Walking to decide

Thee Marginal Way, in Ogunquit, Maine

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) walked 34 miles to Mount Wachusett, seen on the horizon, from his home in Concord, Mass

— Photo by Benabbey - Template:St. Benedict Abbey

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

For a few hours last Thursday, it seemed that you could see the buds on the trees open in front of you in five minutes in the warm wind.

The fine weather reminds me of the joys and usefulness of walks. They’re good for the body and the mind. A good walk can help clarify your thinking when you have a difficult and/or complicated decision to make.

My favorite walks:

Walking from our house down a pot-holed one-lane road to rocky headlands on Massachusetts Bay when  I was a boy. It went through cedar and oak woods and by a marsh thick with reeds through which we cut trails  and created little rooms. Then I’d look up to the left at a gray-shingled house on a granite crag in the woods where hawks always seemed to be flying. As the road descended slightly to almost sea level there was a cottage to the right – I assume mostly a summer place – on a beach that extended out to a mussel bed. In those days we didn’t eat these shellfish but used them solely for bait to catch mackerel.

Then, near the end of the road, came a little beach, more stones than sand, on the left and two granite headlands, both with quartz stripes, one of which was an island at high tide on which stood a brick mansion, with a swimming pool, which we thought exotic. It was connected to the road by a  slightly arched bridge. It took me no more than about 15 minutes to get to this place from our house, but that was enough in the salty air to feel refreshed with new ideas.

When I worked in Lower Manhattan, in the ‘70s, I frequently strolled down Broadway to The Battery, at the tip of the island, to stare out on New York Harbor, usually rippled by a southwest breeze. There I might buy a hot dog, with sauerkraut, from a cart manned by an old man with a beard. He too admired the view, though he noted in some sort of Slavic accent that “It’s too bad the water’s so dirty and smelly.’’ This was before the newly created EPA had sprung into action.

The best days for these walks were Sundays, a work day for me. Hardly anyone lived in Lower Manhattan then – it was almost entirely offices, most in the financial sector --  and so the neighborhood had a kind of sweet sadness on weekends.

One day I was walking with my colleague Marty Hollander down Broadway, and he looked over at the new Twin Towers and said: “Someday someone’s gonna fly into them.’’  I’m trying to recall if he meant intentionally or by accident.

Many of my most vivid memories are from walking in New York, though I only lived there for four years, but visited many times before and after. I guess one’s memories are implanted more firmly when one is young. 

Before my Lower Manhattan gig, I’d daily walk to and fro between the campus of Columbia  University, where I was a grad student, and the apartment I shared about 25 blocks south.  When I didn’t stroll up Riverside Park, I’d go up

Broadway, by the Thalia movie theater and strange eateries. One specialized in Mexican Chinese food. On my way back home, the usual hookers stood by at the entrance to a store that sold newspapers and magazines; they nodded with dignity as people walked by.

On the trip to Columbia, I’d plan out the day, sometimes stopping to jot down ideas and reminders.

In Providence,  where I’d come to work at The Providence Journal, then in its last glory decades, I’d hike from our house in Fox Point and later the East Side among the architectural marvels of College Hill to the Journal Building and back again at night – often very late. The homeward-bound trip was fine exercise because of the steep hill. Later on, however, when I became an “executive’’ I found that I no longer had the time and drove. It was frustrating.A

I fixed a lot of problems on these walks, which I did in all weather, including the Blizzard of ’78.

They come and they go and they come back

2020 U.S. Census enumerator’s kit

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary’’ in GoLocal24.com

The  2020 U.S. Census figures, in general, weren’t surprising. Population growth slowed to 7.4 percent in the stretch since 2010, the lowest since the Great Depression, when the population only rose 7.3 percent. The Sunbelt  continued to draw many new residents, though not as fast as most demographers had predicted. So the Sunbelt’s megastates – Texas and Florida –  picked up congressional seats – Texas two and Florida one; the economic dynamo North Carolina also got one new seat. (I don’t include California in the Sunbelt. It lost a seat.)

