‘Games of remembering’
“Goose, Fruit, Awning, Arm” (detail) (oil, marble dust and wax on linen over panel), by Mariel Capanna, in her show “Giornata,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., through Jan. 25.
— Courtesy of the artist and Adams and Ollman
— Photo by Constance Mensh
The museum says:
“Mariel Capanna (b. 1988, Philadelphia, where she lives and works) plays what she calls ‘games of remembering’ as a way of reckoning with loss. Working from home videos and family slideshows, whose runtime is her constraint, the artist races to record fleeting memory images in oil paint. She scatters these flat, pastel forms like confetti across deep, atmospheric surfaces, creating compositions that are at once jubilant and wistful.’’
A now heavily politicized HHS has been turned into publicity orgy for medical crank Kennedy
“Narcissus,’’ by Caravaggio (1571-1610).
By Darius Tahir
Via Kaiser Family Foundation Health News (except for picture above).
As health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wields one of the louder megaphones the federal government has. Yet he insists he doesn’t want to impose his opinions on Americans.
“I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me,” Kennedy told a Democratic congressman in May.
Kennedy once expressed different views — for example, about the need to proselytize about exercise. As he said on a podcast, he wants to use the “bully pulpit” to “obliterate the delicacy” with which Americans discuss fitness and explain that “suffering” is virtuous.
“We need to establish an ethic that you’re not a good parent unless your kids are doing some kind of physical activity,” Kennedy told the podcaster in September 2024.
The Department of Health and Human Services is tasked with communicating information to protect and improve the health and well-being of every American. It provides reminders about vaccinations and screenings; alerts about which food is unsafe; and useful, everyday tips about subjects such as sunscreen and, yes, exercise.
Under Kennedy’s watch, though, HHS has compromised once-fruitful campaigns promoting immunizations and other preventive health measures. On Instagram, the agency often emphasizes Kennedy’s personal causes, his pet projects, or even the secretary himself. Former agency employees say communications have a more political edge, with “Make America Healthy Again” frequently featured in press releases.
Interviews with over 20 former and current agency employees provide a look inside a health department where personality and politics steer what is said to the public. KFF Health News granted many of these people anonymity because they fear retribution.
One sign of change is what is no longer, or soon will not be, amplified — for instance, acclaimed anti-smoking campaigns making a dent in one of Kennedy’s priorities, chronic disease.
Another sign is what gets celebrated. On the official HHS Instagram account this year, out were posts saluting Juneteenth and Father’s Day. In, under Kennedy, were posts marking President Donald Trump’s birthday and Hulk Hogan’s death.
Commenting on such changes, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email that “DEI is gone, thanks to the Trump administration.”
Some elected officials are pointedly not promoting Kennedy, a former heroin addict, as a source of health-care information. Regarding the secretary’s announcement citing unproven links between Tylenol and autism, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told MSNBC that, “if I were a woman, I’d be talking to my doctor and not taking, you know, advice from RFK or any other government bureaucrat, for that matter.” (Thune’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
At least four polls since January show trust in Kennedy as a medical adviser is low. In one poll, from The Economist and YouGov, barely over a quarter of respondents said they trusted Kennedy “a lot” or “somewhat.”
The department’s online messaging looks “a lot more like propaganda than it does public health,” said Kevin Griffis, who worked in communications at the CDC under President Joe Biden and left the agency in March.
Transition to a New Administration
The new administration inaugurated dramatic changes. Upon arrival, political appointees froze the health agency’s outside communications on a broader scale than in previous changeovers, halting everything from routine webpage updates to meetings with grant recipients. The pause created logistical snafus: For example, one CDC employee described being forced to cancel, and later rebook, advertising campaigns — at greater cost to taxpayers.
Even before the gag order was lifted in the spring, the tone and direction of HHS’ public communications had shifted.
According to data shared by iSpot.tv, a market research firm that tracks television advertising, at least four HHS ads about vaccines ended within two weeks of Trump’s inauguration.
“Flu campaigns were halted,” during a season in which a record number of children died from influenza, Deb Houry, who had resigned as the CDC’s chief medical officer, said in a Sept. 17 congressional hearing.
Instead of urging people to get vaccinated, HHS officials contemplated more-ambivalent messaging, said Griffis, then the CDC’s director of communications. According to Griffis, other former agency employees, and communications reviewed by KFF Health News, Nixon contemplated a campaign that would put more emphasis on vaccine risks. It would “be promoting, quote-unquote, ‘informed choice,’” Griffis said.
Nixon called the claim “categorically false.” Still, the department continues to push anti-vaccine messaging. In November, the CDC updated a webpage to assert the false claim that vaccines may cause autism.
