‘Yearnings for freedom’
Work by Alice Garik in her show “Veil, the Well, the Fire,’’ at The Lakes Gallery at Chi-Lin, Laconia, N.H., through Sept. 4
Ms. Garik explains:
“In this work I use the language of forms to connect physically and spiritually with the burden of enforced wearing of a head covering. The forbidding black forms above which the young girl rises, as she looks beyond as if into the future, hold and appear to subdue a woman below them. I also use the language of color—blue, the color of open skies is intertwined in the girl’s hair and the red lines are for the fires {in the Ala Khaki poem that goes with this work}. With these colors I speak of the yearnings for freedom for the women of Iran.’’
Chris Powell: Decline of Catholic Church isn’t improving state
The Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Some people may privately celebrate the steady decline of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, which worsened last week as Hartford Archbishop Leonard P. Blair announced the closing of two more churches in Waterbury and the merger of three others there.
The church is resented for its opposition to homosexual relations, its exclusion of women from the priesthood, and, of course, for the rampant sexual abuse committed by priests over many years and its concealment by the church's highest officials. Not so long ago the church in Connecticut strove to criminalize contraception and still opposes it, if only theoretically.
But the church may be resented most of all here for its opposition to abortion, a stance that has become heroic as abortion fanaticism has consumed the state's political class, which not only rationalizes abortions performed long into fetal viability but also wants state government to finance travel and abortions for women from abortion-restricting states.
The church gets little credit for the thousands of lives its hospitals have saved or improved, or for the education that its schools continue to provide, education far superior to and far less expensive than most education provided by Connecticut's public schools, which have been declining almost as fast as the church itself has been.
Nor is there much appreciation of the ordinary daily work of the church -- the baptisms and marriages performed, the counseling for engaged couples, the funerals and the many other good works that create and sustain community and proclaim the sanctity, obligation, spirituality and meaning of life, even for the poorest and most demoralized, pushing back against the corrupting materialism and nihilism of the age.
Yes, correlation is not necessarily causation, but as social disorder explodes in Connecticut, with ever more brazen crime, mental illness, drug abuse, homelessness, educational failure, road rage, hatefulness, political incivility, and such, the bad trends may not be completely unrelated to the decline of religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly.
Connecticut used to be heavily Catholic and this gave the church more political influence than it deserved and used well. But now that, according to Archbishop Blair, the number of practicing Catholics in the Hartford archdiocese has fallen by about 70 percent in the last 50 years, it's not apparent that Connecticut is any better for it.
At least Catholic and other churches help hold neighborhoods together and their buildings haven't become decrepit even as Connecticut's cities have declined economically and socially and gotten dangerous. Waterbury, one of those cities long in decline, will not be any stronger for the closing and consolidation of more of its Catholic churches. Indeed, few things are more disconcerting, incongruous, and indicative of social disintegration than a vacant church building or one converted to secular use.
Of course, the church must take responsibility for its decline, for failing to convince people of its necessity. Mere tradition is not a persuasive argument for religious doctrines.
xxx
But venerable as it is, the church isn't the only teacher around, nor the only one making huge mistakes.
The biggest teacher, government, is, unlike the church, tax-funded and so draws on infinite money as its welfare system ruthlessly destroys the family and subsidizes child neglect and other irresponsibility, as it destroys education by abandoning standards, and as it promotes not just all sorts of gambling but also a hallucinogenic drug, marijuna, in the name of raising revenue without direct taxes. Altogether government is embedding and perpetuating poverty and hopelessness in society.
No church has been doing anything close to damage like that.
xxx
The British writer, sometime politician and Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc may have had a point a century ago. "The Catholic Church," he said, "is an institution I am bound to hold divine. But for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."
By contrast, no matter how much knavish imbecility it commits, government will last forever. It is managed worse than the church but gets away with it mainly because it employs so many more people to do its damage, which they often imagine to be God's work.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net).
‘Brave little state’
Official presidential portrait of Calvin Coolidge
The Coolidge Homestead, in Plymouth Notch, Vt. It’s now a museum.