The big news around here (which surprised me) was that Rhode Island  held onto enough people to retain its two congressional seats. Massachusetts will keep its nine seats and Connecticut its five.  I attribute much of Rhode Island’s minor triumph to the great wealth-and-job-creation machine of Greater Boston, which spills into Rhode Island. 

The Census data let New England maintain its 21 seats in the U.S. House, where for the first time in a half-century none of the region’s six states lost a seat!

Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the more attractive and prosperous  parts of the North, especially New England, see substantial population increases in the next decade as the Sunbelt problems  cited below lead to some reverse migration, spawned by our relatively moderate weather (and lots of freshwater) and our rich technological, health-care and education complexes, beauty, generally low crime rates and sense of community and history.  In any event, I doubt that the population of the country as a whole, or the economy, will surge in the Twenties, which unlike the last century’s Twenties, probably won’t be “roaring’’ for long. The demographics, including our low birth rate, don’t suggest a long-term  national boom (or crash) is coming.

The assumption has been that the Census data will give the increasingly far-right Republican Party yet more clout. Maybe in the short run, but the folks moving into Sunbelt states from the Northeast, Rust Belt and California include many liberals who continue to want the sort of  Democratic Party-promoted public services they had back north and in California. Thus,  especially in Sunbelt metro areas, Democrats are fairly steadily increasing their share of the electorate.  Strange political times! The Democrats have been moving toward  European-style social democracy while parts of the GOP embrace neo-fascism.

The migration to the Sunbelt, although it’s slowing, is putting ever-increasing strains on its states’ generally thin social services and inadequate public infrastructure, as witness the Texas power-grid collapse in February.

The Sunbelt increasingly faces the heavy traffic, soaring home prices and other aspects of density that metro areas of the Northeast and California have long had to deal with. Addressing them will require major political  and policy changes. The low taxes (except sales taxes), cheap real estate and wide open roads will not continue in large parts of the Sunbelt.

And this comes as the South faces the nation’s worst effects (with the possible exception of California) of global warming – including stronger hurricanes and other storms, more floods,  more droughts and longer heat waves. God help Florida and the Gulf Coast as the seas keep rising.

The climate crisis has already turned away some people from the South, even as it requires  very expensive infrastructure work to address. That means higher taxes, which the GOP hates more than anything else, especially when they’re imposed on the wealthy.  The two most important Republican constituencies are the very rich (many of them via inheritance) and rural and exurban voters.

So I think that the Sunbelt will become increasingly politically competitive. The Census figures strongly suggest that. And New England will do all right, with or without “climate refugees.’’ 

Going forward, the New England states would do well to cooperate in formulating tax and other policies  so as not to cannibalize themselves in marketing the compact region to business and individuals, especially to those in the Sunbelt and the Mountain States, the other high-growth region, that might be having second thoughts about where they’ve moved to in recent years.

Find safer places for homeless

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

“Tent cities” of homeless people are all over the place. A particularly noticeable one was the camp just closed down in Pawtucket on the west bank of the Seekonk River to make way for a soccer-stadium project, which might actually get built.

Many, probably most, of the people at this camp are mentally ill.  In these places they might find kindred spirits but they also face such dangers as exposure to the elements, assaults and thefts. And the atmosphere is conducive to alcohol and drug abuse.

These tent cities have been common since the de-institutionalization movement that got going in the late ‘60s, when officials hoped that new psychotropic medications would allow many of the mentally ill to be released from state mental hospitals, saving taxpayers money.  But for many mentally ill people this didn’t work out because they didn’t like the side-effects of these meds for such illnesses as schizophrenia and manic-depression (aka bi-polar disease). For that matter, some of these people like feeling “crazy.’’

Or some have not been  given adequate guidance on how to use the meds or don’t have a way to pay for them or can’t get to pharmacies to get them.