Messaging related to tobacco control has been pulled back, according to Brian King, an executive at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, as well as multiple current and former CDC employees. Layoffs, administrative leaves, and funding turmoil have drained offices at the CDC and the FDA focused on educating people about the risks of smoking and vaping, King said.
Four current and former CDC employees told KFF Health News that “Tips From Former Smokers,” a campaign credited with helping approximately a million people quit smoking, is in danger. Ordinarily, a contract for the next year’s campaign would have been signed by now. But, as of Nov. 21, there was no contractor, the current and former employees said.
Nixon did not respond to a question from KFF Health News regarding plans for the program.
“We’re currently in an apocalypse for national tobacco education campaigns in this country,” King said.
Kennedy’s HHS has a different focus for its education campaigns, including the “Take Back Your Health” campaign, for which the department solicited contractors this year to produce “viral” and “edgy” content to urge Americans to exercise.
An earlier version of the campaign’s solicitation asked for partners to boost wearables, such as gadgets that track steps or glucose levels — reflecting a Kennedy push for every American to be wearing such a device within four years.
The source of funds for the exercise campaign? In the spring, leadership of multiple agencies discussed using funding for the CDC’s Tips From Former Smokers campaign, employees from those agencies said. By the fall, the smoking program hadn’t spent all its funds, the current and former CDC employees said.
Nixon did not respond to questions about the source of funding for the exercise campaign.
Food Fight
At the FDA, former employees said they noticed new types of political interference as Trump officials took the reins, sometimes making subtle tweaks to public communications, sometimes changing wholesale what messages went out. The interventions into messaging — what was said, but also what went unsaid — proved problematic, they said.
Early this year, multiple employees told KFF Health News, Nixon gave agency employees a quick deadline to gather a list of all policy initiatives underway on infant formula. That was then branded “Operation Stork Speed,” as if it were a new push by a new administration.
Marianna Naum, a former acting director of external communications and consumer education at the FDA, said she supports parts of the Trump administration’s agenda. But she said she disagreed with how it handled Operation Stork Speed. “It felt like they were trying to put out information so they can say: ‘Look at the great work. Look how fast we did it,’” she said.
Nixon called the account “false” without elaborating. KFF Health News spoke with three other employees with the same recollections of the origins of Operation Stork Speed.
“Things that didn’t fit within their agenda, they were downplayed,” Naum said.
For example, she said, Trump political appointees resisted a proposed press release noting agency approval of cell-cultured pork — that is, pork grown in a lab. Similar products have raised the ire of ranchers and farmers working in typically GOP-friendly industries. States such as Florida have banned lab-grown meat.
The agency ultimately issued the press release. But a review of the agency’s archives showed it hasn’t put out press releases about two later approvals of cell-cultured meat.
Wide-ranging layoffs have also hit the FDA’s food office hard, leaving fewer people to make sure news gets distributed properly and promptly. Former employees say notices about recalled foods aren’t circulated as widely as they used to be, meaning fewer eyeballs on alerts about contaminated ice cream, peaches, and the like.
Nixon did not respond to questions about changes in food recalls. Overall, Nixon answered nine of 53 questions posed by KFF Health News.
Pushing Politics
Televised HHS public-service campaigns earned nearly 7.3 billion fewer impressions in the first half of 2025 versus the same period in 2022, according to iSpot data, with the drop being concentrated in pro-vaccine messaging. Other types of ads, such as those covering substance use and mental health, also fell. Data from the marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows similar drops in HHS ad spending online.
With many of the longtime professionals laid off and new political appointees in place atop the hierarchy, a new communications strategy — bearing the hallmarks of Kennedy’s personality — is being built, said the current and former HHS employees, plus public health officials interviewed by KFF Health News.
Whereas in 2024, the agency would mostly post public health resources such as the 988 suicide hotline on its Instagram page, its feed in 2025 features more of the health secretary himself. Through the end of August, according to a KFF Health News review, 77 of its 101 posts featured Kennedy — often fishing, biking, or doing pullups, as well as pitching his policies.
By contrast, only 146 of the agency’s 754 posts last year, or about 20%, featured Xavier Becerra, Kennedy’s predecessor.
In 2024, on Instagram, the agency promoted Medicare and individual insurance open enrollment; in 2025, the agency has not.
In 2024, the agency’s Instagram feed included some politicking as Biden ran for reelection, but the posts were less frequent and often indirect — for instance, touting a policy enacted under Biden’s signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, but without mentioning the name of the bill or its connection to the president.
In 2025, sloganeering is a frequent feature of the agency’s Kennedy-era Instagram. Through the end of August, “Make America Healthy Again” or variants of the catchphrase featured in at least 48% of posts.
Amid the layoffs, the agency made a notable addition to its team. It hired a state legislative spokesperson as a “rapid response” coordinator, a role that employees from previous administrations couldn’t recall previously existing at HHS.