— Photo by Magicpiano
The ‘‘Brave Little State of Vermont’’’ speech is a name given to remarks delivered by Vermont native and President Calvin Coolidge at Bennington on Sept. 21, 1928.
Coolidge was touring his home state by train to assess progress of recovery following the devastating 1927 flood. Considered taciturn and nicknamed "Silent Cal," Coolidge demonstrated unusual emotion in delivering his extemporaneous response to the human suffering and loss he had witnessed.
Text of Coolidge's remarks follow:
My fellow Vermonters:
For two days we have been traveling through this state. We have been up the East side, across and down the West side. We have seen Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Windsor, White River Junction and Bethel. We have looked toward Montpelier. We have visited Burlington and Middlebury. Returning we have seen Rutland.
I have had an opportunity of visiting again the scenes of my childhood. I want to express to you, and through the press to the other cities of Vermont, my sincere appreciation for the general hospitality bestowed upon me and my associates on the occasion of this journey.
It is gratifying to note the splendid recovery from the great catastrophe which overtook the state nearly a year ago. Transportation has been restored. The railroads are in a better condition than before. The highways are open to traffic for those who wish to travel by automobile.
Vermont is a state I love. I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield, and Equinox, without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me. It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride, here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our everlasting hills.
I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.
Literary Fenway
View of Fenway Park from atop ‘‘the Green Monster.’’
“The Yankees may have always had the better players, but the Red Sox always had the better writers.”
— Dan Riley, in The Red Sox Reader
xxx
“That moment, when you first lay eyes on that field — The Monster, the triangle, the scoreboard, the light tower Big Mac bashed, the left-field grass where Ted (Williams) once roamed — it all defines to me why baseball is such a magical game”
― Jayson Stark (born 1951), American sports writer
New England ghosts
The Bridgewater Triangle is an area of about 200 square miles in southeastern Massachusetts claimed to be a site of paranormal phenomena, ranging from UFOs to poltergeists, and other spectral phenomena, various bigfoot-like sightings, giant snakes and thunderbirds. The term was coined by New England-based cryptozoologist Loren Coleman.
—- Wikipedia
“Form is a jostle, a throstle,
Life a slice of sleight,
“Indians are looking out from the
“Cheekbones of Connecticut Yankees,
”Poltergeists deploy northward
To tinderboxes in cupboards in Maine….’’
— From “Hard Structure of the World,’’ by Richard Eberhart (1904-2005), New Hampshire-based poet and Dartmouth College professor
Making an impression in Conn.
“October Morning” (oil on canvas), by Leonard Ochtman (American, b. Netherlands, 1854–1934), in the show “Connecticut Impressionism,’' at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn, through June 30., 2024.
The museum says:
“Drawn entirely from the Bruce Museum’s permanent collection, this installation reveals the important role that Connecticut played in the development of American Impressionism from the late nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth century. Artists such as Childe Hassam, Elmer MacRae, Leonard and Mina Ochtman, and John Henry Twachtman formed deep connections with the landscape, inspiring paintings that would come to define Impressionism in the United States.’’
17th Century creepiness
The House of Seven Gables, in Salem, Mass. The first part of the house was built in 1668.
“Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), in his novel The House of Seven Gables (1851)
'Better Homes Than Gardens'
”Thank Your Lucky Stars’’ (custom view-master you with reel), by Krystal Brown, in her show “Better Homes Than Gardens,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Aug. 30-Oct 1.
The gallery explains:
That the show “confronts the current national housing crisis and the widening wealth gap head on through the lens of autobiography, asking the viewers to grapple with their complicity in the current situation, while laying bare Brown’s family’s struggles with poverty and housing in Boston during their childhood.’’
Tenacious and beauteous
“You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation.”
— Maine-based novelist Stephen King (born 1947), in Salem’s Lot
Linda Gasparello: ‘Smart City’ on the Athens Riviera
Mural across the street from the Wyndham Grand in Athens. The mural’s title is “So many books, so little time.’’
