has not done well in its three major wars in my adulthood – Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In Ukraine, it finally seems vital to stay the course.
xxx
I caught a windjammer of a cold over the holidays and failed to post to EcononomicPrincipals.com in timely fashion what he had written before the storm. He put it up when calm returned. Apologies to those accustomed to reading it there.
More to the point, all good wishes to readers for the coming year.
David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this column originated.
‘A certain impermanence’
“The Needle’s Mark and Maquoketa” (quilt fragments, gesso, acrylic), by Susan Denniston, in her show “Voices Carry,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Jan. 5-29. She lives near the ocean south of Boston.
The gallery says:
“When artists work with materials created and shaped by previous generations, it evokes memories and pulls a thread from the past through the present and into the future. Working with inherited, delicate cloth, Denniston listens and acknowledges our fragility, our vulnerability, and our certain impermanence.’’
Read more.
‘Deeper in’
“Sumac thickets by the roadbed, either side,
spangled by snow and the big moon’s light.
Deeper in, evergreens, taller, darker,
but still undark in that light, this weather.’’
— From “Inviting the Moose: A Vision,’’ by Sydney Lea (born 1942), a former poet laureate of Vermont who has taught at various New England colleges.
Adjust your attitude
“Better Times” (mixed media), by Susan Leskin, in the group members show at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Jan. 13-29.
"It feels important right now to find and express visions of hope and lightness to counter the despair that many of us feel about the current state of the world. These collages reflect those visions for me."
Her artist statement says:
“My work frequently explores connectivity and disjunction. I enjoy creating images that are ambiguous and may be just on the edge of recognition. There is often a focus - explicit or implied - on the relationship between humans and nature.
”I use fluid acrylic paint and mediums, ink, pencil, and painted papers in my collages.’’
Bonnie Phillips: Those secretive and opportunistic Bobcats
Bobcat
Text from ecoRI News (ecori.org)
JOHNSTON, R.I.
The big cat saunters across the driveway, bobbed tail swaying, passing in front of two parked cars before the doorbell camera cuts off.
The video, posted on the neighborhood app Nextdoor, came with a question: Anyone else see an animal like this? It looks like a bobcat.
After watching the video, Mary Gannon, the wildlife outreach coordinator for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, confirmed the animal is “a very healthy-looking Bobcat.”
Is it unusual for a Bobcat to be wandering around suburban Johnston? Not so much, said Morgan Lucot, a furbearer biologist with DEM. Bobcats are “very adaptable,” and are the most widely distributed feline in North American, she said.
Bobcats are “meso-carnivores,” meaning they will eat just about any animal, from squirrels to birds to snakes to small deer, according to Lucot.
It’s undetermined how many Bobcats roam Rhode Island, Lucot said, but their numbers are growing. Although the habitats they prefer — forested land, large fields — are diminishing, their adaptability means they can adjust to any environment.
A Bobcat was captured on a doorbell camera walking across a driveway in Johnston, R.I.
— Photo from Nextdoor
“Carnivores that are highly adaptable aren’t always negatively affected by” an urban environment, Lucot said, and can sometimes turn it to their advantage, eating backyard chickens, say, or unsecured trash.
“We’ve gotten sightings from Johnston before, as well as from Smithfield and Cranston,” Gannon said. Although Bobcats can be found throughout Rhode Island, their highest numbers are in Washington County.
Bobcat kittens
The shy, secretive cats are solitary, unless they are mating or raising young. The cats mate between February and May, and the kittens — an average litter has three — are born in June. The young stay with the mother until the following spring. Lucot said while she’s rearing her kittens the mother will choose a den, usually in a boulder pile or underneath exposed tree roots. She said she’s known Bobcats to den under a shed, near a plentiful supply of food.
Bobcats are roamers, Lucot said, walking up to 12 miles a night. The cats are crepuscular, meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk. DEM partnered with the University of Rhode Island several years ago to track Bobcats with GPS collars, Gannon said. A video discussing the results of the study can be found on YouTube. One Bobcat tagged in the study was tracked from South Kingstown to eastern Connecticut and back over the course of a week.
