Pandemic news — flu kits for elderly, mask study, sleep tips
World War II poster issued by the U.S. government
BOSTON
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
Here is the council’s Oct. 28 roundup:
“United Health Group Ships Flu Kits to Medicare Recipients – UnitedHealth Group is sending medical care packages including Tamiflu and COVID-19 tests to patients considered the most at-risk for the virus. The kits will also include a digital thermometer and instructions for self-administering the COVID-19 test. Read more here.
“Harvard Medical School Releases Mask Study – Researchers at Harvard Medical School have found additional evidence of the benefits of mask wearing. The researchers found that universal masking in the Massachusetts health-care system led to a flattening, and then decreasing number of cases, even with cases rising in the surrounding population. Read more here.
“Massachusetts General Unveils Tips for Better Sleep During COVID-19 – Massachusetts General Hospital has released a number of recommendations for better sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic. Citing increased levels of stress and anxiety, Massachusetts General compiled simple recommendations for people to keep well-rested. Read more here.
“Catholic Medical Center Adds Second Automated Disinfection Robot – Catholic Medical Center has recently acquired a new Tru-Da device, which will help protect patients from hospital-acquired infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. The robot uses UVC light to modify the DNA and RNA of infectious cells, effectively sterilizing hospital rooms. Read more here.
“BIDMC Finds New Ways to Anticipate the Effects of COVID-19 – Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have proposed the adoption of complexity science – a field concerned with understanding dynamic, unpredictable systems, such as the human brain, economies or climates – to predict and inform pandemic responses. Read more here.’’
When you could get in cheap
Atlantic cod
— Photo by Hans-Petter Fjeld
“By 1937, every British trawler had a wireless, electricity, and an echometer - the forerunner of sonar. If getting into fishing had required the kind of capital in past centuries that it cost in the twentieth century, cod would never have built a nation of middle-class, self-made entrepreneurs in New England.”
― From Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
Flying fabric
“Valparaiso Green Cloak for Three’’ (stitched fabric), by Pia Camil, in her show “Velo Revelo,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., through Jan. 3. The show has two sculptures that use fabric, that, according to museum, recall “Mexican craft and modernist American paintings. Her works evoke themes of public and private space, indigenous craft, gender and identity.’’
Don Pesci: Driving police away from where they are most needed
The "thin blue line" refers to the concept of the police as the line that keeps society from descending into violent chaos. The "blue" in "thin blue line" refers to the blue color of the uniforms of many police departments.
Police officers of all kinds, both old-hands and newly minted officers, are leaving Hartford, according to a piece in The Hartford Courant.
No surprise there. The job, as everyone knows, is fraught with danger. Police are not accountants or legislators tucked away in a malfunctioning Connecticut Coronavirus General Assembly; still less are they social workers. The pay and benefits are okay in the cities but better in suburbs. And a new “Sweeping Reform Bill” -- inspired, we are told, by police assaults on George Floyd and Breonna Taylor -- has driven multiple wedges between police across the state and their employers, Democrats and Republicans and, eventually, the urban population that police are sworn to protect.
The new bill is the brain child of State Senator Gary Winfield, who is Black.
The reader will note the capitalization of “Black.” The new Associated Press reporting guide requires every mention of “Black” in news reports to be capitalized, even though the word designates a color rather than a race. White is also a color, though the AP reporting guide does not suggest the capitalization of the word, possibly because the capitalization of “white” might be regarded by some as a gruesome exercise in white privilege.
This grammatical irritation may be adduced by some as a strong indicator that systemic racism in the United States is ebbing, though Winfield’s bill, suggests that little progress has been made since 1619, the year, The New York Times tells us, that marks the true beginning of the founding of the United States – the American Revolution against British overlords, the Continental Congress, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights be dammed.