In the Hellenistic age, which began with the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C. and ended with Rome’s conquest of Egypt, in 30 B.C., Greek architects went colossal. The ruined Temple of Olympian Zeus, which stands in the center of Athens, exemplifies the temples, theaters and stadia that were the main features of the towns and cities of the age.
Today, just a half hour’s drive southeast of Athens, on the Athens Riviera, a mega-city is under construction, harkening back to the Hellenistic age cities.
The $8.2 billion Ellinikon project is underway on the site of Hellinikon International Airport, which closed in 2001. The site also housed facilities for the 2004 summer Olympics.
The Ellinikon is supposed to be a “smart city,” with high-end shopping, restaurants, housing, an athletic club, hotels and a sprawling public park.
Now open: the Experience Center, in the largest of the three airport hangars, and Park, where visitors can get an idea of what will be built via a series of virtual exhibitions.
One of the interactive models at the center’s ‘‘Living a New Era’’ exhibition uses more than 25,000 individual pieces to highlight the Ellinikon’s green spaces, next-generation designs and infrastructure projects. Visitors can also cruise the coastline aboard a simulated speedboat at the ‘‘Living by the Sea’’ exhibition or check out the Botanical Library. You can even take a virtual stroll through the ‘‘Night Garden Dome,’’ which emulates the park at night with a series of light strips, sounds and scents, according to the Robb Report, the luxury lifestyle magazine.
The Ellinikon will open in phases. The first phase, including Marina Tower — Greece’s first residential high-rise, designed by Britain’s Foster + Partners — and a retail and dining galleria, is expected to open in 2025. This will be followed by the launch of a sporting complex, marina and next-generation transportation system.
A number of international architectural firms are involved with the Ellinikon. From what I have seen of Foster + Partners’ work in the capital cities of Astana, Kazakhstan and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, they will do the Hellenistic age proud.
Down to the Sea in Ships
Cape Sounion, on the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula, was an emotionally important place for the ancient Athenians.
According to the myth, Aegeus, king of Athens, threw himself from a cliff into the sea because of a misunderstanding: Aegeus had told his son, Theseus, that upon returning to Athens, he was to fly a white sail if he had triumphed over the Minotaur, and to instruct the crew to raise a black sail if he had been killed. Theseus, forgetting his father’s direction, flew a black sail as he returned. The grieving king fatally jumped from a cliff into the sea, giving the sea its name, Aegean, and his son the kingdom.
The Temple of Poseidon
The ancient Athenians decided to build a temple there, dedicated to Poseidon, the god of the sea, to ensure fair winds and following seas for their seafarers and warriors. The temple was rebuilt three times, the last by Pericles, the Athenian statesman, probably around 440 B.C., but only some of the Doric columns stand today.
During a visit in 1810, poet, Grecophile and graffitist Lord Byron engraved “Byron” on one of the columns.
At a Temple of Poseidon overlook, I watched a sailboat in irons — the sails were luffing, it was drifting. The captain and crew were struggling to resume forward motion.
The scene was poignant — a reminder that the ancient Greeks feared ships and the sea. But most of all, they feared disappearing without a trace at sea. Death by drowning meant you gained no fame — no one to tell the tale of how you died — and no closure for yourself and your loved ones.
Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, the wandering hero of Homer’s epic poem, yearned to stop grieving and get on with his life.
In the Robert Fagles translation of The Odyssey, Telemachus — now a 20-year-old, but just a babe when his father set sail for Troy — says bitterly, “I would never have grieved so much about his death if he had gone down with comrades off Troy or died in the arms of loved ones, once he had wound down the long coil of war.
“Then all united Achaea would have raised his tomb and he would have won his son great fame for years to come.
“But now the whirlwinds have ripped him away, no fame for him! He is lost and gone now — out of sight, out of mind — and he has left me tears and grief.”
On June 14, a fishing vessel carrying hundreds of refugees, the Adriana, sank off the Greek port city of Pylos. About 600 people, including children, drowned. Investigations by numerous organizations are close to concluding that the Adriana was towed by the Greek coast guard towards Italian waters and then, when this was unsuccessful, capsized.