I think that we need more mental hospitals for long-term care. As for those people, mentally ill or not, who actually prefer to live in settings like tent cities, the states and localities should consider setting aside permanent places for them on public land, or rent space from private landowners, where the “campers’’ could be better monitored by police, social workers and public-health agencies. Moveable tent cities pose too many dangers. And be they temporary or permanent, they should not be near regular residential or commercial areas; they are too disruptive.

Folks seeking help with serious mental-health and/or substance-abuse problems might want to look at this Rhode Island state Web site to find available spaces at institutions.

A little decorum, please

Not exactly asking for this

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

Rhode Island state Sen. Jonathon Acosta calls a proposed Senate dress code mandating that such traditional business clothing as jackets and collared  shirts for men and blouses for women  be worn in the chamber is somehow ‘’oppression’’ by white culture. In fact, such clothing, whatever its origins in Western culture, has long since become near-universal as a sign of seriousness, decorum and respect for the organizations that people work for. Just look at what people wear in international organizations.

Consider that officials of China, the ultimate non-Western power, all wear “Western”  business clothes. I don’t think that they feel oppressed by this.

Stop the ATV angst in Providence

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

It seems that Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration has been unwilling or unable, at least until recently, to  strictly enforce laws against the use of ATV vehicles and dirt bikes on city streets, despite the  very serious public-safety and quality-of-life issues such vehicles pose, especially given the arrogant, selfish and menacing irresponsibility of some of their riders.  Indeed, the mayor has expressed an interest in legalizing their use on city streets, for those who would receive licenses and insurance for such use, although he has more recently back-tracked on that.

So, as a recent GoLocalProv.com article suggested, perhaps  Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee should send in the State Police to arrest these riders. ATV’s and dirt bikes don’t belong on city streets.

To read the editorial, please hit this link.

Will in-person town meetings Zoom away?

Town meeting in Huntington. Vt.

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

March is New England town meeting time, but this year many – most?  -- such proceedings have been virtual, by Zoom, etc. I suppose that in some towns the in-person meeting may never come back. That’s in part because so many people have gotten so used to inter-acting most of the day on screens, and attending virtual meetings is easier for many people than going there physically. But easier doesn’t necessarily mean better. (Is the  long lack of in-person encounters making some people more timid?)

I’ve attended town meetings over the years in various communities. It’s hard to beat the up-close-and-personal encounters and voting in person, if you’re looking for basic democracy. At many of them, votes are taken by voice or a show of hands. Seeing the body language, and hearing the informal chats before and after the meetings, the often entertaining free-form debates, the droll, sardonic remarks of the town moderators, and reading the  paper documents explaining the proposals to be voted on – all good stuff.

And there’s something seasonally heartening about town meetings. They come as winter is losing its grip, there’s a smell of thawing earth in the air and the sunlight is brighter. They’re a marker of spring.

The Town House of Marlboro, Vt., was built in 1822 to be used for town meetings, which had previously been held in private homes. It is still in use today.

The future of work and Greater Boston's 'meds and eds'

Downtown Boston: Who will fill those now mostly vacant offices?

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

Last November, Bill Gates predicted that half of business travel and 30 percent of “days in the office” would disappear forever. Meanwhile, the McKinsey Global Institute says that a mere 20 percent of business travel won’t return and about 20 percent of workers might be working from home indefinitely. Whomever you believe, all this means far fewer jobs at hotels, restaurants and downtown shops, even as the pandemic has speeded the automation of (i.e., killing of)  many office jobs  (including home office jobs) and  more factory jobs.

So what can government do to train people for new, post-pandemic jobs, assuming that  there will be many? How can vocational and other schools be brought into this project? The trades – electricians, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, etc., will probably have the most secure, and generally well compensated, jobs going forward, along with physicians, dentists and nurses as well as engineers of all sorts and computer-software and other techies.

