'Still and cool'

Nuthatch

‘‘….I come back to my dooryard,
to my own wooden step.

“The last red leaves fall to the ground
and frost has blackened the herbs and asters
that grew beside the porch. The air
is still and cool, and the withered grass
lies flat in the field. A nuthatch spirals
down the rough trunk of the tree.’’

— From “Back From the City,’’ by New Hampshire-based poet Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)

Place and experience

“Our Time Here Is Brief”(monotype with gold foil), by Lynn Brofsky, at the Boston Printmakers 2023 North American Print Biennial, through Dec. 9.

She says:

“As the years go by, my images and subjects shift, mediums and techniques change and grow; I have found that more than anything, the driving force in my work is the relationship between place and human experience.

“I grew up in Colorado, where family road trips from Denver took us out to areas of farmland, mesas, deserts and forgotten towns populated with skeletal relics of industry. Embedded with ghosts of what they once were, their energy always spoke to me. This is what I come back to, our fragile existence, the way we relate, love, isolate and abandon ourselves and the places we live in.

“Moved by the sensuality of the human figure, asymmetry, architecture, landscape, growth and decay, and perceived connections, I attempt to relate my stories, my own narrative of contrasts.’’

Columbus Day in Victorian Salem

Columbus Day in 1892 at the John Tucker Daland House, in Salem, Mass., long before Native Americans and sympathizers were well organized to educate the general public on how Western Hemisphere indigenous people suffered in many ways in centuries of European colonialization started by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. 1892 was before the bulk of Italian immigration to America. Italian-Americans were naturally big fans of the holiday, but it didn’t become an official federal holiday until 1971. Southern New England, of course, drew large numbers of Italian immigrants.

The Daland House, an imposing, Italianate structure designed by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant, is at 132 Essex St. in the Essex Institute Historic District and now owned by the fabulous Peabody Essex Museum as home for the Essex Institute.

The three-story brick house was originally built for John Tucker Daland, a prosperous merchant. The Dalands lived in the house until 1885, when the Essex Institute acquired it. It was then remodeled as offices by architect William Devereux Dennis (1847–1913) and in 1907 connected to the adjacent Plummer Hall (former home of the Salem Athenaeum).

Might be a bonanza

Kendall Square, Cambridge, as seen from across the Charles River in Boston.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The other week I noted how Greater Boston’s  universities and associated institutions  have been crucial in enriching the region. We had another example  of their ability to spark profitable business ventures with news that the Feds are setting up an “investor catalyst” center at Kendall Square, in Cambridge. Its neighbors, of course, include Harvard and MIT. Kendall Square has become something like the world’s bio-tech capital.

The center will use basic-research findings about such tough diseases as cancers and dementias to create new technologies,  medicines  and devices, and get them in the market by working with entrepreneurs and financial organizations.

This center, part of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) will probably pump billions into the regional economy over coming years. Perhaps some Rhode Island institutions, especially Brown University and the University of Rhode Island, as well as Lifespan, Care New England and some Ocean State bio-tech businesses – established and startups -- can glom on to some of this activity.

The Worcester area will benefit — e.g., University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center, in Worcester — as will institutions farther away, such as Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Labanon, N.H., and Maine Medical Center, in Portland.

They want to know why you were out late

Work by New Hampshire-basedfartist Tim Campbell at the Hannah Grimes Art Center, Keene, N.H.

Barbara Gibbs wrote in the Laconia (N.H.) Daily Sun:

“Tim Campbell identifies with the term of outsider art, which was coined by an art critic in 1972 as an English synonym for ‘art brut’– French, meaning raw art or rough art. The critic, Roger Cardinal, used this term to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture. The term outsider art is often applied more broadly to include self-taught or naïve art makers. Campbell's work reflects his sharp sense of humor, and interest in primitive folk art as well as contemporary political and religious imagery.’’

1907 postcard from when Keene was an important manufacturing town. Now it has mostly a service economy, including Keene State College and Antioch University New England.