Hundreds from Africa and the Middle East — mostly from Pakistan — are lost and gone, and their loved ones have been left with tears,
From Dereliction to Destination
The Metaxourgeio neighborhood around the Wyndham Grand in Athens, where my husband and I and a friend stayed for a week, is tumbledown.
It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Athens. The upper class lived there until the opening of the Athanasios Douroutis silk factory, which gave the neighborhood its name (metaxourgeio means “silk mill”) and brought in the working class.
When the silk factory closed down in 1875 (it now houses the Municipal Art Gallery), the neighborhood started its long slide into dereliction.
Some tourism Web sites describe it gently as a “transition neighborhood” in the city center, which is gaining a reputation as an artistic neighborhood, due to the opening of art galleries, theaters and cafes. Others say is known for its large number of cheap brothels, drug addicts, transsexuals and Middle Eastern immigrants.
One cab driver fumed about the ticky-tacky tourist shops on a street near the Wyndham Grand.
“They are owned by the migrant criminals from Pakistan. Their gangs rob people on the streets and in the metro,” he said, referring to the Metaxourgeio Metro Station.
Such anti-migrant sentiment has been growing in Greece, and lead to the biggest surprise in the country’s parliamentary elections on June 25: The little-known, far-right Spartans party, which campaigned strongly on the idea that Greece was threatened by uncontrolled migration, won 4.7 percent of the vote, becoming the fifth biggest group in the 300-seat parliament, according to newspaper reports.
I must report that I had an encounter with a criminal in Athens: A Greek cabbie whose preposterous fare from the National Archaeological Museum to the Wyndham Grand gave new meaning to the Golden Fleece.
Metaxourgeio Murals
Athens has some of the finest street art in the world — and it has brightened up the blighted Metaxourgeio.
On the side of a building across the street from the Wyndham Grand, there is a mural of a young woman sitting on a window seat, reading a book and revealing a knee. There are books piled up behind her. The title of the mural, painted by SimpleG, is “So many books, so little time.”
Across the circle in front of the hotel, there is a mural, painted by Leonidas Giannakopoulos, that will stop you in your tracks. It depicts a fish disgorging a woman, upon whose wavy hair a twin-masted ship is sailing.
As noted on a bottom corner, the mural was painted during the Petit Paris d’Athene, 2021 — the eighth year of a 10-day art and culture festival in underserved areas of the city, co-organized by the Athenian Art Network and the Cultural, Arts and Youth Organization of the Municipality of Athens, and supported by the French press and the French Institute in Greece.
Alexander the Great
There are great restaurants all over Athens. And there is the Alexander the Great: a restaurant where performance art meets culinary art.
While the owner, Alexander, greets and gabs with the customers, applause-worthy traditional food — taramosalata, grilled fish, moussaka, pork souvlaki and lamb chops — comes out of the kitchen. Dinner theater — and so reasonably priced.
On the day we arrived in Athens, we ate there for convenience — the restaurant is across the street from the Wyndham Grand and has tented, sidewalk seating on the same side of the street as the hotel. But we kept returning for what was some of the best food — and often just for Alexander’s great coffee — and fun on our trip. Bravo, Alexander!
Linda Gasparello is co-host and producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS. She is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
The genius of Robert Cray
Robert Cray in concert in 2007
PROVINCETOWN, Mass.
"To say that Robert Cray is a transformational figure for my generation, Gen-X, would not be hyperbole.’’
— "Braintree Jim," the DJ who spins for WOMR , on Cape Cod.
Cray is a singer, songwriter guitarist, known for his unique hybrid of blues and soul. He is a five-time Grammy award winner who has released 19 studio albums, along with an assortment of live recordings and compilations. The Robert Cray Band may not be a household name today, but it has achieved international recognition in the nearly 50 years it, and various iterations, have performed during that time. Cray, who turned 70 earlier this month, regularly visits New England on a relentless, annual touring schedule. He will be spending time here on the Outer Cape during August and into September.