Bobcats are native to New England and were considered “varmints” by early settlers and were hunted as such. It wasn’t until 1969 that Massachusetts, the first New England state to do so, declared the Bobcat a “game species,” which meant the cats could only be hunted during a particular time, and there was a limit to how many could be killed.
The difference between dog and cat tracks. (State of Michigan)
So what should you do if you suspect you are sharing your land with a bobcat? First, look for tracks. Bobcat tracks look like common house cats’, only much larger: Bobcat tracks are typically about 1 1/2 inches long by 1 3/8 inches wide. In contrast, coyote (and most other dog tracks) are longer than they are wide. Bobcats weigh between 15 and 30 pounds, and with their fluffy fur can look much larger.
“They look like cute furry cats but are not,” Lucot warned. Don’t approach them, she said. Instead, make noise, bang pots and pans, and “shoo them away.”
“It’s best for the animal to be scared,” Lucot said. “We don’t want them getting used to people.”
While “it might be exciting to get a Bobcat in our backyard, it’s not legal to feed them,” Lucot said.
She recommended that homeowners bring in small animals and livestock, such as chickens, after dark. Enclosures should be checked frequently for holes, and outdoor pet dishes should be brought in overnight as well.
Bonnie Phillips is a journalist with ecoRI News.
Bobcat tracks in mud showing the hind-paw print (top) partially covering the fore-paw print (center)
— Photo by Lensim
Grownup state
“Massachusetts is the first state in America to reach full adulthood. The rest of America is still in adolescence.”-
— Uwe Reinhardt 1937-2017), health-care economist
Llewellyn King: U.S. airlines gouge and pack
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
A Conservative British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, coined the phrase “the unacceptable face of capitalism” in 1973. He was describing the actions of Roland Walter “Tiny” Rowland and the company he headed, Lonrho (London Rhodesia), a mining and real-estate conglomerate with interests across Africa.
Having had a hectic travel schedule since the end of the COVID-19 lockdown, I can say that the airlines have become an unacceptable face of capitalism.
I refer to the airlines collectively because from the traveling public’s point of view, they are a massive whole with little to choose between them. Nominally in competition, their attitude to the public has become a common one of disrespect.
That one of the airlines, Southwest, would implode when stressed was no surprise. A metamorphosis had taken place in the last two years with the passengers -- the customers – becoming, in the collective airline psyche, just economic opportunities, ripe for endless upselling.
When the airlines realized that they could extract money over and above the ticket price, they began a service free fall and abandoned any pretense of respect for their customers -- or, apparently, themselves. They, the customers, had become economic targets for exploitation.
First came the baggage charges. Surely, the airlines knew people didn’t travel without bags and could have allowed for that in ticket pricing.
Then they found they could upsell the seating, making passengers pay extra for marginally better seats, and even for boarding about five minutes early.
On a recent flight in a Boeing 767, the airline was charging a stiff premium to sit in the double seats near the window rather than in the three abreast in the middle. My wife and I stayed in the middle.
A new class of service called “basic economy” has prohibited carry-ons in the overhead bins, forcing passengers to pay for checked baggage and wiping out some of their flight-cost savings.
I have flown round the globe for decades and have known every class of service, from that on the Concorde to the wonders of first class on Asian air carriers. But mostly, I have sat in the back and watched as the aircraft have gotten older and shabbier, as the seating area has shrunken, as the lavatories have shrunken in number and size, as the snacks and food offering are as incomprehensible as they are inedible, and as the flexibility of tickets has disappeared.
In tandem with these deteriorations in comfort, service and pricing, has come cancellation of normal business practices when it comes to cash and credit cards. You can no longer buy a ticket with cash at the airport. You can’t use a credit card on board for a snack if you haven’t pre-registered your credit card and, in many cases, you must have your own device to watch entertainment.
For a fee, of course, you can now get Wi-Fi on many airlines. But the seats are so positioned that you can’t, in my experience, open a laptop and work. For another fee, they may have a fix.
As I have strapped myself into a sometimes-broken seat (which reclines about 2 inches), looking at the ashtray (which indicates the age of the cabin furnishings), I have begun to wonder to what extent this predatory approach to passengers, this total indifference to those who pay the stiff fares and all the fees on top, has filtered down to the maintenance department.