'The ‘landscape’ of my mind'

“Hairy Hare” (zinc etching and mixed media), by Dan Weldon, in his show “Dan Weldon: Solo 100, Oct, 21-Jan. 14, at Mitchell- Giddings Fine Arts, Brattleboro, Vt.

He says:

“I am an experimenter, explorer and a seeker of beauty. When I set out to work, there is no image in mind, but the vision unfolds as the work evolves. It usually begins with simple forms and marks with broad areas. It then becomes more refined and delicate and knits itself together through line.

”I am a process person, interested in employing materials and techniques to the ‘landscape’ of my mind. My drawings, paintings and prints evolve from the idea of linear pathways echoing from the tracks of animals in nature, fissures in rock palisades and the patterns created by my hands becoming ‘playful’ with my tools.  

Learning to read a printing plate before inking, is like sensing the log before wielding the axe. So goes my act of creativity, being aware of what resonates in front of me and responding with marks, colors and textures. ‘‘

Downtown Brattleboro, as seen from a walking trail just across the Connecticut River, in New Hampshire, with the Green Mountains in the distance. There are many miles of scenic trails in and around the town, which has long been known as a arts center.

Chris Powell: Government underwrites lethal child-neglect culture

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Why did a 2-year-old boy fall to his death through a window of his third-floor apartment in Hartford in July?

A long report by the Connecticut Mirror the other day attempted to answer that question. It attributed the boy's death to "generational poverty" and, more so, to government's failure to make sure that the boy's mother had everything she needed to raise her five children, all under 13, on her own, since the children's father or fathers were not providers. 

If only, the report lamented, government had given the woman free day care and longer classes about parenting and had applied current housing code standards to the family's apartment building, which was exempt because of its age.

Well, maybe. 

But the report did not address the most compelling issue as it strove to acquit the woman of the manslaughter and risk-of-injury charges she faces for having left her children unattended in squalor as she went to work as a part-time taxi driver, purportedly expecting the 2-year-old's father to arrive soon to watch the children. It could not have been surprising that he was fatally late.

That is, how does a woman of limited education and job skills who can't support herself come to have five children but no husband or other committed helpmate in the state that gave rise to the constitutional right to contraception and sometimes seems to consider abortion the highest social good?

One pregnancy may be an accident. Five are not. Five children born to someone unprepared to support them is irresponsibility, though political correctness forbids any such acknowledgment.

xxx

But the Mirror report inadvertently hinted at an explanation.

First, the report said, the woman always wanted to be a mother. Of course, many people want to be parents, but some still know that parenthood imposes obligations of preparedness.

Second, and perhaps crucially, the report elaborated: "When she was in high school, she moved in with an older man. Her family sent her to Connecticut after graduation to get her away from him, but she had little beyond the clothes on her back when she moved. She lived in a homeless shelter for several months and rang the Salvation Army bell at Christmas to earn money to pay the security deposit for her first apartment. When she got pregnant with her first daughter, she qualified for a housing choice voucher. ...

“She paid $469 per month for the apartment, and her housing choice voucher covered the rest of the $1,550 rent.”

Of course in addition to that heavily subsidized housing there would be free medical insurance and food and other benefits. So who needs to be prepared, competent, self-supporting, and responsible and have a committed spouse when government will lavish money on irresponsibility that holds children hostage?

And so the disastrous cycle began again -- four more children without a spouse, more dependence on government, more child neglect, mental illness for one of the children, and the horrible death of the 2-year-old boy, following constant problems that prompted frequent visits by social workers from the state Department of Children and Families, on which Connecticut spends more than $800 million each year to minister to thousands of similarly dysfunctional households with similarly neglected children, without ever establishing as a matter of policy that this is no way to live since it imposes a catastrophic burden on both the children held hostage and society.

xxx

Few children monitored by DCF fall out of third-story windows, but some die after ingesting narcotics left within their reach, others suffer serious injuries at the hands of their reckless custodians, and many come to school far behind in social development or with learning disabilities and behavioral problems. The $800 million spent annually by DCF is only part of the cost of this lifestyle, a cost that extends to schools, courts, and prisons.