The DJ, who hosts the radio show called Target Ship Radio, further explains his rationale. "I was attending Providence College during the mid-’80’s when Cray's breakthrough album 'Strong Persuader' was released, in late 1986. When I first heard the single 'Smoking Gun' on the radio I simply had to get the album. I was totally taken by it and played it repeatedly. I still have the cassette today."
He recalls that pivotal time for young music fans. "Back then, the ascendant genre was hip hop. Many of my friends were attracted to that whole scene. And by the late 80s, even MTV was showcasing that music. But when I heard Robert Cray, principally a blues guy back then, I went back, not forward. Not only did I buy his back catalog work, which was fantastic, he really helped me discover the blues as a whole other art form.
"Cray, along with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton -- and even Albert Collins and Billy Gibbons -- were part of this exciting blues revival in the 80s and into the early 90s. For me, Cray played an instrumental part in this movement. Cray was affable, the music was accessible. In fact, his whole persona was quite approachable. He was making MTV-style videos that both young men and women found entertaining. And remember, his first national TV debut was on Late Night With David Letterman. By the ‘90s, he was morphing into a soul and R&B performer. He could deliver searing blues numbers for sure, but his music was adapting. That's why I think he's retained this rather remarkable staying power."
Braintree Jim is planning a Robert Cray retrospective on his next show on the Provincetown radio station. "I really think," he reasons, "that Robert Cray should be a bigger name. He's got an unbelievable canon of work that I wish more people heard. So, I want to dedicate three hours of my next show and pay tribute to his music. And he has collaborated with so many people, like Tina Turner, BB King, and Chuck Berry, just to name a few. And he still rips it up on tour. His voice is still the same after all these years and his guitar chops are also still intact."
The radio host further adds that, "I may have eventually discovered the blues without Robert Cray. But It's safe to say that his music really inspired me to appreciate the art form and dig into its rich history. Many of my generation discovered the blues because of Robert Cray. That alone makes him worthy of a three-hour radio show. But the music is so good that it will be tough to boil it down into that time frame. But I'll have fun doing it! That's the great thing about WOMR. I have this incredible level of autonomy in what I can play. That's virtually unheard of in radio today. I will be representing the station at the upcoming concert, too. It doesn't get much better than this."
The Robert Cray Band will be performing at the Payomet Performing Arts Center, in North Truro, Mass., on Tuesday, Aug. 29, beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets are still available.
Payomet is celebrating its 25th year in 2023 as one of the Cape's leading producers of live music, circus, theatre, and humanities.
The next Target Ship Radio show will be on Sunday, Aug. 20 at 1-4 p.m. The live broadcast can be heard on 92.1 FM Provincetown, and 91.3 FM Orleans, streaming on womr.org and beaming on the free WOMR app.
Connecting kids with heart disease and horses
At Windrush Farm
Edited from a New England Council report (newenglandcouncil.com)
“Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), in its treatment of patients with complex congenital heart disease, is connecting young children with horses to bolster their emotional and physical strength. The New England Council member has seen success with the unique program.
“Since 2017, BCH has partnered with Windrush Farm, in North Andover, Mass., to offer equine-assisted therapy to patients. The children have the opportunity to bond with and ride a horse, receiving the fulfillment of accomplishment. Additionally, patients receive many physical benefits, as riding trains their balance, strength, and flexibility. For these children who have battled with this disease since birth, there is great value in experiencing the confidence, assertiveness, and collaboration required in riding horses. Furthermore, the animals offer an emotional outlet, where patients can release the anxiety and stress that develops after a childhood affected by the disease.
“‘For kids who haven’t felt successful in much of their lives, this helps them build independence, confidence, and self-esteem,’ said Kate Ullman-Shade, the director of education for the cardiac neuro-developmental program at BCH. ‘I’ve had kids say to me, ‘I’m so proud of myself.’”’
Immigrant artists
“Heroic Harvest” (archival pigment print with hand-sewn embroidery), by Boston-based photographer Astrid Reishwitz, in the group show “There Are No Strangers,’’ at Hera Gallery, Wakefield, R.I., through Sept.
— Photo courtesy Hera Gallery.