“Like other Trump administration agencies, HHS is continuously rebutting fake news for the benefit of the public,” Nixon said when asked about the role.
On the day Houry and Susan Monarez, the CDC leader ousted in late August, testified before senators about Kennedy’s leadership, the agency’s X feed posted clips belittling the former officials. The department also derisively rebuts unfavorable news coverage.
“It’s very interesting to watch the memeification of the United States and critical global health infrastructure,” said McKenzie Wilson, an HHS spokesperson under Biden. “The entire purpose of this agency is to inform the public about safety, emergencies as they happen.”
‘Clear, Powerful Messages From Bobby’
Kennedy’s Make Our Children Healthy Again report, released in September, proposes public awareness campaigns on subjects such as illegal vaping and fluoride levels in water, while reassuring Americans that the regulatory system for pesticides is “robust.”
Those priorities reflect — and are amplified by — cadres of activists outside government. Since the summer, HHS officials have appeared on Zoom calls with aligned advocacy groups, trying to drum up support for Kennedy’s agenda.
On one call — on which, according to host Tony Lyons, activists “representing over 250 million followers on social media” were registered — famous names such as motivational speaker Tony Robbins gave pep talks about how to influence elected officials and the public.
“Each week, you’re gonna get clear, powerful messages from Bobby, from HHS, from their team,” Robbins said. “And your mission is to amplify it, to make it your own, to speak from your soul, to be bold, to be relentless, to be loving, to be loud, you know, because this is how we make the change.”
The communications strategy captivates the public, but it also confuses it.
Anne Zink, formerly the chief medical officer for Alaska, said she thought Kennedy’s messaging was some of the catchiest of any HHS director.
But, she said, in her work as an emergency physician, she’s seen the consequences of his health department’s policies on her puzzled patients. Patients question vaccines. Children show up with gastrointestinal symptoms Zink says she suspects are related to raw milk consumption.
“I increasingly see people say, ‘I just don’t know what to trust, because I just hear all sorts of things out there,’” she said.
Darius Tahir is a KFF Health News reporter DariusT@kff.org, @dariustahir
But stop the complaining
“Winter Scene in New England,’’ by George Henry Durrie (1820-1863)
“When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.”
―Alice Hoffman (born 1952), in her novel Here on Earth. She lives in the Boston area.
‘Small-scale craftsmanship’
“Nesting Memory” (detail), by Kharris Brill, in her show “Tiny Treasures,’’ at the Center for Maine Craft, in West Gardiner, through Dec. 31.
— Image courtesy of Center for Maine Craft.
The gallery explains (this is edited):
“Tiny Treasures’ emphasizes ‘small-scale craftsmanship and the story each piece tells.’ Each piece measures six inches and smaller. Brill's artistic repertoire includes linear stained glass, batik, reclaimed wood furniture, and most recently, found object assemblages, according to curatorial materials. Her work, ‘‘inspired by visionaries such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Cornell, seeks to give new life to salvaged materials.’’
The mighty political center of West Gardiner, Maine, pop about 3,6oo
— Photo by User:Magicpiano
We should think local to help save democracy
New England Diary applauds the civic engagement represented by this group. It would be nice if non-Trump Republicans, if they’re brave enough, try the same thing.
Here’s a press release from West Bay Blue Wave:
West Bay Blue Wave (WBBW) is a community-driven civic organization focused on strengthening democratic values, civic participation, and community well-being across Rhode Island’s West Bay.
A group of friends and neighbors in the Cowesett neighborhood of Warwick organized in the summer of 2024 to host “Artists for Kamala,” an event that raised $10,000 in support of Kamala Harris’s campaign. Participants left inspired, but after the disappointing results of the presidential election, conversations continued, now focused on a new question: How can civic-minded Rhode Islanders strengthen democracy right here at home?
Neighbors continued to meet, and momentum has grown. A few events with local politicians and key State leaders brought more residents together. In October 2025, about a dozen people gathered to organize for the statewide “No Kings” protest. Within days, committees had formed, a logo and Web site were created, a newsletter platform and social-=media channels were launched. What began as kitchen-table conversations quickly became a coordinated effort, and West Bay Blue Wave was born.
WBBW is rooted in the belief that when neighbors connect, listen, and act together, we build more than community—we build power. Today, WBBW includes members from Cranston, Coventry, East Greenwich, Exeter, North Kingstown, Warwick, West Warwick, and surrounding communities. The organization welcomes anyone–regardless of what town they live in–who is interested in promoting constructive, respectful civic engagement.