That is, what is called the child-protection system pays for and thus rationalizes, institutionalizes, and encourages child neglect.

While the poor may be demoralized, like everyone else they respond to financial incentives. They are not stupid. But government can be, and journalism doesn't always make it smarter.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).

‘Beauty of impermanence’

Work by North Adams-based artist Tom Schneider in his show “Ecstatic Gates,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, through Oct. 29.

The gallery says:

“Tom Schneider’s current series, ‘Ecstatic Gates,’ is a collection of 13 wall sculptures. Each piece is a miniature shrine or chapel and expresses the ethereal duality of the eternal and finite. 

“Inspired by the beauty of impermanence, each piece incorporates bones, natural fibers, and decaying wood grains. The shimmer of gold peeking through the doors offers the suggestion of what lies beyond our world.

“Schneider’s sculptures are influenced by the elegant lines of Asian architecture and the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. They thereby honor imperfection, transience, the rawness of the natural world, and the beauty found in small and humble things.’

The Hoosic River runs through North Adams and was essential to its growth, providing power for the mills that were built along its banks as well as those of its branches. Many artists can be found in surviving mill buildings today.

The Norad Mill, in North Adams. The woolen factory was built in 1863 in an Italianate style and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

— Photo by Beyond My Ken

Susan Jaffe: Feds rein in Medical Advantage predictive software

From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News

Judith Sullivan was recovering from major surgery at a Connecticut nursing home in March when she got surprising news from her Medicare Advantage plan: It would no longer pay for her care because she was well enough to go home.

At the time, she could not walk more than a few feet, even with assistance — let alone manage the stairs to her front door, she said. She still needed help using a colostomy bag following major surgery.

“How could they make a decision like that without ever coming and seeing me?” said Sullivan, 76. “I still couldn’t walk without one physical therapist behind me and another next to me. Were they all coming home with me?”

UnitedHealthcare — the nation’s largest health-insurance company, which provides Sullivan’s Medicare Advantage plan — doesn’t have a crystal ball. It does have naviHealth, a care-management company bought by UHC’s sister company, Optum, in 2020. Both are part of UnitedHealth Group. NaviHealth analyzes data to help UHC and other insurance companies make coverage decisions.

Its proprietary “nH Predict” tool sifts through millions of medical records to match patients with similar diagnoses and characteristics, including age, preexisting health conditions, and other factors. Based on these comparisons, an algorithm anticipates what kind of care a specific patient will need and for how long.

But patients, providers, and patient advocates in several states said they have noticed a suspicious coincidence: The tool often predicts a patient’s date of discharge, which coincides with the date their insurer cuts off coverage, even if the patient needs further treatment that government-run Medicare would provide.

“When an algorithm does not fully consider a patient’s needs, there’s a glaring mismatch,” said Rajeev Kumar, a physician and the president-elect of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents long-term care practitioners. “That’s where human intervention comes in.”

The federal government will try to even the playing field next year, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services begins restricting how Medicare Advantage plans use predictive technology tools to make some coverage decisions.

Medicare Advantage plans, an alternative to the government-run, original Medicare program, are operated by private insurance companies. About half the people eligible for full Medicare benefits are enrolled in the private plans, attracted by their lower costs and enhanced benefits like dental care, hearing aids, and a host of nonmedical extras like transportation and home-delivered meals.

Insurers receive a monthly payment from the federal government for each enrollee, regardless of how much care they need. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general, this arrangement raises “the potential incentive for insurers to deny access to services and payment in an attempt to increase profits.” Nursing home care has been among the most frequently denied services by the private plans — something original Medicare likely would cover, investigators found.

After UHC cut off her nursing home coverage, Sullivan’s medical team agreed with her that she wasn’t ready to go home and provided an additional 18 days of treatment. Her bill came to $10,406.36.

Beyond her mobility problems, “she also had a surgical wound that needed daily dressing changes” when UHC stopped paying for her nursing home care, said Debra Samorajczyk, a registered nurse and the administrator at the Bishop Wicke Health and Rehabilitation Center, in Shelton, Conn., the facility that treated Sullivan.