Another part of the jobs package should be a WPA-style program to rebuild America’s infrastructure, which the drive for lower taxes and higher short-term profits has dangerously eroded. (See Texas again.) This has undermined the nation’s long-term economic health. Such a program could also serve to train many people in new, post-pandemic skills that would be useful even as automation accelerates.

Of course there will always be jobs available for very low-paid personal-help people, such as home  health-care workers. Indeed, the aging of the population means that we’ll need a lot more of them 

Andrew Yang,  an entrepreneur who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in  2020, made  addressing the looming threat of automation-caused job losses a key part of his campaign, which he suspended before the pandemic. He has proposed giving Americans a $12,000-a-year “basic income’’ to help get them through the developing employment implosion. It may come to that….

Meanwhile, “meds and eds’’ – Greater Boston’s (of which Rhode Island is on the edge) dense medical, technological and higher-education complexes – will help save it at least from the worst of the long-term economic disruption caused by the pandemic. Much research must be done  by teams in labs; technological breakthroughs require a lot of in-person collaboration, and most college students will continue to want and need in-person teaching. Further, Greater Boston is an international venture-capital and company start-up center. These high-risk activities also require a lot of in-person, look-‘em-in-the-eye work.

On the other hand, Boston’s banks and its famed retirement-investment companies, such as Fidelity, will never have as many employees working in its offices as before COVID-19; nor will its innumerable law firms. Many offices in high rises in downtown Boston (and Providence) will remain empty for a long time while architects, engineers and interior designers try to figure o

Lawrence moves out of its funk

The old Ayer Mill building on the Merrimack River in Lawrence

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

Old cities can be brought back, if not to their boom times,  at least to more stability and even a modicum of prosperity. An example to watch is Lawrence, Mass., an old mill town on the Merrimack River. Even with the effects of the pandemic, the city is much better off than it was a decade ago, when Boston Magazine called it “City of the Damned” – a center of rising crime and poverty. (I spent some time there back in the fall of 1968, when I was teaching high school  next door, in North Andover, Mass. It was a downer then but it still had a fair number of mills operating and was far from the disaster it became by 1990.)

A group called the Lawrence Partnership has been a key to the city’s economic and social revival. This includes a bunch of business and other community leaders formed in 2014 to “stimulate economic development and improve the quality of life” in Lawrence.  This group has helped strengthen the city’s finances, cut crime, improve education and lure new business. COVID has made things more difficult, of course, but the city’s leaders are pressing on.

Lessons for cities in southeastern New England? Hit this link to learn more.

In the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, Massachusetts National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets surround a parade of strikers.

In Lawrence, the bizarre High Service Water Tower (1895), also called Tower Hill Water Tower, named an American Water Landmark in 1979 by the American Water Works Association

Urban uplift

Downtown Providence in 1844

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

Providence officials, aided by professional planners, are trying to envisage how to improve the city’s downtown by stitching it together more tightly after car-dependent, suburban impulses have tended to fragment it.

Manuel Cordero, co-founder of the nonprofit DownCity Design, said “The idea is to create spaces that are welcoming and vibrant, and to address some of the longstanding issues, such as lighting and accessibility, to create a better set of interconnected spaces for our downtown.’’

Of course, every city needs to try to implement the best design ideas to adjust to changing demographics, technology, architecture, engineering and economics. But that might be even trickier than usual now because of the uncertainties of COVID-19. How might the pandemic permanently change how we live in, work in and visit cities?

To read ecoRI News’s report on this, please hit this link

The new Amtrak train hall in the Pennsylvania Station complex.

— Photo by Jim.henderson

One very good piece of urban news, especially for those of us in the Northeast Corridor:  A new, natural-light-filled train hall opened Friday in New York’s Penn Station complex. It has 92-foot-high ceilings and glass skylights and recalls the  glorious masterpiece that was the Beaux-Arts Pennsylvania Station, opened in 1910 and torn down in ‘60’s. It was replaced by the hideous cavelike, dank,  dark  and overcrowded Penn Station that we all hate – the busiest train station in America.