• Core activities will include:
• Community education events and workshops on policy, local governance, and civic history
• Town-based and regional gatherings that strengthen social and civic connections
• Partnerships with nonprofits and service organizations to support residents in need, such as ongoing food drives
• Volunteer opportunities across West Bay towns
• Year-round communications—including digital outreach and newsletters—that help keep residents informed and connected.
WBBW believes that civic participation must begin locally. The organization works to ensure residents have clear information, a sense of belonging, and meaningful opportunities to help shape solutions. WBBW is one of many pro-democracy and human-rights organizations that have sprung up in Rhode Island. The group works closely with the state-wide Indivisible Rhode Island, several regional Rhode Island chapters of Indivisible, and many of the pro-democracy and human-rights non-profits in the state. WBBW encourages collaborations and joint activities with all like-minded Rhode Islanders.
WBBW hopes to demonstrate that democracy thrives not only during elections, but every day through connection, collaboration, and shared responsibility. By nurturing participation and strengthening relationships, WBBW hopes to empower every resident to be informed, supported, and engaged in shaping their community’s future.
For more information, hit this link.
Interspersed with floods
“Winter in New England” (oil on canvas), by Marion Monks Chase (1874-1957), at the Worcester Art Museum.
Big plans at Northeastern
Entrance to Matthews Arena, with the original 1910 arch enclosed by brick.
Edited from a New England Council rep0rt
“Northeastern University’s Institutional Master Plan was approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency, as were seven new housing developments. The approval of Northeastern’s plan is not a surprise, as construction preparations have already begun on the large redevelopment aspect of the plan, Matthews Arena, which will be demolished.
“Matthews Arena, home to Northeastern’s hockey and basketball teams, opened in 1910 and was the original home of both the Bruins and the Celtics. The new development will retain similar capacity to the current arena.
“‘The approval of the new Institutional Master Plan marks a significant milestone in the ongoing development of Northeastern University’s Boston campus to support our academic mission,’ said Northeastern VP & Chief of Planning, Real Estate and Facilities Kathy Spiegelman.
“We look forward to working closely with the city and our community partners as we bring this vision to life, ensuring that our physical campus continues to meet the evolving needs of our students, faculty, staff, and the broader Boston community.”
In a ‘beauty-obsessed culture’
“Hysteria” (ceramic and glaze), by Corran Shrimpton, in her show “Fresh Flowers,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Jan. 2-Feb. 1.
The gallery says the show “explores the tumultuous relationship that many women experience with their bodies in today’s beauty-obsessed culture. Surfaces inspired by Victorian decor highlight the parallels between the constraints faced by women historically and those prevalent today.
“Distorted feminine forms illustrate the restriction and contortion of our bodies needed to achieve impossible beauty standards and prompts us to consider our expectations of femininity, their origins, and their effects.’’
How melting ice sheets affect different coasts
Debris washed ashore for many miles to the south of the two collapsed houses in Rodanthe, N.C., on the Outer Banks. Sea levels are rising fast on the U.S.East Coast.
— Photo by National Park Service
The famous story of King Canute and the tides.
Article is from The Conversation (but not picture above)
Shaina Sadai, an associate in earth science in the Five College Consortium, is an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Rhode Island and Ambarish Karmalkar is an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Rhode Island.
Shaina Sadai has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Hitz Family Foundation.
Ambarish Karmalkar receives funding from National Science Foundation.
KINGSTON, R.I.
When polar ice sheets melt, the effects ripple across the world. The melting ice raises average global sea level, alters ocean currents and affects temperatures in places far from the poles.
But melting ice sheets don’t affect sea level and temperatures in the same way everywhere.
In a new study, our team of scientists investigated how ice melting in Antarctica affects global climate and sea level. We combined computer models of the Antarctic ice sheet, solid Earth and global climate, including atmospheric and oceanic processes, to explore the complex interactions that melting ice has with other parts of the Earth.
Understanding what happens to Antarctica’s ice matters, because it holds enough frozen water to raise average sea level by about 190 feet (58 meters). As the ice melts, it becomes an existential problem for people and ecosystems in island and coastal communities.
Changes in Antarctica
The extent to which the Antarctic ice sheet melts will depend on how much the Earth warms. And that depends on future greenhouse gas emissions from sources including vehicles, power plants and industries.
Studies suggest that much of the Antarctic ice sheet could survive if countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement goal to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to before the industrial era. However, if emissions continue rising and the atmosphere and oceans warm much more, that could cause substantial melting and much higher sea levels.
Our research shows that high emissions pose risks not just to the stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is already contributing to sea-level rise, but also for the much larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet.
It also shows how different regions of the world will experience different levels of sea-level rise as Antarctica melts.
Understanding sea-level change
If sea levels rose like the water in a bathtub, then as ice sheets melt, the ocean would rise by the same amount everywhere. But that isn’t what happens.