Sullivan’s coverage denial notice and nH Predict report did not mention wound care or her inability to climb stairs. Original Medicare would have most likely covered her continued care, said Samorajczyk.

Sullivan appealed twice but lost. Her next appeal was heard by an administrative law judge, who holds a courtroom-style hearing usually by phone or video link, in which all sides can provide testimony. UHC declined to send a representative, but the judge nonetheless sided with the company. Sullivan is considering whether to appeal to the next level, the Medicare Appeals Council, and the last step before the case can be heard in federal court.

Sullivan’s experience is not unique. In February, Ken Drost’s Medicare Advantage plan, provided by Security Health Plan of Wisconsin, wanted to cut his coverage at a Wisconsin nursing home after 16 days, the same number of days naviHealth predicted was necessary. But Drost, 87, who was recovering from hip surgery, needed help getting out of bed and walking. He stayed at the nursing home for an additional week, at a cost of $2,624.

After he appealed twice and lost, his hearing on his third appeal was about to begin when his insurer agreed to pay his bill, said his lawyer, Christine Huberty, supervising attorney at the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources Elder Law & Advocacy Center in Madison.

“Advantage plans routinely cut patients’ stays short in nursing homes,” she said, including Humana, Aetna, Security Health Plan, and UnitedHealthcare. “In all cases, we see their treating medical providers disagree with the denials.”

UnitedHealthcare and naviHealth declined requests for interviews and did not answer detailed questions about why Sullivan’s nursing home coverage was cut short over the objections of her medical team.

Aaron Albright, a naviHealth spokesperson, said in a statement that the nH Predict algorithm is not used to make coverage decisions and instead is intended “to help the member and facility develop personalized post-acute care discharge planning.” Length-of-stay predictions “are estimates only.”

However, naviHealth’s website boasts about saving plans money by restricting care. The company’s “predictive technology and decision support platform” ensures that “patients can enjoy more days at home, and healthcare providers and health plans can significantly reduce costs specific to unnecessary care and readmissions.”

New federal rules for Medicare Advantage plans beginning in January will rein in their use of algorithms in coverage decisions. Insurance companies using such tools will be expected to “ensure that they are making medical necessity determinations based on the circumstances of the specific individual,” the requirements say, “as opposed to using an algorithm or software that doesn’t account for an individual’s circumstances.”

The CMS-required notices nursing home residents receive now when a plan cuts short their coverage can be oddly similar while lacking details about a particular resident. Sullivan’s notice from UHC contains some identical text to the one Drost received from his Wisconsin plan. Both say, for example, that the plan’s medical director reviewed their cases, without providing the director’s name or medical specialty. Both omit any mention of their health conditions that make managing at home difficult, if not impossible.

The tools must still follow Medicare coverage criteria and cannot deny benefits that original Medicare covers. If insurers believe the criteria are too vague, plans can base algorithms on their own criteria, as long as they disclose the medical evidence supporting the algorithms.

And before denying coverage considered not medically necessary, another change requires that a coverage denial “must be reviewed by a physician or other appropriate health care professional with expertise in the field of medicine or health care that is appropriate for the service at issue.”

Jennifer Kochiss, a social worker at Bishop Wicke who helps residents file insurance appeals, said patients and providers have no say in whether the doctor reviewing a case has experience with the client’s diagnosis. The new requirement will close “a big hole,” she said.

The leading MA plans oppose the changes in comments submitted to CMS. Tim Noel, UHC’s CEO for Medicare and retirement, said MA plans’ ability to manage beneficiaries’ care is necessary “to ensure access to high-quality safe care and maintain high member satisfaction while appropriately managing costs.”

Restricting “utilization management tools would markedly deviate from Congress’ intent in creating Medicare managed care because they substantially limit MA plans’ ability to actually manage care,” he said.

In a statement, UHC spokesperson Heather Soule said the company’s current practices are “consistent” with the new rules. “Medical directors or other appropriate clinical personnel, not technology tools, make all final adverse medical necessity determinations” before coverage is denied or cut short. However, these medical professionals work for UHC and usually do not examine patients. Other insurance companies follow the same practice.