The new hall is in the James A. Farley Post Office building, across Eighth Avenue from the main Penn Station, which is under Madison Square Garden.

The facility will only serve Amtrak and Long Island Railroad passengers, at least initially. Subway and other riders/victims must continue to use the old station. But more changes are planned in the passenger-rail complex – by far America’s busiest – in coming years.

What a nice way for New York City, which  suffered much from the COVID catastrophe in 2020, to start the new year. And maybe it will inspire the political will to fix a lot more of America’s decayed transportation infrastructure. Big things can still be done, even in mostly gridlocked America, with strong and brave leadership.

The Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully (1920-2017) famously bemoaned the destruction of the 1910 Pennsylvania Station: “Through Pennsylvania Station one entered the city like a god. Perhaps it was really too much. One scuttles in now like a rat.”

The colorful and complex life of a great physician and art patron

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

fWe’re also lucky that New England is so welcoming to  the arts, with Rhode Island and Boston the centers. You get a good sense of this reading the new  autobiography in the form of a graphic novel called Chazan!: Unfiltered about the Ocean State’s leading patron of living local artists, Joseph Chazan, M.D.

Joe Chazan, who is now 85, is a  physician, scientist and very successful businessman (kidney-dialysis services) and has been a big figure around here  for a long time. His  often humorous, larger-than-life personality has energized civic culture.

Besides the exciting (funny, sad, educational and a lot in-between) story of Dr. Chazan’s life from its very modest beginnings, the book serves as a panoramic view of the local art scene, showing the work of many artists, some well known, some not. With art work by Erminio Pinque, script/story work by Lenny Schwartz, story work by Bradley Starr and help from others, the book entertains even those who may have known nothing about Dr. Chazan’s  decades of supporting local artists, including, for example, helping to start AS220, the downtown Providence arts center. (Full disclosure: My wife, a painter, is one of the many artists listed in the book.)

All too often, rich people chase status by only buying the work of famous artists. But Joe Chazan seeks out little known but promising artists and helps some of them become well known. He knows that there are plenty of hidden treasures around here.

Hit this link for more information about the book, including how to buy it.

And now what?

A First Night ice sculpture in Boston

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

On and about New Year’s Day we talk about time more than usual – past, present and future. But what is the present since we’re always moving through time?

So what have we learned, or relearned, in this crummy year? Well, on the list might be:

That there are far too many variables in heaven and earth to confidently make predictions about big stuff. You  can only try to mitigate your vulnerability to an infinite number of risks. And most of us have big failures of imagination -- e.g., the possibility that a bunch of terrorists could fly airlines into skyscrapers and that we’d have the biggest pandemic since 1918 -- and so we don’t adequately prepare for many disasters that are inevitable but whose timing can’t be known.

(I’m waiting for a really big earthquake hereabouts.)

That in-person communication is almost always better than via a screen.

That many  of us have learned to appreciate more than we had certain small pleasures that we had too often ignored before, such as  walking outside on a mild, sunny morning.

That, generally, sitting in restaurants with your friends is better than getting takeout.

That global warming and its effects are moving along at a faster pace than expected.

That our ability to pollute the earth grows ever wider – consider that microplastics have been found in the placentas of babies, with unknown health risks – and that  thrown-away face masks  are making a mess on land and in the water.

Hit this link.

That reading a book – especially  a good, solid hardcover one --  can be much more satisfying than watching TV.

That investing in dry-cleaning stores is unwise.

That having lots of locally based shops and eateries  within walking distance of where you live is a gift and that it’s worth supporting them as much as possible.

That sidewalks should be widened so that more of our social and commercial life can take place outdoors. 

That America needs more trades people – plumbers, electricians, roofers, carpenters, etc. – and the apprentice programs and vocational schools to train them -- than it needs more college graduates. Indeed, bring back “shop’’ classes in the public schools. Our COVID house arrests have reminded millions of how many things  need fixing in our homes and how few people are available to fix them.