Instead, many places experience higher regional sea-level rise than the global average, while places close to the ice sheet can even see sea levels drop. The main reason has to do with gravity.
Gravity is determined by mass, and Earth’s mass is not distributed equally.
Ice sheets are massive, and that mass creates a strong gravitational pull that attracts the surrounding ocean water toward them, similar to how the gravitational pull between Earth and the Moon affects the tides.
As the ice sheet shrinks, its gravitational pull on the ocean declines, leading to sea levels falling in regions close to the ice sheet coast and rising farther away. But sea-level changes are not only a function of distance from the melting ice sheet. This ice loss also changes how the planet rotates. The rotation axis is pulled toward that missing ice mass, which in turn redistributes water around the globe.
2 factors that can slow melting
As the massive ice sheet melts, the solid Earth beneath it rebounds.
Underneath the bedrock of Antarctica is Earth’s mantle, which flows slowly like maple syrup. The more the ice sheet melts, the less it presses down on the solid Earth. With less weight on it, the bedrock can rebound. This can lift parts of the ice sheet out of contact with warming ocean waters, slowing the rate of melting. This happens quicker in places where the mantle flows faster, such as underneath the West Antarctic ice sheet.
This rebound effect could help preserve the ice sheet – if global greenhouse-gas emissions are kept low.
Another factor that can slow melting might seem counterintuitive.
While Antarctic meltwater drives rising sea levels, models show it also delays greenhouse gas-induced warming. That’s because icy meltwater from Antarctica reduces ocean surface temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere and tropical Pacific, trapping heat in the deep ocean and slowing the rise of global average air temperature.
But as melting occurs, even if it slows, sea levels rise.
Mapping our sea-level results
We combined computer models that simulate these and other behaviors of the Antarctic ice sheet, solid Earth and climate to understand what could happen to sea level around the world as global temperatures rise and ice melts.
For example, in a moderate scenario in which the world reduces greenhouse gas emissions, though not enough to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) in 2100, we found the average sea-level rise from Antarctic ice melt would be about 4 inches (0.1 meters) by 2100. By 2200, it would be more than 3.3 feet (1 meter).
Keep in mind that this is only sea-level rise caused by Antarctic melt. The Greenland ice sheet and thermal expansion of seawater as the oceans warm will also raise sea levels. Current estimates suggest that total average sea-level rise – including Greenland and thermal expansion – would be 1 to 2 feet (0.32 to 0.63 meters) by 2100 under the same scenario.
Models show Antarctica’s contribution to sea-level rise in 2200 under medium (top) and high (bottom) emissions. The global mean sea-level rise is in purple. Regionally higher than average sea-level rise appears in dark blue. Sadai et al., 2025
We also show how sea-level rise from Antarctica varies around the world.
In that moderate emissions scenario, we found the highest sea-level rise from Antarctic ice melt alone, up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) by 2200, occurs in the Indian, Pacific and western Atlantic ocean basins – places far from Antarctica.
These regions are home to many people in low-lying coastal areas, including residents of island nations in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, and the central Pacific, such as the Marshall Islands, that are already experiencing detrimental impacts from rising seas.
Under a high emissions scenario, we found the average sea-level rise caused by Antarctic melting would be much higher: about 1 foot (0.3 meters) in 2100 and close to 10 feet (more than 3 meters) in 2200.
Under this scenario, a broader swath of the Pacific Ocean basin north of the equator, including Micronesia and Palau, and across the middle of the Atlantic Ocean basin would see the highest sea-level rise, up to 4.3 meters (14 feet) by 2200, just from Antarctica.
Although these sea-level rise numbers seem alarming, the world’s current emissions and recent projections suggest this very high emissions scenario is unlikely. This exercise, however, highlights the serious consequences of high emissions and underscores the importance of reducing emissions.
The takeaway
These impacts have implications for climate justice, particularly for island nations that have done little to contribute to climate change yet already experience the devastating impacts of sea-level rise.
Many island nations are already losing land to sea-level rise, and they have been leading global efforts to minimize temperature rise. Protecting these countries and other coastal areas will require reducing greenhouse gas emissions faster than nations are committing to do today.
Seek, if not to find
“The Seeker” (mixed media), by David Wiggins, showing his work at Glimpse Gallery, Concord, N.H., Dec. 9-Jan. 9.
The delightfully bizarre official seal of Concord, N.H., the state capital.
Regional culinary innovators
New England boiled dinner with cabbage, potato, white turnip, rutabaga, carrot, onion, and parsnip.
“Aunt Fanny’s headstone in the roadside graveyard is moss-stained …but her reputation as queen of the kitchen still lingers of the village of Franconia (N.H.), for she was one of those natural cooks who are ‘born with a mixing spoon in one hand and a rolling pin in the other.’ New England has produced many. They invented baked Indian pudding and apple pandowdy. They established the boiled dinner as a Thursday institution, and Boston baked beans and brown bread as the typical Saturday night supper.’’