David Lipschutz, associate director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, is concerned about how CMS will enforce the rules since it doesn’t mention specific penalties for violations.

CMS’ deputy administrator and director of the Medicare program, Meena Seshamani, said that the agency will conduct audits to verify compliance with the new requirements, and “will consider issuing an enforcement action, such as a civil money penalty or an enrollment suspension, for the non-compliance.”

Although Sullivan stayed at Bishop Wicke after UHC stopped paying, she said another resident went home when her MA plan wouldn’t pay anymore. After two days at home, the woman fell, and an ambulance took her to the hospital, Sullivan said. “She was back in the nursing home again because they put her out before she was ready.”

Susan Jaffe is Kaiser Family Foundation reporter.

Llewellyn King: Artificial intelligence and climate change are making 2023 a scary and seminal year

Global surface temperature reconstruction over the last 2000 years using proxy data from tree rings, corals and ice cores in blue. Directly observed data is in red.

The iCub robot at the Genoa science festival in 2009

— Photo by Lorenzo Natale

His job is probably secure.

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

This is a seminal year, meaning nothing will be the same again.

This is the year when two monumentally new forces began to shape the way we live, where we reside and the work we do. Think of the invention of the printing press around 1443 and the perfection of the steam engine in about 1776.

These forces have been coming for a while, they haven’t evolved in secret. But this was the year they burst into our consciousness and began affecting our lives.

The twin agents of transformation are climate change and artificial intelligence. They can’t be denied. They will be felt and they will bring about transformative change.

Climate change was felt this year. In Texas and across the Southwest, temperatures of well over 100 degrees persisted for more than three months. Phoenix had temperatures of 110  degrees or above for 31 days.

On a recent visit to Austin, an exhausted Uber driver told me that the heat had upended her life; it made entering her car and keeping it cool a challenge. Her car’s air conditioner was taxed with more heat than it could handle. Her family had to stay indoors, and their electric bill surged.

The electric utilities came through heroically without any major  blackouts, but it was a close thing.

David Naylor, president of Rayburn Electric, a cooperative association providing power to four distribution companies bordering Dallas, told me, “Summer 2023 presented a few unique challenges with so many days about 105 degrees. While Texas is accustomed to hot summers, there is an impactful difference between 100 degrees and 105.”

Rayburn ran flat out, including its recently purchased natural gas-fired station. It issued a “hands-off” order which, Naylor said, meant that “facilities were left essentially alone unless absolutely necessary.”

It was the same for electric utilities across the country. Every plant that could be pressed into service was and was left to run without normal maintenance, which would involve taking it offline.

Water is a parallel problem to heat.

We have overused groundwater and depleted aquifers. In some regions, salt water is seeping into the soil, rendering agriculture impossible.

That is occurring in Florida and Louisiana. Some of the salt water intrusion is the result of higher sea levels and some of it is the voracious way aquifers have been pumped out during long periods of heat and low rainfall.

Most of the West and Florida face the aquifer problem, but in coastal communities it can be a crisis — irreversible damage to the land.

Heat and drought will cause many to leave their homes, especially in Africa, but also in South and Central America, adding to the millions of migrants on the move around the world.

AI is one of history’s two-edged swords. On the positive side, it is a gift to research and especially in life sciences, which could deliver life expectancy north of 120 years.

But AI will be a powerful disruptor elsewhere, from national defense to intellectual property and, of course, to employment. Large numbers of jobs, for example, in call centers, at fast-food restaurant counters, and check-in desks at hotels and airports will be taken over by AI.

Think about this: You go to the airport and talk to a receptor (likely to be a simple microphone-type of gadget on the already ubiquitous kiosks) while staring at a display screen, giving you details of your seat, your flight — and its expected delays.

Out of sight in the control tower, although it might not be a tower, AI moves airplanes along the ground, and clears them to take off and land — eventually it will fly the plane, if the public accepts that.

No check-in crew, no air-traffic controllers and, most likely, the baggage will be handled by AI-controlled robots.