The gallery says the show features “the work of 11 artists who were born outside of the United States: Anthony Abu, Nenée Angulo, Joseph Mushipi, Zuly Palomino, Julio Berroa, Agustina Markez, Becky Behar, Astrid Reischwitz, Mari Claudia Garcia, Edward Vasquez and Fritz Eichenberg. With this exhibition, which is based in part on an essay written by Thomas Merton, Hera Gallery acknowledges that, except those of us who are Native People, all of us are immigrants and that this nation was built by immigrants.’’
David Warsh: Of economics ideas and the power of big business to shape policies
Theater lobby card for the American short comedy film Big Business (1924)
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Nami Oreskes and Erik Conway, was a hard-hitting history in 2010 that catapulted its authors to fame – Oreskes all the way to Harvard University; Conway remained at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech.
Their new book – The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (Bloomsbury, 2023) – the authors describe as a prequel. In identifying the doubters, it exhibits the same strengths as before. It displays greater weaknesses in establishing the various truths of the matter. It is, however, a page-turner, a powerful narrative, especially if you are already feeling a little paranoid and looking for a good long summer read.
It’s all true, at least as far as it goes. Those three powerful intellects – Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises – started with unpopular arguments and won big. From the National Electric Light Association and the Liberty League in the Twenties and Thirties, the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce in the Fifties and Sixties, to the Federalist Society and the Club for Growth of today, business interests have been spending money and working behind the scenes to boost enthusiasm for markets and to undermine faith in government initiative.
To tell their gripping story of ideas and money, Oreskes and Conway rely on much work done before. Pioneers in this literature include Johan Van Overveldt (The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers who Revolutionized Economics and Business, 2007); Steven Teles (The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law); 2008); Kim Phillips-Fein, (Invisible Hands: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, 2009); Jennifer Burns (Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, 2009); Phillip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (The Road to Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, 2009); Daniel Rodgers (Age of Fracture, 2011); Nicholas Wapshott (Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics, 2011); Angus Burgin (The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression, 2012); Daniel Stedman Jones (Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, 2012); Robert Van Horn, Phillip Mirowski and Thomas Stapleford, (Building Chicago Economics: New Perspectives on the History of America’s Most Powerful Economics Program, 2011); Avner Offer, and Gabriel Söderberg (The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn, 2016); Lawrence Glickman (Free Enterprise: An American History, 2019); Binyamin Appelbaum (The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society) 2019); Jennifer Delton (The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism, 2020); and Kurt Andersen (Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America a Recent History, 2020). Biographies of Robert Bartley and Roger Ailes remain to be written.
So about those weaknesses? They boil down to this: In The Big Myth you seldom get the other side of the story. Take a fundamental example. Oreskes and Conway assert that “the claim that America was founded on three basic interdependent principles: representative democracy, political freedom, and free enterprise,” cooked up in the Thirties by the National Association of Manufactures for an advertising campaign. This so-called called “Tripod of Freedom” was “fabricated,” Oreskes and Conway maintain; the words free enterprise appear nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, they declare. That stipulation amounts to a curious “blind spot,” Harvard historian Luke Menand observed in a lengthy review in The New Yorker. There are mentions of property, though, writes Menand, “and almost every challenge to government interference in the economy rests on the concept of property.” See Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton, 2022), by Glory Liu, for elaboration.
Similarly, the previous Big Myth with which the market fundamentalists and the business allies were contending received little attention. As the industrial revolution gathered pace in the late 19th Century, progressives in the United States preached a gospel of government regulation. Germany’s success in nearly winning World War I received widespread attention. Britain emerged from World War II with a much more socialized economy than before. And in the U.S., government planning was espoused by such intellectuals as James Burnham and Karl Mannheim as the wave of the future.
Finally, The Big Myth largely ignores the experiences of ordinary Americans in the years that it covers. For all the fury that Big Coal mounted against the Tennessee Valley Authority, its dams were built, nevertheless. There is only a single fleeting mention of George Orwell, though his novels Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) probably influenced far more people than Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Paul Samuelson’s textbook explanation of the workings of “the modern mixed economy” dominated Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom tract for forty years and probably still does.