— Ella Shannon Bowles and Dorothy S. Towle, in Secrets of New England Cooking (1947)
View of Franconia, N.H., from the northeast.
Ascended Dreamer photo
‘Between looking and understanding’
“Grocery Conveyor” (mixed media), by Cathy Della Lucia, in her two-person show with Lee Williams titled “Sculptural Ideas: Line, Color, and Form,’’ at Burlington City Arts, March 13-June 20, 2026
The gallery says:
“Foundational art elements–line, color, and form–influence the composition of sculpture as well as how we interact with it in an idiosyncratic way. The effect that sculpture has in space and the physical imposition it creates engages our subconscious and our non-verbal observations. Using tools like line, color, or form to communicate gesture, scale, or motion, three-dimensional artwork both passively and actively manipulates our perceptions. This idea may seem basic, but it often carries broader implications about the artist's intent or the artwork's impact on the viewer. ‘Sculptural Ideas: Line, Color, and Form’ seeks to close the gap between looking and understanding when interacting with contemporary sculpture.
The color of longing
Untitled digital image by Diego Navarro, in the group show “The Blue of Distance,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston Jan. 2-Feb 1.
The gallery says:
This group exhibition is in response to the essay, “The Blue of Distance,” by Rebecca Solnit:
"For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains. ‘Longing,' says the poet Robert Hass, ‘because desire is full of endless distances.' Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world."
Chris Powell: Eastern Conn. State U. tries to revive the ‘noble savage’ myth
Exhibit at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, near the tribe’s Foxwoods Resort Casino, in eastern Connecticut.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Having realized that it had been overlooking a prerequisite of political correctness in academia, Eastern Connecticut State University, in Windham, this month adopted a formal “land acknowledgment" that will be ceremoniously proclaimed at the start of major university events.
It reads: “We respectfully acknowledge that the land on which Eastern Connecticut State University stands, and the broader land now known as the State of Connecticut, is the ancestral territory of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, Golden Hill Paugussett Tribe, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Mohegan Tribe, Nipmuc Tribe, and Schaghticoke Tribe, who have stewarded this land throughout the generations with great care. We honor their resilience, cultural heritage, and enduring presence. As Connecticut’s public liberal arts university, we are committed to fostering greater awareness of Indigenous histories and contemporary experiences, and to building relationships grounded in respect, reciprocity, and responsibility."
And so the university now will perpetuate the myth and stereotype of the “noble savage": that the Indians of old were good, one with nature, eternally peaceful, and uncorrupted by civilization, unlike the civilization that succeeded theirs, of which everyone should be ashamed.
Of course, the struggle for land and sovereignty is not peculiar to Connecticut. While the struggle is fortunately concluded in the United States, it is the history of humanity and continues throughout the world. Even the “noble savages" of old, including those in what became Connecticut, struggled with each other for land and sovereignty before the European tribe came to dominate the area three centuries ago by making alliance with the Mohegans and Narragansetts to eradicate the troublesome Pequots.
The university says the Indian tribes of old “have stewarded this land throughout the generations with great care."
Huh? The tribes of old were mainly hunters and foragers, not industrialists. They didn't build roads, dams, sawmills, schools, factories, and railroads. They didn't make great advancements in medicine. They sometimes practiced slavery and polygamy. Any stewardship they performed ended centuries ago.
That is, they were people of their time and culture, as their adversaries were, and as everyone is.
But now that some of their ultra-distant descendants have obtained lucrative state grants of exclusivity, their “stewardship” includes casinos, through which some of them have accumulated great wealth that is imagined to be reparations for wrongs done to their ultra-distant ancestors, even as their casinos nurture costly addictions to gambling, which an ever-ravenous state government happily whitewashes when it shares the profits.
Indeed, it's unlikely that Eastern would nurture this obsession with ancestry if there wasn't casino money in it, since ancestor worship is emphatically un-American. The Mother of Exiles says so herself from New York Harbor: “‘Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp,’ cries she with silent lips.’’
That is, in the civilization now operating in these parts one's ancestry doesn't matter any more than anyone else's does, and everyone who has lived here a little while becomes as “indigenous” as everyone else is.
Despite its many faults, the current civilization at least has greatly diminished, if not quite eliminated, tribalism, what with Eastern and other institutions of higher education trying to revive it with “land acknowledgments."
Contrary to Eastern's implication, no one today is guilty of the injustices of the distant past, and even back then there was plenty of guilt to go around. If guilt is to be imposed, the present offers injustices enough. They won't be corrected by the politically correct posturing that is sinking higher education.