As a side note, it should be mentioned that the 1619 founding of the United States, during which the first slaves were shipped to the New World, occurred 117 years after what some consider an unfortunate sea journey by Christopher Columbus from Spain to San Salvador, in the Bahamas -- literal translation, “Holy Savior”. Columbus was a Christian, as were many of the Connecticut politicians who winked at the beheading of his statue in Waterbury by Brandon Ambrose, 22, of Port Chester, N.Y.
The Winfield Bill creates a state independent Office of the Inspector General that will be charged with investigating all uses of deadly force by police and all instances of death in police custody; it permits a state's police accreditation body to revoke law-enforcement officers’ credentials if they have been found to have used excessive force; it bans neck restraints, or "chokeholds," unless a law-enforcement officer "reasonably believes" such a hold to be necessary to defend from "the use or imminent use of deadly physical force"; it eliminates “qualified immunity” for police; and it subjects all police officers in the state to civil suits, leaving police officers the option of claiming immunity only if they "had an objectively good faith belief” that their conduct did not violate the law. The law opens a wide door of police prosecution on many counts.
The Winfield bill was politically divisive, Democrats voting for it, Republicans against it. All the Democrat legislators who voted in favor of the bill, many of them lawyers, understood at the time they voted that exposure to civil suits, well founded or not, is a very expensive proposition, and that suits served on urban police working in Connecticut’s large cities were much more likely than similar suits in more toney towns such as West Hartford and Greenwich, both of which have been trending Democrat for some time.
The city to town migration of police officers in Connecticut was predictable the moment the bill had been passed in Connecticut’s General Assembly -- even before the Winfield bill had been affirmed on a partisan vote last July.
Good news is a tortoise, bad news is a hare, and it did not take long for the bad news to reach the ears of Connecticut law-enforcement officials and city police officers. Police unions across the state are now endorsing Republicans.
At the polls, where matters really matter to politicians, the Winfield bill and its inevitable consequences – reduced police recruitment in urban areas, where a strong police force is a necessity, a greater opportunity for socially disruptive elements to ply their various trades uninterrupted by fully manned police forces, clogged court systems and, ironically, an increase in racial disparity, among many other unintended consequences – may not affect the current elections in Connecticut. But some social bombs have long fuses.
“As a police officer the last thing you ever want is to be hated,” commented Hartford police union President Anthony Rinaldi. “It kills your drive, your love for wanting to give back and help your communities. It causes officers to feel rejected and not wanted.” The drive gone, it will not be restored by the usual palliatives: increased pay and benefits for shattered urban police departments. You can only kill a police department once; after that comes the deluge.
Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon, Conn.
Regionalize COVID borders
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Massachusetts and Rhode Island should follow New York State’s example on the movement of people from neighboring states as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has decided not to add Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to states from which travelers must quarantine for 14 days or show proof that they’ve tested negative within the previous 72 hours. That decision comes even as COVID cases continue to spike in the three states.
The Empire State declared that because of the interconnectedness of the Greater New York City region, a quarantine on those states “is not practically viable.”
“There is no practical way to quarantine New York from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut,” Governor Cuomo said. “There are just too many interchanges, interconnections, and people who live in one place and work in the other. It would have a disastrous effect on the economy, and remember while we’re fighting this public health pandemic we’re also fighting to open up the economy.”
(It’s good to read that Connecticut is opening up things with Rhode Island and Massachusetts.)
Well, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are also tightly connected, especially the northern Ocean State, which to some degree is part of Greater Boston. Recently, Massachusetts imposed quarantine and testing rules on Rhode Islanders, but COVID cases are climbing in both states. And enforcing quarantine and testing rules on people going back and forth between the two states is virtually impossible.
Quarantine and testing rules between the two states need to be removed to boost their economies even while the public should continue to be ordered to wear face masks and practice social distancing in indoor places and confined outdoor spaces. People who refuse to comply should be kicked out of stores, restaurants, offices, etc. and off public transit.
Jolly pandemic camping tent?
“The Force of Friendship ‘‘ (watercolor on paper), by Marcie Jan Bronstein, in her show “Being There,’’ at the University of Maine’s Zillman Art Museum, in Bangor.