Yet there can be no doubt that there was a disjunction. Oreskes and Conway mention that in the ‘70’s conservative historian George Nash considered that nothing that could be described as a conservative movement in the mid-’40s, that libertarians were a “forlorn minority.” President Harry Truman was reelected in 1948, and Dwight Eisenhower, a moderate Republican, served for eight years after him. Suddenly. in 1964, Republicans nominated libertarian Barry Goldwater. Then came Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
What happened? America’s Vietnam War, for one thing. Globalization for another. Massive migrations occurred in the US, Blacks and Hispanics to the North, businesses to the West and the low-cost South. Civil rights of all sorts revolutions unfolded, at all points of the compass. The composition of Congress and the Supreme Court changed all the while.
In Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway were on sound ground when making claims about tobacco, acid rain, DDT, the hole in the atmosphere’s ozone layer and greenhouse-gas emissions. These were matters of science, an enterprise devoted to the pursuit of questions in which universal agreement among experts can reasonably hope to be obtained. It was sensible to challenge the reasoning of skeptics in these matters, and to probe the outsized backing they received from those with vested interests. The interpretation of a hundred years of American politics is not science; much of it is not even a topic for proper historians yet. Agreement is reached, if at all, through elections, and elections take time.
Again, take a small matter, the interpretation of “the Reagan Revolution.” Jimmy Carter started it, Oreskes and Conway maintain; Bill Clinton finished it via the “marketization” of the Internet, and most persons have suffered as a result. It is equally common to hear it proclaimed that Reagan presided over an agreement to repair the Social Security system for the next fifty years, ended the Cold War on peaceful terms, and, by accelerating industrial deregulation, ensured on American dominance in a new era of globalization.
In arguments of this sort, EP prefers Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming to Merchants of Doubt and Jacob Weisberg In Defense of Government: The Fall and Rise of Public Trust to The Big Myth. But I share Oreskes’ s and Conway’s concerns while searching for opportunities to build more consensus. A century after today’s market fundamentalists began their long argument with Progressive Era enthusiasts for government planning, sunlight remains the best disinfectant.
David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this column originated.
'Engrossed with contrivances'
“Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin” (1931), by Rube Goldberg (1883-1970). Soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past toucan (E). Toucan jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and ignites lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K), which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M), allowing pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.
Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways.
“We are swallowed up in schemes for gain and engrossed with contrivances for bodily enjoyments, as if this particle of dust were immortal —- as if the soul needed no aliment, and the mind no raiment.’’
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet, translator and literature professor at Harvard. He was a native of Portland, Maine
Pinnacle of puppetry
”Turkey Gobbler Balloon, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1929,’’ by German-American artist Tony Sarg (1880-1942), in the show “Tony Sarg: Genius at Play,’’ at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., through Nov. 5
— Photographer unknown, from the collection of the Nantucket Historical Association
The museum says:
The show “is the first comprehensive exhibition exploring the life, art and adventures of Tony Sarg, the charismatic illustrator, animator, puppeteer, designer, entrepreneur and showman who is celebrated as the father of modern puppetry in North America. His vast knowledge of puppet technology was instrumental in his design of the inaugural Thanksgiving Day parade balloon for Macy’s Department Store, in 1927, as well as subsequent parade balloons and automated displays for the company’s festive holiday windows, which were imitated nationwide. The creator of a host of popular consumer goods, from toys and clothing to home décor, Sarg also envisioned fanciful illustrated maps and created mural designs for the Oasis Cafe in New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.’’
Sarg's “Nantucket Sea Serpent,’’ 1937.
— From the Nantucket Historical Association
The famed Austen Riggs Center, in Stockbridge, a mental hospital known for, among things, very quietly treating celebrities.
— Photo by Joe Mabel
Llewellyn King: Three huge bumps to buckle up for
The record-breaking temperatures that hit Europe in July contributed to an increase in the surface temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. This visualisation, based on Copernicus Marine Service models , shows the sea surface temperature anomaly for July 24, 2023. The data show an anomaly of up to +5.5° celsius along the coasts of Italy, Greece and North Africa.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The future has arrived. Those things we were warned about for decades are here. They are now palpable.