Passengers, I guess, are inured to the horrors of airline travel and the victimhood that goes with it. Know this: If you are trying to travel by air, you have identified yourself as an economic target for a group of companies, the airlines, which supposedly compete but which, within hours, match every new fee dreamed up by one of their supposed competitors.
The latest serious inequity is defrauding passengers by reducing the value of their frequent-flyer miles.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg needs to take a root-and-branch look at the airlines: the greed, the collusion and the manifest disrespect for the passengers that is pervasive. Importantly, he needs to look at seat size and aisle width and their impact on safety.
I have a full flying schedule ahead in January, and I am preparing for my time in the gouging skies with trepidation and resignation.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Where abnormal is normal
1816 was called “The Year Without a Summer” in New England because of the effects of a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia, which blocked much of the sun’s heating power on Earth. Hannah Dawes Newcomb, of Keene, N.H., kept a diary (above) with short daily reports on her everyday life. Starting around May, her comments reflected the strange weather patterns of that year, which were disastrous for agriculture in North America, Europe and elsewhere.
“Freak weather conditions are standard in New England. In fact, The Old Farmer’s Almanac was vaulted on the road of success by predicting “snow and ice” for July 13, 1816. When it actually did snow on Boston that day, most of Robert B. Thomas’s 1,500 competitors faded into oblivion.’’
—Judson D. Hale, now former editor of Yankee magazine and The Old Farmer’s Almanac, writing in Arthur Griffin’s New England: The Four Seasons (1980).
Expand and contract
“Edge of Snow” (acrylic and photo on paper), by Cape Cod-based Jane Lincoln, at Kingston Gallery, Boston.
A baby Hercules of a college
Fayerweather Hall at Amherst College. Founded in 1821, the college, in Amherst, Mass., developed from Amherst Academy, first established as a secondary school. The college was originally suggested as an institution to succeed Williams College (founded in 1793), in Williamstown, Mass., which was struggling to stay open but later thrived. The two rather similar elite colleges remain friendly rivals.
“The infant {Amherst} college is an Infant Hercules. Never was so much striving, outstretching, & advancing in a literary cause as is exhibited here.’’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1823)
Founded in 1821, Amherst College, in Amherst, Mass., developed from Amherst Academy, first established as a secondary school. The college was originally suggested to succeedWilliams College, in Williamstown, Mass., which was struggling to stay open but later thrived.
xxx
“You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much.’’
— Anonymous
The joy and pain of shrinkage
Big enough
— Photo by Cavajunky
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Many people at the end of the year reflect on whether they should make a major life change. This might include simplifying by downsizing where they live.
So I recommend Dr. Edward Iannuccilli’s latest book of essays, Essays on the Art and Pain of Downsizing. (He’s a friend, but no, I get no kickbacks for this plug.)
Of course, many older people, such as Dr. Iannuccilli, who lives in beautiful Bristol, R.I., downsize in part because of their stage of life. But there are good reasons for others to do so. You save on fuel, electricity, taxes and insurance and you’re disciplined to get rid of stuff, which can feel liberating. (Do some people have so much stuff that it acts as insulation, saving fuel in the winter?)
In 1980, the median size of a new house in the U.S. was 1,595 square feet. That ballooned to 2,386 square feet by 2018, with fewer people living in these houses. Obviously, the bigger the house, the bigger the purchase price and maintenance costs; the latter tend to be alarmingly unpredictable.
Town hall and Civil War memorial in Bristol, R.I.
Individual terror
“Brake Run Helix,’’ by EJ Hill, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA), North Adams., Mass., through January 2024.
The museum explains:
“In ‘Brake Run Helix,’ Hill inverts the experience of riding a roller coaster, transforming it from a shared ritual of joy and terror to an individual performance: only one person may ride the roller coaster, Brava!, at a time. Brava!’s single cart emerges from behind a two-story velvet stage curtain, moves across the coaster’s pink tracks, and ultimately comes to rest on the wooden stage, while onlookers observe from below. Visitors can see the roller coaster activated by riders throughout the day. Are you interested in riding? The line starts here.’’