The museum says that Ms. Bronstein uses :a wide variety of marks in her works, from shapes reminiscent of architecture to webs, stretched ovals and pill-like capsules. These varied forms, combined with the blooms of watercolor, make artworks begging for interpretation and ripe for reflection.’’
Statue of the mythical Paul Bunyan in Bangor, where the lumber industry was economic king for many years, starting in the 19th Century but no more. Since Bangor lies on the Penobscot River, logs from Maine’s immense North Woods could be floated downstream to the city and processed at its water-powered sawmills, and then shipped to the Atlantic Ocean, 30 miles farther downstream, and from there to any port in the world. Many of the lumber barons’ elaborate Greek Revival and Victorian mansions suggest the wealth made in this business.
Bauhaus meets New England
The house in the affluent Boston suburb of Lincoln designed by famed German-American Modernist architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969). He and his family lived there from 1938, after fleeing Nazi Germany. He taught in the Harvard School of Design.
The house was influential in bringing Bauhaus-inspired designs to the U.S. but Mr. Gropius dIsliked the term “International Modernism” that was applied to the house:. "I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate."
He wrote in April 1919, in “The Bauhaus Proclamation”:
“Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.’’
Llewellyn King: The huge unanswered questions of the presidential campaign
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? was the title of a 1963 book by Jimmy Breslin about the disastrous first year of the New York Mets, an expansion team. It’s attributed to the team’s manager Casey Stengel.
As I’ve watched this picaresque presidential election year unfold, I’ve had the same thought.
The game is governance; the campaign, the run-up. And nobody seems to know how to play this game. The questions that should’ve been raised and answered were neither raised nor answered.
Some unheard and unanswered questions:
· How will you rebuild our stature abroad, restore America to global leadership and moral authority?
· What will you do if the pandemic hangs on for years? How will you place the millions whose jobs were lost through the pandemic in work?
· How will you fix our ailing school system with its disastrous weaknesses exposed by Covid-19?
· The health-care system is stretched to breaking under the pandemic with or without Obamacare. What is your plan?
· If the climate change-induced sea level rise accelerates, how will you deal with cities that appear in danger, including New York, Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco?
· One of the rationales for the U.S.-Mexico border wall was to reduce the influx of drugs. Now, with the advent of drones, we may have a new drug-smuggling crisis. What is your plan to combat it?
· States depend on gasoline and cigarette taxes, but electric vehicles are pushing out gasoline taxes and cigarette smoking is in steep decline. How do you see these tax streams being replaced?
· What will you do if China invades Taiwan?
· What will you do if China bars U.S. shipping from traversing the South China Sea?
· The population of Africa is set to double every quarter century. Already there is vert high unemployment, what should the United States do to help?
· Jobs are being eaten up by AI and other technologies. While those enthralled with these job-subtracting technologies point to the history of the Industrial Revolution, this may be different. What should be done?
Just think of anything to do with the future and a gusher of questions erupts, but no answers have been heard, or few at best.
President Trump, it seems, will offer us more government as demolition derby, but wilder than in the first four years. We’ve gotten a shower of hopes, fanciful and improbable. When it comes to the overhanging crisis of today, the pandemic, he is like King Canute commanding the waves to retreat.
From his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, we are to get what? Decency, character? Like all candidates, he’s told us he’ll fix everything. But how remains obscured from us, and quite possibly from himself.
On the evening of April 7, 1775, Samuel Johnson, the sage and lexicographer, told us that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. That is a truth that Trump -- who probably doesn’t know who Johnson was -- has exploited as his own. He would undo the things we should be proud of in the world, like human rights, and get away with it because he wraps himself in the flag like Linus in his blanket.
Those who’ll vote for Biden will vote for a man who is old in years and old in ideas. If he wins, his supporters can trade fear for apprehension.