ARE THEY US?: A few days ago Connecticut got another invitation to take a good look at itself.
State police said a pedestrian was killed on Interstate 95 in Stamford when he was struck by four cars -- and the first three drivers fled the scene. Maybe the fourth would have fled as well if his car hadn't been disabled in the collision.
Could all the drivers really have thought that they had hit a deer or a bear, not a person? Who are these people? Are they us?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Llewellyn King: Journalism is a business of serial judgment under pressure
An example of the nonobjective newspapers that dominated American journalism until ideals of objective rep0rting slowly started to take hold around the turn of the 20th Century in larger cities.
The Linotype machine was very important in newspaper printing until computerization doomed it.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
The BBC has fallen on its sword. The director general has resigned and so has the head of news over the splicing of tape of President Trump's rambling speech on Jan. 6, 2021, which preceded the sacking of the Capitol by his fanatical followers.
The editor and the technician who did the deed for the esteemed BBC program Panorama haven't been publicly identified.
Agreed, they shouldn't have done what they did. But was there malice?
Journalism is a business of serial judgment. It is replete with mistakes — things that we who practice the craft wish we hadn't done.
I have worked as an editor in film, with tape and on newspapers, and I have seen how the paranoia of politicians can cast a whole news organization as a biased enemy when that wasn't the case.
Before a single sentence or an article appears in a newspaper or a video appears on television, dozens of judgments have been made — not by teams of academics or by ethicists or by juries, but by individuals responding to time pressure and what they judge to be newsworthy.
The unsaid pressure to keep it interesting, to have news worth something, is always there. The reader has to be kept reading or the viewer watching.
After something is published or broadcast, it can be beacon-clear what should have been done or corrected, but in the moment, those defects are opaque.
Let me take you behind the veil.
It is a hot night in 1972. There is a presidential election brewing and among those running for the Democratic nomination is Henry “Scoop" Jackson, the well-known Democratic senator from the state of Washington.
I am working in the composing room of The Washington Post as the editor in charge of liaising between the printers and the editors. The job is sometimes called a stone editor after the “stone’’ — big metal tables that held the pages and where the newspaper was assembled in the days of hot type via Linotype machines.
It was a busy news night, and it was when David Broder was the political reporter without rival. He was industrious and thorough, dedicated and prolific. As the night wore on, Broder would often add new stuff to his story, and it would grow in length.
In desperation when things got tough and deadlines were pressing, we would cut back the size of the photos, which had run in the first edition. The editor on duty would just ask the printers to do this: It was known as “whacking the cut."
In short, the photo would be reduced in size by cutting it down physically. The engraving would be put in a guillotine and some of it would be cut off, whacked.
That night, we had a large photo of Jackson addressing a large crowd.
But as the night wore on and different editions and mini editions, known as replates, were assembled, I ordered the cut whacked and whacked again. The result was that by the time the main edition went to press, the good senator was talking to a much smaller audience — although it did suggest that many more were there but not seen.
Jackson thought that this was a deliberate bias by The Post to suggest that he couldn't draw a large audience, and he called the legendary executive editor Ben Bradlee.
Bradlee asked the national editor, Ben Bagdikian, who was to become an authority on newspaper ethics, what happened. When they came to me, I explained how we trimmed the pictures.
While Bradlee was amused, Bagdikian added it to his concern about newspaper ethics.
Journalism is executed by individuals under pressure, much of it intense. It is a business of multiple judgments made sequentially, often without a lot of contemplation.
I once worked at the BBC in London, and the same pressures were present. I was scriptwriter and editor on the evening news. You made decisions all the time: This frame in, those 20 frames out. An outsider might imagine prejudice and foul intent in the way one clip was used and others were not.
In the news trade, judgments can trip you up, but making judgments is essential. Later the judge is judged, as at the BBC.
On X: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King, based mostly in Rhode Island, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He was a long-time publisher and remains an international energy-sector consultant.
‘Secure your rights’
“The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775,’’ by John Trumbull.
“Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors, but like them resolve never to part with your birthright; be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberties. Follow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights; at least prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memories.’’
— Joseph Warren (1741-1775), physician, second president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and commissioned a major general in the Massachusetts Militia. This quote is from his 1772 “Boston Massacre Oration’’.
1775 map of the Boston area, with some inaccuracies.
His ‘Proof of Life’
From Dennis Svoronos’s show “Proof of Life,’’ at Boston Sculptors Gallery, through Dec. 7
The gallery says:
“Years after his brain-cancer diagnosis, Dennis Svoronos remains surprisingly alive, and ponders the problems he and others face being among the masses of life-long patients. Through interactive and kinetic work, he conveys the horror and humor of the place between chronically ill and unexpectedly well.