That, as we’ve seen in who shows up on TV  as victims in the COVID crisis, there are far too many single-family households, led only by the mother. America needs a revival of marriage and of holding fathers economically and otherwise responsible for the children they help create.

That  so many Americans own big expensive cars, especially SUVs -- even poor people lining up in their cars for food pantry stuff.

That tens of millions of Americans will devoutly follow a sociopathic/psychotic demagogue, whatever the easily ascertainable extent of his lies and viciousness, suggests that the future of the American democratic experiment may be in deep peril.

That science’s ability to save us is vast (consider the super-fast invention of COVID-19 vaccines!) even as science applied by evil people can threaten us.

xxx

Let’s hope for a grand reopening by June, anti-vaxxers permitting.

And maybe the best New Year’s resolution is to decide to tolerate who we have become and to look at the roads that brought us here more clinically than emotionally.

xxx

I have a pile of old magazines – Life, Look, etc. -- from the ‘50s and ‘60s that I like to browse from time to time. It’s a bit of an education in cultural change, both  the ads – lots of them are for cigarettes and gasoline and now bizarre- looking health products –  and the often stilted language of the articles.

Too bad that most print magazines have died. People 50 years from now would enjoy seeing in a physical format what Americans in 2020 were like.

Catch the Pawtuxet polluters

Scum at the waterfall on the South Branch of the Pawtuxet River at the grand Royal Mills complex, in West Warwick. The Royal Mills, built in 1890 and then rebuilt in 1920, after a fire, was for years the site of a major textile mill making stuff under the brand name of Fruit of the Loom — a brand still extant.

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

Attention Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management,  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State Police! What’s  the source of the revolting yellow scum and suds that appear on the South Branch of the oft-scenic Pawtuxet River, particularly when the water is high after a rainstorm? It’s especially noticeable at the otherwise beautiful waterfall along the Royal Mills complex, in West Warwick.

This pollution is killing birds and other wildlife, and proximity to it can’t be good for people either.

Locals have been asking the DEM for several years to find out why this is  happening and to stop it, but as yet nothing has happened.

Is this industrial waste? There’s not much industry left in the valley. So is the pollution draining from an old closed factory? From sewers?

Or, as seems  much more likely,  are people  dumping stuff  directly into the river, which would be a crime? These sorts of miscreants, often dressing in black to avoid detection, particularly favor dumping at night to avoid the expense and inconvenience of proper disposal.

Anyway, this has gone on far too long!

Sort of the way it should look

Those screaming invaders

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

“It’s time to ban leaf blowers. The decibel level is a health hazard. Raking works.’’

Bravo to Richard Goldberg for posting this observation on the Next Door site.

See:

https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?

For weeks every fall,  and then again in the spring, affluent homeowners hire yard crews with screaming, gasoline-powered leaf blowers to make life utterly miserable for their human neighbors, as well as other animal life in the area, for hours  a day. These infernal devices also emit copious quantities of air pollution. They’re  a menace to health and should  have been banned long ago. With so many people now forced to work at home, they’re hurting the health of many more people than ever.  (Electric leaf blowers are quieter and don’t emit pollution.)

And we notice that the ears and lungs of many of the workers wielding these monsters aren’t protected. More than a few seem to be illegal aliens, who lack  workplace protections. They don’t dare complain.

Hit this link to read a discussion  in Newton, Mass., on the general public-health awfulness of gasoline-powered leaf blowers.

Yes, indeed, it’s time to ban gasoline-powered leaf blowers, at least in residential neighborhoods.

Economy looking wetter in Rhode Island

The tiny, five-turbine wind farm off Block Island. It’s still the only offshore wind farm in the U.S. even as there are huge offshore wind farms in Europe.