As we face the most momentous challenges the world has ever borne -- international upheaval, a lingering pandemic and climate change – we’ve gone through a presidential campaign where the issues were shelved for repetitive nothingness. We haven’t been lifted by high rhetoric nor inspired by blinding vision.
The global upheaval triggered by disease, nation realignment and technology will have to await the judgment of those who whisper into the ears of presidents, when they, the candidates, have none, as now.
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.
Web site: whchronicle.com
Jim Hightower: Pandemic has been a bonanza for the rich
Via OtherWords.org
Let’s say you’re a millionaire. That’s a lot of money, right? Now let’s say you’re a billionaire. That’s a lot more money! But how much more?
Think of all those dollars as seconds on a clock. A million seconds would total 11 days – but a billion seconds equals nearly 32 years.
Rich is nice, but billionaire-rich is over the moon — and the wealth of billionaires is now zooming out of this world.
There are only 2,200 billionaires in the whole world, but the wealth stashed away by these elites hit a new record this summer, averaging more than $4 billion each. They’ve even pocketed an extra half-billion bucks on average in the midst of the COVID-19 economic crash.
Bear in mind that these fortunate few did nothing to earn this haul. They didn’t work harder, didn’t get one-digit smarter, didn’t create some new breakthrough product to benefit humankind. They could just crank back in their gold-plated La-Z-Boys and let their money make money for them.
Then there are multimillionaire corporate chieftains who are cashing in on their own failure.
Having closed stores throughout America, fired thousands of workers, stiffed suppliers and creditors, taken bailout money from taxpayers, and even led their corporations into bankruptcy, the CEOs of such collapsing giants as Hertz, JCPenney, and Toys “R” Us have grabbed millions of dollars in — believe it or not — bonus payments!
The typical employee at JCPenney for example, is held to part-time work, making under $12,000 a year. Thousands of them are now losing even that miserly income as the once-mighty retailer is shutting 154 stores. Yet, the CEO was paid a $4.5 million cash bonus before the company filed for bankruptcy this year.
And still, the corporate establishment wonders why the people consider them heartless and greedy.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer and public speaker.
Stop these mobile mobs
— Photo by J.T. Thorne
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It’s a big challenge, but Providence and the Rhode Island State Police need to do a better job monitoring the sort of flood of riders of ATV’s, mopeds, motorcycles and dirt bikes (sounds like a Trump rally) that assaulted parts of Providence last Sunday, ruining the day for thousands of residents. The police need to have a better idea of when and where these people, many from outside the city, are grouping before they can sweep through Providence’s streets, with many participants dangerously ignoring traffic laws. Roadblocks and the credible threat of mass arrests are needed to stop therm.
Trying to control these invasions, of course, poses dangers in themselves, as
witness a very troubling crash involving a police car and a young man riding in this mob last Sunday, who, as I write this, was in a coma. But it’s far more dangerous to let these riders disrupt the city than to let them roam at will in their packs. They need to be made very afraid of law enforcement. Unfortunately Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza is seen as weak, which encourages their dangerous activities. Engendering a little fear of the mayor would be a good preventive.
These mobs don’t belong in cities.
Getting at the sense of doom
“Gates of Hell’’ ( mixed media diptych), by James C. Varnum, of Newton, Mass., in the show “Subtle Recognition: Mirrors of Contemplation,’’ at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, though Oct. 31.
He tells the gallery:
“These two paintings represent my feelings toward the outside world during the pandemic. While Parallel was completed earlier, it reflects the duality of opinions about the severity of COVID 19 and attitudes toward public health and community. ‘Gates of Hell ‘was completed in March. It is bleak and expresses my sense of doom felt during some periods this spring. I experimented with materials, tools and palette to keep some sanity."
See:
galateafineart.com
'O ye who lead, Take heed!'
“An Ode in Time of Hesitation,’’ by William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910)
“After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted Negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.’’
I
Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of Robert Shaw,
This bright March morn I stand,
And hear the distant spring come up the land;
Knowing that what I hear is not unheard
Of this boy soldier and his negro band,
For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,
For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.