Aviation is much closer to AI automation than people realize. But that isn’t all. You may get to the airport in a driverless Lyft or Uber car and the only human beings you will see are your fellow passengers.

All that adds up to the disappearance of a huge number of jobs, estimated by Goldman Sachs to be as many as 300 million full-time jobs worldwide. Eventually, in a re-ordered economy, new jobs will appear and the crisis will pass.

The most secure employment might be for those in skilled trades — people who fix things — such people as plumbers, mechanics and electricians. And, oh yes, those who fix and install computers. They might well emerge as a new aristocracy.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

‘Somatic responses’

Selections from Maggie Nowinski’s show “Cicatrix/In Bloom,’’ at Tremaine Art Gallery, at the Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Conn., through Oct. 15

Maggie Nowinski is a Massachusetts-based multi-modal artist, teaching artist and curator Maggie Nowinski.

The gallery says: “Through her work, Nowinski ‘explores somatic responses to environment, internal and external passageways, and collected disturbances through imagined specimen drawings that depict abject human-botanical entities’ with line drawings, prints, found objects and sound.’’

The Litchfield Hills and Lake Wononscopomuc, as seen from the grounds of the Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Conn.

Sam Pizzigati: Time for a general strike at hyper-rapacious Dollar General

— Photo by Mike Kalasnik

Dollar General headquarters, in Goodlettsville, Tenn.

Via OtherWords.org

BOSTON

President Biden recently walked a picket line in solidarity with striking auto workers. An amazing sight.

What could he do for an encore? He could stand before another major American corporation — Dollar General — holding a simple two-word placard saying “For Shame.”

Thanks to United Auto Workers members and the attention their strike has attracted, Americans now know a bit about the pressures that auto workers face. As a nation, unfortunately, we know next to nothing about life for Dollar General workers.

With more outlets than Walmart and Wendy’s combined, Dollar General has become “America’s most ubiquitous retailer,” Bloomberg reported recently, and may now be the “worst” retail employer in the country.

Bloomberg sums up Dollar General’s corporate ethos this way: “Build as many stores as possible, pack them with tons of stuff while using as little warehouse space as possible, and spend as little as possible on everything else.”

That means spending as little as possible on basic store upkeep.

Businessweek investigators have “found expired products on Dollar General shelves,” from chicken soup in Louisiana to doughnuts in Illinois. In one Oklahoma store, birds nested in the ceiling and pooped down on the merchandise.

And as little as possible on safety.

Government inspectors have reported “fire extinguishers blocked by boxes” and “shaky, leaning towers of product” as high as nine feet tall. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration last year tagged Dollar General a “severe violator” of federal workplace-safety law.

And, of course, Dollar General spends as little as possible on wages and workers.

One of every four Dollar General employees makes less than $10 an hour. Over half make under $12. Meanwhile entire stores go hours every day with only one employee responsible for an average of 7,500 square feet of retail space.

This brutal approach has paid off handsomely for investors and executives. Dollar General’s stock price has quintupled since 2009. And the company reports that its CEO, who hauls in $16.6 million a year, makes 935 more than a “median” Dollar General employee.

Officially, the typical Dollar General worker makes just $17,773 a year. But even that measly figure may be an overstatement.

Researcher Rosanna Weaver reports that the company recently changed its median-pay calculations by “annualizing” the wages of permanent employees who didn’t work a full year. Meanwhile, Dollar General actually understates CEO pay. The company’s executive compensation can run much higher than first reported once executives actually cash out their stock.

One example: After cashing out on a huge chunk of his stock awards, former CEO Todd Vlasos actually made nearly 4,500 times the annual pay of his 163,000 employees. He essentially made more in a single weekday — $328,000 — than his median employee could earn in 18 years.

All this “success” for Dollar General executives rests on a half-century of ever-greater American inequality. For two generations now, a shrinking share of U.S. income and wealth has gone into the pockets of America’s working families.

Thanks to this shrinking share, tens of millions of American families today couldn’t get by without the “bargain-basement” prices that dollar stores like Dollar General offer — at the expense of their customers’ health and safety and the economic security of their workers.

Moreover, that discounted food — often sold in “food-deprived areas” — comes highly processed, offers little in the way of nutritional value, and sits packaged within toxic, chemical-laden wrappings.

“Dollar General’s practices have an immense impact on communities across the country,” note advocacy attorneys Sara Imperiale and Margaret Brown, “especially communities of color and low-income communities.”

The U.S. economy isn’t delivering for American families — and that failure is delivering for corporate investors and executives. You’ll never find them doing their weekly food shopping at Dollar General.

How about a general strike against Dollar General?

Sam Pizzigati, based in Boston, co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. His books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win.

The soothing properties of water

“Pond Reflections,’’ by Susan Bailey, in the fall group show at Arts3Gallery, Manchester, N.H. She says: “Yes! I am often asked how I can paint realistic still lifes at the same time as abstracted landscapes”.

Seal of Manchester, N.H. Note the references to the city’s role as one of America’s first great industrial centers.

Lunching with The Prince

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The recent death  at 75 of Gennaro Castellano, former captain of  downtown Providence’s well known Capriccio restaurant, brought back cinematic memories of a few lunches I had there  with Vincent “Buddy” Cianci in his heyday as mayor and “Prince of Providence’’  in the ’90’s. The lunches were very long, and he wasn’t averse to drinking stuff stronger than water during them. Considering that Cianci allegedly had a good-sized city to run, he seemed in no hurry to get back to work even as we approached 3 p.m. Indeed, it was I who became increasingly anxious to get back to my job running The Providence Journal’s commentary pages, with its not very forgiving deadlines. 

Buddy would say as I kept looking at my watch: “Relax! Nice place, eh?”  

The waiters were very able, if obsequious, as if they feared the mayor, with his semi-mobster persona. They probably had good reason to. 

 Of course, being mayor of a good-sized city has always involved various degrees of show business. Consider besides Buddy, such flamboyant examples as New York Mayors Jimmy Walker and Fiorello LaGuardia (see the musical Fiorello!) and Boston Mayor James Michael Curley (read the novel The Last Hurrah).

‘Tis only a mirage’

“But this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 'tis mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who ever could clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone; 'tis only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence.’’

— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882), American essayist, poet, philosopher and a leader of the cultural luminaries based in Concord, Mass.

Hard work

“Soledad/Solitude” (Indiana limestone), by Boston-based sculptor Nora Valdez, in the show “Rock Solid XXIII,’’ at Studio Place Arts, Barre, Vt. (“Granite Capital of the world”).

— Photo courtesy of Studio Place Arts

Studio Place’s exhibition features the work of 20 New England artists who have created a variety of stone artwork and assemblages. Each work highlights the unique qualities of stone as a medium.

The Barre World War 1 Memorial, "Youth Triumphant", by C. Paul Jennewein, one of the many local granite sculptures.

A beautiful exit

Near the mouth of the Goose River, at Rockport Harbor, Maine.

LittleT889

Autumn in Maine’s Hundred-Mile Wilderness

— Photo by Andythrasher

The blood of maples on the autumn sky,
And dead leaves drifting, drifting to the sea:
Now, to the year Time makes his old reply,
Nothing on earth shall live immortally.
The burst of glory on a dying face,
Of one who sees beyond, some haven far,
Lit with the spring-light of another place
And silver winds blown from another star.
Now beauty burns in gold on every hill
And changes not her warm imperial way:
There is no sadness here, whate'er men say—
Beauty departing is yet beauty still.

‘‘October on a Maine River,’’ by Kenneth Slade Alling

'Portraits' of 'witches'

Installation view of Barbara Broughel’s show ‘‘Requiem,’’ at the Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston, through Oct. 14.

The gallery explains:

“Barbara Broughel’s ‘Requiem’ portraits consists of brooms and other modest household objects of early American design, each one a ‘portrait’ of a person accused, convicted, and/or executed as a ‘witch’ in 17th Century America. Based on court transcripts, each ‘portrait’ is reconstructed from elements detailing the victim’s life and the ‘spectral evidence’ (whereby an ill-fated event was considered to be caused indirectly through the supernatural powers of a person not present) used to convict them.’’