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

It’s always good to see the Ocean State taking more advantage of, well, the ocean. There are two developments worthy of note. One is Gov.  Gina Raimondo’s plan, working with National Grid, for Rhode Island to get 600 more megawatts of offshore wind power, as part of her hope to get all of Rhode Island’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. That’s probably unrealistic but a worthy goal nonetheless. Certainly it would be a boon for the state’s economy to have that regionally generated power. Ultimately, with the development of new advanced batteries to store electricity, it would lower our power costs while making our electricity more reliable, helping to clean the air, slowing global warming and providing many well-paying jobs.

There is, however, the danger that if the Trump regime stays in power, it will slow or even sabotage offshore-wind development because it’s in bed with the fossil-fuel sector.

Then there’s the happy news that the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation plans to buy more land for the Port of Providence. This would come from a $70 million port-improvement bond issue that voters approved in 2016. $20 million of that is for expanding the Port of Providence. Considering its geography and location, Rhode Island for more than a century has used far too little of its potential to host major ports, with of course Providence and Quonset being the main sites.

Observers see considerable synergies between those ports and big offshore-wind operations off southeastern New England, much of which could be served from Rhode Island, as well as from New Bedford.

Please hit these links to learn more:

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/national-grid-to-develop-600-mw-offshore-wind-rfp-for-rhode-island/587866/

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rhode-island/articles/2020-10-27/after-4-years-state-moves-to-buy-land-near-providence-port

Police are asked to do too much

— Photo by Scott Davidson

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

There’s something to be said for those fliers cropping up in Providence that say “Don’t Call the Police. Scan for Alternatives’’ around a bar code. The Providence Journal’s Madeleine List wrote about this in the Oct. 27 paper.

If you scan the QR code with your smartphone you’ll be taken to a Web site that lists agencies that city residents can use to obtain assorted services, such as for housing, mental health and substance-abuse issues.  These are things that the police don’t necessarily have to be brought into.

Unfortunately, Ms. List’s article says, the list also includes domestic violence. The police need to handle that.

The main point, to me, is that police are called upon all too often to act as social workers rather than as anti-crime and public-safety personnel. There’s no way that cops can be trained  and otherwise resourced to adequately address  all the problems that they’re unfairly called upon to face these days. School personnel are also increasingly asked to serve as social workers, especially in places with lots of dysfunctional and impoverished families, many with only one parent around – the mother. The more of these functions that can be spun off to specialized agencies the better.

Of course, some of these problems are intertwined. Much criminal behavior is caused by perpetrators’ mental illness. So you sometimes need to bring in the police and social services.

Where are you?

Central Philadelphia was laid out by Thomas Holme in 1683 according to this sketch and was the first city to use numbered streets systematically.

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

I’ve lived in, let me see, more than 10 places and early on came to appreciate the emotional and other baggage connected with street addresses and how interesting the origin of street names can be.

So Deirdre Mask’s volume The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power caught my eye. There are some little mistakes (such as calling the Massachusetts State House , in Boston, the “Senate House”) because book publishers in general have laid off too many copy editors. But Ms. Mask is very engaging and ingenious as she tours the world, exploring cities’ colorful and sometimes unsettling address histories, including how the Nazis’ eliminated street names with Jewish references. Tokyo’s address system is particularly bizarre.

Her last chapter is titled “Are Street Addresses Doomed’’.

A big takeaway of the book is how much government wants you to have a precise street address so, among other things, it can tax you, arrest you and draft you. Addresses weren’t created so you could find your way.

Unprofessional clamming

— Photo by Invertzoo

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

In one part of my brain it’s endless summer, as I was reminded by Dr. Ed Iannuccilli’s  recent column  in GoLocal about crabbing as a kid on the Rhode Island shore. (Hit this link to read the doctor’s sweet essay: https://www.golocalprov.com/articles/dr.-ed-iannuccilli-crabbin-on-a-summer-evening)

My paternal grandparents lived in a gray-shingle house on West Falmouth Harbor, on the Cape side of Buzzards Bay. (The house has since been torn down and replaced by a monstrosity twice as  high.) The harbor once had vast numbers of quahogs and more than a few oysters, too. We kids would wade out on the flats, collect the shellfish in a bag and bring them back to a stone dock, where we’d smash them to get at the meat, over which we’d squeeze a lemon,  and eat right there. Very messy and unprofessional. This was before our father showed us how to open them with a special knife, which I don’t think I could do now. I fuzzily remember that he could do it with one hand, and with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

On those seemingly open-ended days, a southwest wind was always blowing off Buzzards Bay, the air was  always about 76 degrees, as was the water, and the haze  turned into a purple fog in the late afternoon as the catboats and the bluefish and striped-bass seekers returned to the harbor from the usually choppy open bay.

A big oil spill in 1969 closed the harbor to legal  shellfishing for decades.  (Still, people, especially poor immigrants from Southeast Asia, would come clamming anyway and probably  lied to the stores and restaurants about where their shellfish came from). But something good came from the disaster: West Falmouth Harbor became an internationally known place  for research into the effects of oil spills and how to remediate them, in large part because the Marine Biological Laboratory was just down the road, in Woods Hole.

I’ll always remember the late ‘50s under a hazy sun as I dug into the sand to pull out a delectable quahog.

Easier than Walt Disney World

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

In a happy reminder of summer, there’s an elderly Cape Cod couple’s uber-charming and kitschy (36-hole) Sandwich Mini Golf, on what used to be a cranberry bog. Construction started on the course back in 1950.

"Even in the winter, he’s repainting," Sylvia Burke said of her husband, Maurice (“Mo’’), who started construction on the course in 1950, when he was 15, reported WBUR’s Gary Waleik back in 2016. "In the evening hours, he’ll be busy carving signs. Every sign that’s on the mini golf is all hand-carved by him." There’s a Mo’s Mountain on the course, by the way.  The attraction is squeezed between scenic Route 6 A and a salt marsh. (Salt marshes are the defining characteristic of the Cape Cod Bay side of the peninsula.)  A brook flows under the course’s bridges, around a simulated giant lily pad and past a white whale and a lighthouse – all very Cape Coddish.

“I love Sandwich Mini Golf because each time I play there, I feel like a kid. My wife and children seem to love it as much as I do. It’s one of our very happy places,’’ Mr. Waleik wrote.

To read his story, please hit this link.

To see the Sandwich Mini Golf Web site, hit this link.

Sandwich was a famous early glass-making center (lots of sand with which to make it) — “Sandwich Glass’’ — and one of America’s earliest Quaker centers.

Boardwalk in Sandwich marshes



Gaze at the greening

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

“I’m not sure why I touched it.

A crocus tip can be more dazzling,

And a boy would rather throw dice

Or marbles than be soft-hearted.’’

-- From “Last Patch of Snow,’’ by George Abbe (1911-89), a New England poet and novelist

Back in the ‘80s, the French still sometimes used a macabre phrase about lovely weather that translates to “the most beautiful weather since 1940.’’ That’s in reference to the lovely late spring of that year, which helped the Germans invade France and commence their homicidal plus-four-year occupation. I think of that when walking around and admiring the tree buds opening and the flowers that have been blooming so early this year after our mild and nearly snowless winter.  Beautiful wild nature and not-so-beautiful wild nature (e.g., viruses) meets human nature. Not that nature cares one way or another.

Enjoy gazing at the slowly greening grass. Green is a soothing color.

The latest New England campus architecture

Business Innovation Hub at UMass, Amherst; new Design Building to the left.
Photo by Bjarke Ingels Group

Architectural critic and historian Willliam Morgan has written an exciting column, with splendid photos, in GoLocal24.com about  some new campus architecture in New England. It’s a very nice tour d’horizon.

 To read Mr. Morgan’s piece, please hit this link.