The land they died to save from death and shame
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.
II
Through street and mall the tides of people go
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show
No hint of green; but to my listening heart
The still earth doth impart
Assurance of her jubilant emprise,
And it is clear to my long-searching eyes
That love at last has might upon the skies.
The ice is runneled on the little pond;
A telltale patter drips from off the trees;
The air is touched with southland spiceries,
As if but yesterday it tossed the frond
Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,
Or had its will among the fruits and vines
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond
Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
III
Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose
Go honking northward over Tennessee;
West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie,
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,
And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young,
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,
With restless violent hands and casual tongue
Moulding her mighty fates,
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;
And like a larger sea, the vital green
Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung
Over Dakota and the prairie states.
By desert people immemorial
On Arizonan mesas shall be done
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice
More splendid, when the white Sierras call
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,
Unrolling rivers clear
For flutter of broad phylacteries;
While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep
To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,
And Mariposa through the purple calms
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms
Where East and West are met, --
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set
To say that East and West are twain,
With different loss and gain:
The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.
IV
Alas! what sounds are these that come
Sullenly over the Pacific seas, --
Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb
The season's half-awakened ecstasies?
Must I be humble, then,
Now when my heart hath need of pride?
Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men;
By loving much the land for which they died
I would be justified.
My spirit was away on pinions wide
To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood
And ease it of its ache of gratitude.
Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay
On me and the companions of my day.
I would remember now
My country's goodliness, make sweet her name.
Alas! what shade art thou
Of sorrow or of blame
Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,
And pointest a slow finger at her shame?
V
Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage
Are noble, and our battles still are won
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat
And scramble in the market-place of war;
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,
This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.
VI
Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand
All night he lay, speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,
Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;
And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine
Fulfilled of the divine
Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, --
They swept, and died like freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust
Obscurely in a common grave with him
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb
In nature's busy old democracy
To flush the mountain laurel when she blows
Sweet by the southern sea,
And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: --
The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew
This mountain fortress for no earthly hold
Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old
Of spiritual wrong,
Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,
Expugnable but by a nation's rue
And bowing down before that equal shrine
By all men held divine,
Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.
VII
O bitter, bitter shade!
Wilt thou not put the scorn
And instant tragic question from thine eye?
Do thy dark brows yet crave
That swift and angry stave --
Unmeet for this desirous morn --
That I have striven, striven to evade?
Gazing on him, must I not deem they err
Whose careless lips in street and shop aver
As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek
Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak?
Surely some elder singer would arise,
Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn
Above this people when they go astray.
Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn?
Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away?
I will not and I dare not yet believe!
Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve,
And the spring-laden breeze
Out of the gladdening west is sinister
With sounds of nameless battle overseas;
Though when we turn and question in suspense
If these things be indeed after these ways,
And what things are to follow after these,
Our fluent men of place and consequence
Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase,
Or for the end-all of deep arguments
Intone their dull commercial liturgies --
I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut!
I will not hear the thin satiric praise
And muffled laughter of our enemies,
Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword
Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd
Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut;
Showing how wise it is to cast away
The symbols of our spiritual sway,
That so our hands with better ease
May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.
VIII
Was it for this our fathers kept the law?
This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth?
Are we the eagle nation Milton saw
Mewing its mighty youth,
Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth,
And be a swift familiar of the sun
Where aye before God's face his trumpets run?
Or have we but the talons and the maw,
And for the abject likeness of our heart
Shall some less lordly bird be set apart? --
Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat?
Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?
IX
Ah no!
We have not fallen so.
We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!
'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!"
Then Alabama heard,
And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho
Shouted a burning word.
Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,
East, west, and south, and north,
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,
By the unforgotten names of eager boys
Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung
With the old mystic joys
And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,
But that the heart of youth is generous, --
We charge you, ye who lead us,
Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!
Turn not their new-world victories to gain!
One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays
Of their dear praise,
One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,
The implacable republic will require;
With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon,
Or subtly, coming as a thief at night,
But surely, very surely, slow or soon
That insult deep we deeply will requite.
Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!
For save we let the island men go free,
Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts
Will curse us from the lamentable coasts
Where walk the frustrate dead.
The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite,
Eaten the sour bread of astonishment,
With ashes of the hearth shall be made white
Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent;
Then on your guiltier head
Shall our intolerable self-disdain
Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain;
For manifest in that disastrous light
We shall discern the right
And do it, tardily. -- O ye who lead,
Take heed!
Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.
Eating fall fruit on way home
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
When I was a kid and sometimes walked home from school instead of taking the slow bus ride in my small Massachusetts town, I’d often take a short cut through the woods.
At this time of the year most of the leaves had fallen; only the oaks had held onto many of their boringly brown leaves. So there was plenty of light as I walked between the bayberry and other shrubs. Deep in the woods you could find crabapples, smaller than the ones in orchards, which contrary to myth, you could eat. There were also some edible wild grapes left, amidst the enveloping breezy barrenness
A crabapple in the fall
— Photo by Alpsdake
Think small as an antidote
“21 Misc. Blocks and Printings,’’ by Mark Luiggi, in the “all small’’ show at Brickbottom Artists Association, Somerville, Mass., Oct. 29-Nov. 22
The gallery explains:
“The challenges of 2020—the pandemic; the divisiveness of politics and the election; the outrage over racial injustice; the apocalyptic fires and storms that are undeniable signs of climate change—are complicated and overwhelming. Indeed, everything in this world today seems to be enormous, and getting bigger all the time. The Brickbottom Gallery would like to propose the opposite as a kind of antidote. Bigger is not necessarily better! This BAA Members' Exhibition features artwork that is small, in scale, size or content.”
See:
https://brickbottom.org/
‘The boozing, the anger’
"It’s {the Boston area} just a really interesting place to grow up. The sports teams, the colleges, the racial tension, the state workers, the boozing, the anger. All of that stuff. I don’t think I ever appreciated the amount of maniacs that live in Massachusetts until I left. When I lived here, I took it for granted that everyone was kind of funny and a bit of a character."
— Bill Burr (born 1968 in the Boston suburb of Canton, Mass.), standup comedian and actor
The name "Canton" comes from the erroneous early belief that Canton, China, was on the complete opposite side of the earth (antipodal). New England merchants in the 18th and 19th centuries had many lucrative commercial links with the Chinese port city of Canton (now called Guangzhou). Canton, Mass. was originally part of Stoughton.
Part of Great Blue Hill is in Canton, whose summit, at 635 feet, is the highest point in Greater Boston and Norfolk County and also the highest within 10 miles of the Atlantic coast south of central Maine.
Chris Powell: Landslides can bring out the worst in pols; casino fallacy
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Should every Republican on the party's ticket with President Trump this year be defeated if he won't denounce or at least criticize the president for his demeanor, policies, or both?
That's the suggestion of New London Day columnist David Collins, who complained the other day that he could not find one Republican candidate in eastern Connecticut willing to discuss the president. Noting the president's unpopularity in the state, Collins wrote: "Surely I can't be the only one who wouldn't consider voting for anyone who won't even comment about the head of their party and his agenda for the country."
Of course, Collins isn't the only one who feels as he does, but there are a few problems with his position.
First is that turnabout is fair play, and Collins lately has expressed outrage about Gov. Ned Lamont's disregard for the New London area. Since the governor is a Democrat, won't re-electing Democrats to the General Assembly vindicate the governor's disregard? Will electing Republican legislators produce any better results for the area? Republicans don't seem to have given much reason to think so.
The second problem, a bigger one, is the difficulty of punishing Trump's ticket mates for his offenses without also punishing the whole state. Yes, in general Republican state legislators are uninspired and timid, not much interested in gaining a majority, mainly content with escaping responsibility for governing, but at least they are much less enthusiastic tools of the government-employee unions and welfare class than Democratic legislators are.