Salem wasn’t the only place in New England with murderous persecutions. Consider this.

Enough to start working on a canoe?

Painting by Elaine Farmer, the Amherst, N.H., based painter who owns White Birch Fine Art.

Birchbark canoe at Abbe Museum, in Bar Harbor, Maine

— Photo by Billy Hathorn

At the Amherst, N.H., common, with the sort of Civil War statute you see in so many New England towns.

Chris Powell: Misappropriating flagpoles for proselytizing

The “Christian flag’’ at issue

A “Rainbow” or “Pride’’ flag promoting LGBT interests

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Misappropriation of government flagpoles for political purposes continues in Connecticut. Torrington Mayor Elinor C. Carbone has approved a request to fly a Christian flag at City Hall for two weeks. It's part of a national campaign to urge people to go to church, particularly Christian churches.

This has commandeered the government for religious proselytizing, the sort of thing done in medievally totalitarian countries. 

Of course, most recent flag controversies in Connecticut have involved commandeering the government to celebrate certain sexual orientations, as if sexual orientation isn't as much a personal matter as religion and as if Connecticut law doesn't already guarantee freedom of sexual orientation as well as religion.

Such use of government flagpoles is said to advance "inclusiveness" but it is actually divisive. Not everyone is Christian and no one needs to be told by government to go to church. Such an intrusion into personal matters is offensive. 

As for the sexual-orientation flags -- “pride” flags -- their advocacy extends far beyond equal rights. They are construed to support transgenderism and the overthrow of gender privacy in bathrooms and equal opportunity for women in competitive sports. Most people oppose those things. 

Additionally, as Torrington and many other municipal governments should know, courts have ruled that if government allows outside groups to use its flagpoles, it may not discriminate. If a government grants one request, it must grant all requests, as any refusal is unconstitutional censorship. This is how manger displays on town greens and public parks at Christmastime have compelled acceptance of atheist displays.

What will happen when someone wants to fly a Ku Klux Klan or a Nazi flag at City Hall, or flags advertising car dealers, supermarkets, or political candidates? The Trump 2024 flags are ready to go.

The only flags that can be "inclusive" on government flagpoles are government's own -- flags that fly for everybody.

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Also being misappropriated in Connecticut are the electricity rates charged by utility companies.

At the direction of the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, the state's two major electricity distributors -- Eversource and United Illuminating -- are offering discounts to poor customers who are receiving financial support from state government like Medicaid insurance and food subsidies. 

Norwich Public Utilities, the electric company owned by that city, is considering its own program of discounted rates for poor customers, the discounts to be determined according to household size and income.

Such discounts will be financed by customers who don't get discounts. 

The intent here isn't necessarily objectionable but the method is. For these discounts will be public welfare expenses and as such they should be borne plainly through general taxation, not hidden in the bills of other electricity customers.

Already 15 to 20 percent of the charges to electricity customers in Connecticut arise not from the cost of providing electric power but from various social programs and policies state government has decided to finance through electricity bills so resentment will fall on the utility companies rather than elected officials. Connecticut faces nearly the highest electricity costs in the country in large part because state government hides so much of its own costs in electricity bills.

This doesn't mean that electric utilities shouldn't economize. It means that elected officials are grossly hypocritical when they accuse the utilities of overcharging even as state government does more overcharging for electricity than the utility companies do.

PICKLEBALL TAKES PRIORITY: Amid brazen crime and worsening poverty, mental illness, drug addiction and homelessness, Connecticut seems to be falling apart, as does the country itself. But last week Gov. Ned Lamont took a break from those problems to help open the four new pickleball courts in Glastonbury.

The courts were financed with state and federal money, as well as municipal money. Glastonbury, prosperous and well-insulated from social problems by its zoning regulations, could have covered the whole cost itself, without state and federal aid, if the courts were really essential to the town's well-being. But setting humane and sensible priorities in government can be such a drag.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)