In the 1950 film All About Eve, aging actress Margo Channing, played by Bette Davis, warned at a party, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
For the world, it will get bumpy for the next decade and beyond as we adjust to three massive, disruptive realities: climate change, artificial intelligence and brutal competition among countries for raw materials for new, carbon-saving technologies like electric vehicles.
This summer, with its aberrant weather the world over, is a clear declaration that climate change is upon us. It is no longer hypothetical; it is here.
The process of living with it begins now.
This summer isn’t a template, it is the first manifestation, from wildfires in Hawaii to elevated temperatures in Argentina’s winter to heat in the Middle East that approaches the point after which life becomes impossible to sustain.
It isn’t all heat, either.
It is storms, deluging rain and previously unexperienced cold. David Naylor, who heads Rayburn Electric, near Dallas, told me what worries him, what keeps him awake at night, is the weather. The cold — new for Texas — is a significant challenge to keeping the lights on for his customers, he said. Weather has pushed out cybersecurity on the list of worries for many utility executives.
Climate change has also brought droughts. The mighty Zambezi River, in Africa, has run so low in recent years that there hasn’t been enough water for hydroelectric production from the Kariba Dam, which spans the river between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Power shortages and blackouts are now endemic.
Mass migration is another consequence of climate change.
Artificial intelligence will be a big disrupter, with some significant benefits. But for now, AI is a daisy chain of question marks.
What is known is that truth is endangered. Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at University of California at Berkeley and one of the leading authorities on AI, told me when I interviewed him on the PBS program White House Chronicle that the “language in, language out” professions are in danger. Lawyers and journalists had better watch out. Much of their work can be done by AI. Already in India, AI newscasters are interfacing with live reporters. In New York, a lawyer went into court with a case based on AI, down to citations. All of it was fiction.
The world is already awash in misinformation and “alternative facts,” as Kellyanne Conway famously declared in defending then-President Trump. Prepare for the era of fabrication where certifying facts will get harder and harder, and provable truths will be the new gold.
Finally, the materials essential in the recent technologies — those that will help us fight global warming — are pointed to be the cause of severe disruption and some ugly realpolitik.
Supplies of some vital materials are controlled by China. It has been relentlessly buying up the sources of rare earths and other minerals for decades in Africa and South America. Seventy percent of the lithium — essential for the batteries in mass electrification — is processed in China. Lithium deposits exist worldwide, from Zimbabwe to the United Kingdom, and from Chile to Australia, but the processing is centered in China.
Likewise, gallium, used for computer chips, and a whole array of precious metals are either sourced in China or processed there.
In dealing with this imbalance, it would be a mistake to think this new disruption is a reprise of the Cold War. It is quite otherwise. The Soviet Union sought to export ideology, which aroused fear in capitalist nations or those wanting a private sector to flourish. The Chinese are ambivalent about ideology outside of China but offer trade and investment on a global scale.
China has bought up much farming and most African mineral production. In South America — the new Aladdin’s cave of mineral wealth — China is buying up and financing.
Around the world, there is a reluctance about choosing sides; jobs and money talk.
The Economist points out that attempts to curb Chinese dominance in critical-materials processing and manufacturing aren’t working because countries from Mexico to Vietnam are transshipping.
Bette Davis’s character might have suggested a shoulder harness and a seat belt.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Greetings, uninvited guests
Painting by Massachusetts artist James M. Coburn (1955 - 2012), at the New England Visionary Artists Museum, Northampton, Mass.
'Lonely, happy child'
Newly emerged adult cicada
— Photo by Ollllonate
“Parents open their shutters and call
the lonely, happy child home.
The child who hates silences talks and talks
of cicadas and the manes of horses.’’
— From “All Summer Long,’’ by Carol Frost (born 1948) in Lowell, Mass. She has taught at the Vermont Studio Center, in Johnson, Vt.