So what is one to do if he detests Trump but also would prefer not to pay more in state taxes for Democratic policies and patronage that only impoverish the state? What if someone wants to avoid not just highway tolls but more raises and pension benefits for government employees while the private sector is crashing? Someone who feels that way and sets out to punish all Republicans for complicity with Trump ends up punishing himself as well.
The third problem is that political landslides such as Collins seems to be advocating can bring out the worst in elected officials, making them arrogant, corrupt, and stupid, as Connecticut might have learned after electing John G. Rowland to a third term as governor in 2002.
President Lyndon B. Johnson's big win at the top of the Democratic ticket in 1964 unleashed his escalation of the Vietnam War. But by 1967 even as the war was plainly a futile enterprise incompetently pursued, few Democratic officials dared to say a word against the president, just as few Republican officials dare to say a word against Trump today. Only when public opinion, without any help from most Democratic leaders, turned against Johnson in 1968 did the president withdraw from re-election -- and only after a Republican, Richard Nixon, was elected president did most Democratic leaders decide that the war was a disaster.
Similarly, Nixon's landslide re-election in 1972 only deepened his administration's criminal corruption. In less than two years both he and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, were exposed and compelled to resign.
Connecticut already suffers inefficiency and corruption in state government because of the state's lack of political competition. Shrinking the Republican minority in the General Assembly to spite the party for Trump won't provide any incentive for state government to improve. It will just give the majority party more license.
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The MGM Springfield casino and hotel complex. Casinos redistribute money from the many to the rich few.
CASINO FALLACY: MGM's casino in Springfield is thumping its chest about all the jobs and tax revenue it has brought to western Massachusettts. But the jobs and revenue are not what was projected, and such claims are inherently misleading anyway.
For casinos produce nothing of value. People who spend their money at casinos no longer spend it on amusement somewhere else. Casinos merely redistribute money from the many -- the public, disproportionately the poor -- to the few, the casino operators, disproportionately the rich, and to the government. That is, casinos are mechanisms of regressive taxation.
A casino adds economically to an area only insofar as it attracts people from elsewhere, and so the only claim genuinely in favor of the Springfield casino is that it may have kept many Massachusetts gamblers spending their money at home instead of at the casinos in southeastern Connecticut.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
COVID-19 wrapup
From The New England Council’s (newenglandcouncil.com) latest wrap up of COVID-19 news:
“Eli Lilly Find Drug to Improve Clinical Outcomes – Eli Lilly and Company has found that baricitinib, used alongside remdesivir, reduces recovery time and improves clinical outcomes for patients infected with COVID-19 more so than patients treated only with remdesivir. Eli Lilly originally developed baricitinib – marketed at Olumiant – as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, but has been studying the drug as a COVID-19 treatment as part of a trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allery and Infectious Diseaseas (NIAID). The most signifiant impact was observed in patients placed on supplemental oxygen. Read more here.
“Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center Utilizes Mobile COVID-19 Testing Unit – Early in the pandemic, Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center launched a mobile COVID-19 testing unit, which has since tested thousands of patients at Dudley Square, Prince Grand Hall Lodge, Children’s Services of Roxbury and other locations. Read more here.
“Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Grants Additional $400,00 to COVID-19 Fund – Blue Cross Blue Shield has donated $400,000 to go towards supporting communities of color most affected by the pandemic, as well as Massachusetts regional funds community health centers, nonprofits, and teacher organizations. Read more here.’’
Largest self-reported ancestry groups in New England. Americans of Irish descent form a plurality in most of Massachusetts, while Americans of English descent form a plurality in much of central Vermont and New Hampshire as well as nearly all of Maine.
Glitter in the gutter
Deer Isle’s rather unsettlngly vibrating bridge
“Gather up whatever is
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled
in the waves or fallen our of the sky….’’
— From “Holding the Light,’’ by Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine’s poet laureate
A ceramicist, as well as poet, he was the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in Deer Isle, Maine, for 27 years.