“To these ends, Svoronos has made work with thousands of replicated medications, created eerie animatronics and uses brain-scanning technology in his own device called an MRI (Mind Reactive Instrument). As a patient himself, Svoronos uses his work to create a safe space to discuss and debate issues affecting our most vulnerable.’’
Integration through eating
This is famed cartoonist Thomas Nast’s 1869 vision, in Harper’s Weekly, of immigrants seated in harmony around America's Thanksgiving table, mirroring writer Sara Josepha Hale's desire to help Americanize immigrant populations through the adoption of the holiday.
Our first civil war
Map of the movements that led to the American (and French) defeat of the British at the Battle of Yorktown, the final major engagement of the American Revolutionary War, which was also a civil war.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
“How is it that the loudest yelps for liberty come from the drivers of slaves?”
-- English writer, scholar and philosopher Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) in 1775
I’ve been watching some of Ken Burns’s PBS series The American Revolution. I tire of the relentless violin music heard in his shows, but the very timely series does serve to undermine various popular myths of the Revolutionary War and, more broadly, The American Founding. It was far more than a noble desire for freedom from an empire, albeit one run by an elected parliament along with troubled, but not evil, king.
The British would have done well to follow the advice of the great Anglo-Irish politician and political philosopher Edmund Burke (1720-1797), who argued for conciliation between the British government and Americans who had felt that their traditional rights as British subjects were being violated by a far too dictatorial, rigid and aggressive government in London.
While Burke didn’t back giving American colonists representation in Parliament, at least partly because of the distance across the Atlantic, he did push for letting colonial legislatures set their colonies’ own taxes and many other policies. After all, he argued, the colonies had long experience of various degrees of autonomy, including considerable self-government.
Many Americans displayed great antipathy toward British-imposed taxes (but enacted, among other things to pay for protection from foreign powers such as the French). “No taxation without representation!’’
The Revolution was also about Americans’ greedy and brutal lust for seizing the tribal lands of Indians across the Appalachians – people whom the British mostly wanted to leave alone -- and an effort by the South to keep their partially slave-based system expanding.
Indeed, you could argue that the revolution was more about money than Enlightenment ideals of republican government.
And it was a bloody civil war between Loyalists for the British and those wanting their own country. There were ethical and other good and evil points on each side.
The Loyalists certainly thought they’d be better off governed under the relatively orderly British Empire than under the sometimes anarchic and rough people now calling themselves “Americans.’’
Lots of Loyalists fled, to Britain, the Maritime Provinces, Quebec and elsewhere, especially as Americans stole their property and in some cases threatened their lives. Some fled along the Maine Coast to points east enough that they thought they’d be safe. But the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, pushed the boundary further east than many had expected, and they found themselves stuck on the U.S. side of the border. At that point, many Loyalists were too tired to move again, and so they stayed put and became “Americans.’’ At least that’s what a Loyalist descendent living in Brunswick, Maine, told me!
The American Revolution helped lead to the very different French Revolution. You can read how and why they took such different courses by reading Hannah Arendt’s classic study On Revolution.
I suspect that a few of my New England ancestors (who were mostly around Boston and on Cape Cod) were Loyalists, but old documents suggest that most of them were “Patriots.’’ I love the old terminology of that war. I came across this from a family record:
“In 1775 John Butler is linked to Private Captain Joseph Palmer’s co. when they marched for 3 days {to where?}. Also with Captain Barrachia {!} Bassett’s co. dated January 13th 1776 a distance of 170 miles. Also on Captain Joseph Palmer’s co Col. Freeman’s regt. For service of 8 days on alarm {waiting for British troops to show up?} at Dartmouth and Falmouth in September 1778.’’
Would the world have been better off if the 13 colonies had remained part of the British Empire? Could they thus have been in better position to have encouraged Britain to adopt some of Americans’ better ideas/ideals (and, to quote Lincoln, “the better angels of our nature”) about government, the economy and other sectors, and society in general? These were ideas and ideals, some of them infused with a rhetorical egalitarianism, less common in Britain, and made manifest in the thoughts and actions of the often bickering Founders? Of course, there are far too many variables to know what would have happened. But playing “what if’’ is fun.
The only fairly sure bet is that slavery would have ended sooner here if London had remained in charge. The public opinion that slavery was evil was stronger in the United Kingdom than in what would become the United States, where part of the nation’s economy profited so much from it.
Meanwhile, one wonders how The Founders would have reacted to the current American regime of bottomless corruption and drive for tyranny, and that a plurality of those who bothered to vote backed a person with a 50-year record of private and public depravity. Of course, The Founders were always terrified that an extreme narcissist demagogue would take power in a lie-infested “populist’’ wave.
And now it’s happened.
Then rest up for the next
“End of Storm, Vinalhaven’’ (oil on masonite), by Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), at Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine.