Vox clamantis in deserto
Rock art, thanks to the Ice Age
“Rock Rest”, an installation by Dan Snow , at the Brattleboro (Vt.) Museum & Art Center.
He says:
“Maybe because, topographically speaking, the museum area is Brattleboro’s lowest point, it’s where, for me, many memories have settled over the years. Within ear-shot here, linotype machines once clattered away in the press room of the Daily Reformer. And it’s where I went after school in the mid-60s to fill my canvas newspaper sack before heading out on my delivery route.
“The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center is now one of our town’s shining lights. And with the dedication of the BMAC Sculpture Garden we’ve taken another step toward making this area attractive and pleasing to all the senses. I hope the stone seats and perches I’ve created here will be enjoyed by everyone, but especially by children—they deserve to have fun, safe spaces for their downtown adventures.
“During my working life I’ve shifted freely, back and forth, from artist to dry stone waller. With ‘Rock Rest,’ I enjoyed the creative process so much that I built the piece twice; once in my Dummerston stone yard and once here beside the museum. The stone was initially collected from a steep slope on a wooded property in Townshend, Vt. It lay there for 12,000 years after being plucked from the ledges by the last ice age. In ‘Rock Rest,’ I’ve attempted to simulate the natural process that turns the bedrock into loose stone.’’
Chris Powell: Did senator’s political frenzy give him a stroke?
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy
MANCHESTER, Conn.
His doctor says that Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy's stroke was minor and a full recovery is expected. Even so, that recovery is said to require weeks of rehabilitation, rest, and absence from from the senator's job, which will be left to his staff members, who can do many things for him but can't cast his vote in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the state's Democratic Party has many ambitious officeholders whose wishes for the senator's recovery may not be so heartfelt.
The circumstances here invite reflection by the senator and everyone involved in politics.
For strokes can be caused by high blood pressure, and Murphy has spent much of this year traveling the country stridently agitating against the Trump administration and riling up people in his pursuit of the leadership of the leftward faction of the Democratic Party. It seemed like preparation for a presidential candidacy. Murphy's senatorial duties did not require that; his ambition did.
Of course there would be no progress without ambition, and maybe there is no successful ambition without high blood pressure, but the country's political blood pressure lately has been far too high. Murphy is only 53 and a stroke at that age suggests excessive strain.
Responsibility for the country's high political blood pressure rests first with President Trump's crude and often hateful demeanor and megalomania, for which his party, the Republicans, paid heavily in mid-term elections. But that demeanor has been answered just as crudely and hatefully by many Democrats, sometimes to the point of censorship and violence.
Trump and Murphy each have been appealing to the angriest people, the political extremes, seeing them as the best sources of political advantage.
While the president says he wants to work with the new Democratic majority in Congress, it's probably too much to expect him to appreciate the country's recent verdict against him and to try to suppress his megalomania and improve his demeanor.
But the senator now has a medical reason to think things over and consider a different approach to getting attention, and even in the Democratic Party there may be many people who don't have to be shrieked at and enraged before they take notice and listen.
When so many people are angry and convinced of their own righteousness, the most notable voice may be a calm, reasonable one. For soft words still turn away wrath, and the spirit of liberty is still, as Learned Hand said, the spirit that is not too sure that it's right.
* * *
Richard Blumenthal served so long as Connecticut's attorney general -- 20 years -- that his young son came to think his father's title was "eternal general." Now that Blumenthal, 80, has represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate for 15 years and indicated the other day that he will seek a fourth six-year term in 2028, when he would be 82, maybe he will come to be considered the eternal senator.
Could Blumenthal really accomplish that? He seems to be in good health, doesn't look a day over 75, and still finds ways of highlighting political issues (and himself) nearly every week. In any case the results of the mid-term election in Connecticut suggest that as long as Blumenthal was on the Democratic line he could be re-elected even if he had departed to the real eternity.
The senator can be admired for his work ethic; he long ago could have retired to luxurious leisure. He seems to be one of those people who can't imagine doing something else or taking it easy, people who can conceive of no other identity or purpose in life. But he is expected to become the oldest serving Democratic senator next year, and ambitious younger Democratic politicians who are not praying too hard for Senator Murphy's recovery might start to wonder if Blumenthal has become as vulnerable within the party as U.S. Rep. John B. Larson was shown to be in the Democratic primary he lost this year. Indeed, Democratic primaries may become Connecticut's only competitive elections.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Bay State’s long history of nannyism
“Nurse and Child,’’ by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
{Massachusetts} “became a ‘nanny state’ well before the term was born. In the 1630s, the General Court {legislature} prescribed dress codes for citizens and imposed wage and price controls….In 1894, well before the advent of automobiles, Massachusetts implemented an array of restrictions on bicycle riding….And long before Prohibition (or the abolition of ‘happy hour’ in the 1980s), the state had banned the sale of liquor to anyone receiving public assistance.’’
— Robert David Sullivan (born 1968), American journalist and editor
They animate ‘our common home’
"Blossom Allée II” (oil on linen), by Luise Kaish, in the show “Among the Trees,’’ at the Fairfield (Conn.) University Art Museum, Jan. 29-Aug. 7.
The museum says:
“Taking both its title and its cue from a poem by Mary Oliver, this exhibition invites viewers to immerse themselves in the sustaining energy of trees and forests. Curated by Carey Weber, executive director of the Fairfield University Art Museum, the exhibition brings together paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and textile works that explore the endless artistic responses to trees - the giants that give shelter, color, and the very breath that animates our common home.’’
Mia Cobb: Brain scans show dogs can distinguish between fear and sadness in humans
“Anxious Dog” (oil on canvas), part of a large and varied series of dog paintings over the years by Providence-based artist Nancy Spears Whitcomb.
From The Conversation, except for image above.
What causes a dog to slink away from a cranky person, when they will quietly approach and lean against someone who is weeping? We’ve all seen it – they can respond to our feelings. And science agrees dogs have emotions too.
These social skills could underpin dogs’ success in living with us. But do you think your dog could tell an angry person’s face from a sad or fearful one?
New research published in the journal iScience explored that question, and revealed interesting findings from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of dogs’ brains.
Scanning dogs’ brains
Dogs are sensitive to human faces. They look longer in response to our emotional expressions and sounds compared with neutral ones.
Scientists weren’t sure whether dogs were just differentiating “good mood” (happy) from “bad mood” (angry, fearful or sad), or treating these expressions as genuine indicators of different emotions.
The new study, by Raúl Hernández-Pérez, a neuroscientist at the University of Vienna, and colleagues, explored this gap using MRI to scan pet dogs’ brains while they were viewing photos of human faces.
Building on their earlier work, the researchers found evidence that dogs do process images of our distinct emotional expressions differently.
The researchers used machine learning and showed that when looking at a dog’s whole brain, a different brain region was activated to distinguish between fear and sadness (the right rostral suprasylvian gyrus, to be precise), than between fear and anger (this was in the right mid ectosylvian gyrus and left splenial gyrus).
The analysis didn’t detect a difference in the brain areas activated when dogs were shown images of human anger and sadness. Fear stood out from the other negative emotions.
This raises the question: why?
It might be that fear and anger are simply more attention-grabbing than sadness.
Other research has found dogs react to fear and anger faster, and with a bigger physical response, such as a raised heart rate. This is likely because they’re the expressions most likely to call for a quick response from dogs to stay safe.
Sadness is less likely to pose a direct threat to dogs living with people, so they experience less urgency to respond to it. We know some dogs don’t respond with the heroic Lassie behavior we might like when we are in distress.
Although the numbers in this new research were small (eight and twelve dogs across the two parts of the study), this is the first MRI-based proof-of-concept evidence that dog brains can distinguish between two human facial expressions of distinct negative emotions. It indicates dogs’ neural representation of our emotion goes beyond a simple valence (good/bad) split.
This shows us that perceiving emotion in others (even across species) isn’t handled by one single “emotion center” in the brain – in dogs, in humans, or in other animal species. It’s spread across a network of regions working together as part of living socially.
Dog trained to stay still while getting an fMRI. Laura V Cuaya, CC BY-NC
A sense-ational result
The authors of this study point out that using still images of humans is a very people-centred way to explore how dogs interpret our emotional states.
We know dogs live in rich sensory worlds where the scent and sound of our speech also convey emotions, shaping how dogs respond to us.
Read more: Dogs see their world through smell – and scientists are starting to translate it like never before
In fact, even wolves who have grown up around people show the same kind of response to the odour of human fear as dogs. This highlights the important role of learning, as distinct from evolutionary differences in canid bodies or how they respond to people. Dogs (and wolves) are learning about us in every interaction we have with them.
Dogs are adept at watching, smelling, and listening to our emotions, learning how these signals predict our behaviours toward them, and using this information to live with people harmoniously.
Returning the favor, learning more about how dogs express their emotions seems like the least we can do.
Mia Cobb is a research fellow at the Animal Welfare Research Center at the University of Melbourne. She receives funding from The Chaser Initiative and the University of Melbourne.
Llewellyn King: Artificial intelligence seems ‘exponential’
WEST WARWICK,R.I.
Artificial intelligence began in 1950 with British physicist Alan Turing’s landmark paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” It asked the question: Can machines think? It even proposed a test for the idea.
The name was coined five years later by John McCarthy as a title for a summer workshop, planned for the next year at Dartmouth College. That 1956 gathering was the beginning of AI as a formal subject of academic research.
In December 2014, another great British physicist, Stephen Hawking, told a BBC interviewer that AI could bring an end to the human race.
But for most of us AI, with its huge promise and Frankenstein threat, arrived in November 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT. It was a watershed moment, after which nothing has been the same.
Faster than any product ever, AI spread globally.
Nearly everyone with a computer and everyone who works with one has dived in. Partly because AI is so useful so immediately. But mostly because the world was already wired for it with the Internet.
‘
In four short years, it has changed how most of us do things with computers, whether we are in the high, thin air of inventors and AI researchers or simply looking for a recipe for French onion soup. AI became an instant part of life, like shoes and cell phones, here to stay.
I became interested in AI when I read the foreboding pronouncement by Hawking. Later, ChatGPT fired up the afterburners of my curiosity.
I have been reporting on AI regularly and, along with my colleague Adam Clayton Powell III, have recorded many episodes on it for White House Chronicle, on PBS and SiriusXM Radio.
‘
The great stories of my long life in journalism have been the end of the colonial empires, the Cold War, the energy crisis of the 1970s and 1980s and, now, AI. These big events of my life had a trajectory — a beginning, a middle and an end.
AI is different. It will always be with us.
I will wager that AI will be more consequential and transformative than any of the mileposts of history, such as the printing press and the steam engine.
I remain uncertain about the nature of its impact but overall, I am looking to it to do more good than harm. That is just a guess not an informed conclusion.
I have interviewed people from across the AI spectrum. But the most pertinent words about it have come from Omar Hatamleh, a scientist of relentless curiosity and courageous thought.
He told me the problem with probing AI is “it is exponential, and we are linear thinkers.”
I first met Hatamleh, a native of Jordan who was educated in Spain and who worked for NASA for 29 years, when he was chief innovation officer at the Johnson Space Center. I was struck by the originality of his thinking.
When AI heated up, he moved to the Goddard Space Flight Center as chief AI officer. He retired early this year and is now devoted to writing and researching.
Bearing in mind Hatamleh’s law that in probing the possibilities of AI, one is doing so with linearity and it is exponential, these things emerge:
Productivity and efficiency leap forward. A lot of repetitive jobs disappear.
Medicine vaults ahead, along with life expectancy.
Intellectual property is threatened. The world built on words — including the law, journalism, education, and the theater and film arts — are thrown into chaos. And certifying truth becomes critical.
Warfare becomes more dangerous as it gets less predictable.
I believe AI will eventually develop to a point where it will police itself or will be educated to police itself, so that AI agents and their underlying neural networks don’t continue to run amok.
I have no evidence for that scenario, just a strong belief that the moral strictures, rules and codes of human civilization, on which AI is trained, will come into play —that AI will get some kind of conscience.
When I asked Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, about this supposition, it was ambivalent. It said it wasn’t yet clear where “emergent moral agency” would develop. In other words, my guess is as good as any other.
Good luck with AI. Even if you aren't interested in it, it is interested in you, as Leon Trotsky might have said.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com , and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Aneri Pattani: On providing housing with opioid-settlement money
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News (except for image above)
Jason Fazekas has spent most of his adult life on the street or behind bars. He was addicted to heroin for decades and often stole to support his habit. On rainy days, he slept in building stairwells to stay dry. On winter mornings, he woke up with fingers too numb to bend.
That all changed in September, when he moved into a one-bedroom apartment in East Haven, Conn.
“I never knew what it was like to have your own apartment, to live on your own, until this,” said Fazekas, 49.
Now he attends a daily treatment program and virtual “Sober at Seven” meetings. He makes grilled cheese and cold-cut sandwiches; works occasional jobs, such as cleaning out a truck; and is in bed most nights by 8:30.
This simple life is “the best thing in the world,” said Fazekas, who celebrated nine months of recovery in October.
That life has become his reality thanks to a housing program that the state of Connecticut funded with about $59 million in opioid-settlement cash, money paid by companies, such as CVS and Walgreens, accused of aggressively pushing painkillers and fueling the opioid crisis. The housing program provides people with substance-use disorders a rental voucher, a case manager to help them find and keep their home, and money to cover the costs of settling in, such as a security deposit or basic furniture.
Nationwide, state and local governments invested more than $340 million from opioid settlements into housing-related initiatives in 2025, according to an analysis by KFF Health News, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit focused on addiction. Some projects, like the one in Connecticut, are aimed directly at helping people most affected by the opioid epidemic. But others lack a clear connection to the crisis, leading to criticism by recovery advocates that the money is at risk of being squandered.
Opioid-settlement cash, expected to total about $60 billion over nearly two decades, is considered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address an overdose epidemic that has claimed more than 1 million lives in the United States since 2000. Although there are some spending guidelines, there is a lot of wiggle room, little oversight, and large gaps in the public’s ability to track the money.
To shed light on where funds are flowing, KFF Health News and its partners annually file public records requests, scour government websites, and assemble a database of expenditures by state and local governments, which are then sorted into categories such as treatment or prevention.
The result is the most comprehensive national resource of its kind: a catalog of more than 17,500 ways settlement cash was used (or left unspent) in 2025.
Of the roughly $3.7 billion publicly reported as spent or committed last year, about 9% went to housing initiatives, ranging from permanent housing like the Connecticut effort to temporary recovery housing and assistance in navigating complex applications and other social services.
Jurisdictions reported spending more than $340 million on housing-related initiatives, including rental vouchers and recovery housing, per public records. Although housing is not a main bucket of settlement spending or itself a core strategy recommended in most opioid agreements, it is an allowable use. The money allocated to it was similar to spending on the prevention bucket and greater than spending on the overdose reversal drugs core strategy.
Many public-health researchers, recovery advocates, and families affected by addiction are excited about the investments. Housing can stabilize people’s lives enough to get them into treatment and increase their chances of maintaining long-term recovery.
Settlement funds also provide flexibility at a time when the Trump administration opposes federal funds for efforts to house people before they’re sober — despite evidence that such policies are effective.
However, some people closely tracking settlement money worry that the lines will be blurred between general homelessness initiatives and those that focus specifically on people with substance use disorders. As jurisdictions continue to grapple with people living on the street and public backlash over encampments, they may be tempted to use opioid dollars to reduce the visibility of homelessness with little or no programmatic link to addiction.
“The most important piece” of investing settlement dollars “is maintaining that connection to opioid remediation and the populations impacted by opioid use disorder,” said Dan Kelly, who worked in housing and homelessness initiatives before joining the Michigan Association of Counties, where he guides local governments on settlement spending.
Connecticut is investing $58.6 million of opioid-settlement funds in a program called Housing Empowering Recovery from Opioids. It provides people with substance-use disorders a rental voucher, case management services, and funds to cover initial costs, such as a security deposit. From left: Kathleen Therrien and Marie Paulemon are case managers in the program, Amy Cedrone is a participant, Ben Werth is a peer support specialist, and Jason Fazekas is a participant.
Blurred Lines in Local Spending
In Connecticut, Fazekas and other participants must have a verified substance-use disorder to be eligible for the housing program.
Elsewhere, it’s less clear-cut.
For example, New Brunswick, New Jersey, spent $520,000 of its settlement funds on “homeless services.”
That may include crucial services for the general homeless population, recovery advocates say. But unless the money is targeted specifically to homeless people with substance use disorders, it may do little to address the overdose crisis. To some, that violates the spirit of the settlements.
J.T. Miller, a city spokesperson, did not answer questions about what specific services were funded or how they related to addiction. Instead, he wrote that settlement money was used to “support staff and services who actively engaged with the homeless population addressing ongoing assistance, prevention and drug addiction programs.” He shared a link to the city’s community services website, which did not mention addiction.
In a report to the state, the city wrote that the money was for “budgetary offsets and allocations” in its Department of Human and Community Services.
Recovery advocates have long feared that governments would use the opioid money to simply replace general taxpayer funding for existing services, rather than enhancing those services or creating new ones.
The database contains thousands of examples of how state and local governments spent or committed their opioid settlement funds in 2025, as reported in public documents. This glossary may help you interpret the reports, and this video can show you how to use the database, which is formatted similarly to ones that KFF Health News and its partners developed in previous years. You can also download the data to sort and filter it.
Disclaimer: This database is being shared as a public resource; however, it does not represent all opioid-settlement expenditures. Though our team undertook extensive searches, some reports may have been missed or released after our research period. Many jurisdictions do not produce public reports. And even in jurisdictions with public information, reports may not capture the full scope of planning, intent, and activities surrounding opioid settlement funds.
In Louisville, Kentucky, more than $1 million in settlement funds went to a Goodwill program called Another Way.
The program aims to reduce panhandling by gathering people who are on the street, taking them to work around the city — often picking up litter for a few hours — and paying them $50 plus lunch. They are connected to Goodwill’s resources on housing, job training, treatment, and more. Although participants may have substance use disorders, they are not screened for them.
In 2025, Another Way had about 1,800 participants, according to Goodwill Kentucky. Of those, about 270 gained full-time employment and about 240 connected to treatment, though a larger number may have a history of addiction.
Matt Mudd, a spokesperson for Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, said the city has invested opioid settlement funds in “proven programs that show positive impact and results.” Another Way provides a “data-proven pathway to treatment, housing, and employment,” he said.
To explain the program’s connection to addiction, he said, “Overdose is the number one cause of death for unhoused people.”
But Brittany Morris is skeptical that the program is a good fit for opioid dollars.
Another Way “helps people that are on the streets,” said Morris, who works at Vocal-KY, a nonprofit that advocates for policies addressing the overdose crisis and poverty. “But do I feel like it’s related to the opioid crisis? That’s basically implying every homeless person is a drug addict hooked on heroin.”
Danny Walker credits Goodwill Kentucky’s Another Way program with helping him transition from being homeless in Louisville to getting two part-time jobs, finding housing, and reconnecting with his family. The Another Way program gathers people who are on the street, takes them to work around the city, often picking up litter for a few hours, and pays them $50 plus lunch.
A Complex Connection
Many people assume homelessness and addiction go hand in hand.
But research suggests more nuance.
A large study on this topic was published last year, based on data from California, which accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s homeless population. It found that less than half (37%) of homeless people used illicit substances regularly in the prior six months. And 25% had never used drugs.
“Most people who are homeless do not have an addiction. And most people who have addictions are not homeless,” said Margot Kushel, a co-author of the study and the director of the University of California-San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
While the two issues are related, the connection is not as common or straightforward as people imagine, she said.
For example, the study found that 23% of people began regularly using illicit drugs only after becoming homeless. Addiction didn’t land them on the street, but the trauma of living there can push people to self-medicate, Kushel said. For example, some may use stimulants to stay awake at night to avoid being assaulted.
The complexity of this relationship means putting settlement money toward general homelessness services may not address the addiction crisis.
Humanity and Survival
That’s why some people with firsthand addiction experience want to see the funds flow to programs like the one that helped Dominic Sitz.
After years on the streets of Louisville, Sitz got housed in 2022.
Arthur Street Hotel, a transitional housing initiative that specialized in helping people with mental illness and substance use disorders, helped him along the way.
“It made me feel human again,” Sitz said of housing.
For the first 48 hours in his place, he locked his apartment door and slept on the tile floor. No food. No furniture. Just a sense of safety.
The Arthur Street Hotel had an annual budget of about $3.5 million and required a lot of staff and intensive case management, said Susan Buchino, executive director of CARE, the nonprofit that ran the facility. Her team often spent weeks earning people’s trust before they’d be ready to come inside.
Over its tenure, the program housed more than 400 people. It closed in July due to a lack of funding.
Sitz, now four years into recovery, wishes opioid settlement funds went to efforts like that, instead of Another Way.
More than $786 million nationwide was spent on or committed to housing, transportation, education, job training, and other support for people to maintain long-term recovery, per public records.
It’s not that the Goodwill program does not do good. It can put money in people’s pockets and potentially move them toward a better life. But it also isn’t specifically aimed at helping people with addiction.
Another drawback: It sometimes asks participants to do work that is traumatic or unsafe, local recovery advocates say.
For example, the program sometimes assigns homeless people to clean up street encampments. Participants may know people who live in the encampments or encounter them later on, Sitz said.
People do it to “have money just to survive,” he said. But “you got to go right back to the people whose stuff you just threw away, and that’s a dangerous situation.”
Sharon Allgeier, senior manager of homeless initiatives at Goodwill Kentucky, who created Another Way, said she’s never encountered such a problem.
“They’re happy to do the work,” she said. “Maybe because they know they’re going to get paid and they’re going to get fed lunch.”
Danny Walker, who participated in Another Way earlier this year, said police had cleared people out of the encampments before he and other participants arrived, so he wasn’t concerned.
He credits the program with helping him land his current part-time jobs at a Goodwill thrift store and Dairy Queen. He’s also gotten housed and is reconnecting with his grandkids after years of substance use and living on the street.
“I can look myself in the mirror and I can say, ‘Hey bud, you’re doing all right,’” Walker said.
Living Better
Although housing programs like the one in Connecticut are expensive, homelessness and addiction experts say they’re more likely to make a dent in the opioid crisis long term. Research also suggests they save money over time by reducing healthcare, judicial, and welfare costs.
The initiative that helped Fazekas is funded for four years at $14.25 million a year to support up to 500 people. The money goes to rental vouchers; case managers and peer support specialists, who visit participants at home at least once a month; and a support fund for application fees, security deposits, furniture, or utilities. An additional $400,000 a year is allotted to the University of Connecticut to evaluate the program.
As of mid-September, about 170 people had moved into housing and about 180 participants were searching for a place, according to the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
Fazekas said he hopes to stay in his apartment forever.
“When I was homeless and using drugs, I didn’t love myself. I didn’t care how my day went,” he said. But this program “makes me want to live better.”
One small example that feels big to him: When Fazekas was on the street, he rarely saw his siblings and only called if he needed something.
Now, they visit his place, and he calls them just “to tell them I love them.”
Read the methodology behind this project and download the data.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has taken a leading role in providing guidance to state and local governments on the use of opioid settlement funds. Faculty from the school collaborated with other experts in the field to create principles for using the money, which have been endorsed by over 60 organizations.
Shatterproof is a national nonprofit that addresses substance use disorder through distinct initiatives, including advocating for state and federal policies, ending addiction stigma, and educating communities about the treatment system.
Shatterproof is partnering with some states on projects funded by opioid settlements. KFF Health News, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Shatterproof team that worked on this report are not involved in those efforts.
Aneri Pattani is a KFF Health News reporter (Pattaniapattani@kff.org)
Visualizations by Lydia Zuraw (Zurawlzuraw@kff.org Lydia Zuraw)
Change your life before winter
“Autumn Night” (oil), by Dwight William Tyron (1849-1925), American landscape painter. He lived in Dartmouth, Mass.
New England Council: Proposed DHS rule on foreign students would slam regional and national economies
The unofficial flag of New England.
BOSTON
From The New England Council (slightly edited by New England Diary):
On Nov. 5 the New England Council submitted comments to express significant concerns regarding the proposed federal rule titled “Optional Practical Training (OPT) Fees.” Under this proposed rule, fees would apply for each F-1 nonimmigrant student to engage in OPT through a Student and Exchange Visitor Program-certified institution: $70,000 for initial OPT; and $30,000 for any subsequent OPT.
The Department of Homeland Security asserts that this rule would help prevent fraud. In reality, it would raise the cost of hiring and training international graduates, weaken the talent pipeline that New England employers depend on, and contribute to a brain drain from the U.S. to our competitors as researchers go elsewhere.
International students contribute nearly $5 billion to our region’s economy. These students support 40,968 jobs. 119,334 international students are enrolled in our region’s colleges and universities. By state:
Connecticut
Financial Contribution: $747.7 million
Jobs Supported: 5,848
International Students Enrolled: 21,865
Maine
Financial Contribution: $87.3 Million
Jobs Supported: 499
International Students Enrolled: 2,306
Massachusetts
Financial Contribution: $3.6 billion
Jobs Supported: 30,805
International Students Enrolled: 84,097
New Hampshire
Financial Contribution: $160.4 million
Jobs Supported: 1,263
International Students Enrolled: 4,575
Rhode Island
Financial Contribution: $272.4 Million
Jobs Supported: 2,217
International Students Enrolled: 5,212
Vermont
Financial Contribution: $57.6 million
Jobs Supported: 336
International Students Enrolled: 1,279
To remain competitive globally, we must attract and maintain the best talent. We urge DHS to withdraw the proposal.
Religion in New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett House, in Kingston, N.H.
“{I} Called on the people of New Hampshire . . . to confess before God their aggravated transgressions and to implore His pardon and forgiveness through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ . . . [t]hat the knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ may be made known to all nations, pure and undefiled religion universally prevail, and the earth be fill with the glory of the Lord.’’
-Josiah Bartlett (1729-1795), New Hampshire physician and an American Founding Father
Bedford Presbyterian Church
“We had no religion at all, but we were Jews in New Hampshire, and my sister - who is now a rabbi - said it best: We were, like, the only Jews in Bedford, New Hampshire, as well as the only Democrats, so we just kind of associated those two things together. My dad raised us to believe that paying taxes is an honor.’’
-- Sarah Silverman (born 1970), American comedian
Memories in hand
From B. Amore’s show “Following the Thread,’’ at Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston, for month of November.
The artist says:
“My art has evolved from its origins in carved forms and public sculpture, to complex installations involving text, ancestral artifacts, alternative photo processes, stone, fabric, and the found object transformed. The installations and assemblages often appear to be meditations on the layered nature of existence. They are sculptural ruminations, which bridge the past and the present.
“The current series, ‘Street Calligraphies,’ incorporates found gloves that have been cold cast in bronze which still evoke the mysterious presence of the lost owner. Although the gloves always retain their original gesture, they are combined with other enigmatic elements from city streets and transformed through the artistic process into works of art. Each glove has its own unique history and nature but becomes part of the whole which creates our intertwined life on this planet.’’
And the gallery says:
“‘Following the Thread’ consists of panels that were part of her exhibit, ‘Life Line: filo della vita’ originally displayed at Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1999-2000. The exhibit traveled in the U.S. and Italy. The families represented in the panels lived first in the North End, then in East Boston. After the exhibit, the panels will be held by the East Boston Museum and Historical Association.’’
Sara Suzuki: Driven by economic concerns, young adults voted in near-record numbers in midterm
From The Conversation, except for image above
(The Conversation is a nonprofit organization. New England Diary is a donor.)
MEDFORD, Mass.
The economy was the top issue for voters in the November 2026 midterm elections, which saw Democrats win decisive majorities in both houses of Congress.
And for young voters, whether in college or not, the economy and jobs, as well as healthcare, were their top concerns, our research at CIRCLE, a nonpartisan, research organization focused on youth civic engagement at Tufts University, shows.
Overall, 27% of young people – meaning people ages 18 to 29 – went to the polls during the midterms, our Nov. 5 analysis shows. This marks the second-highest midterm youth voter turnout in the past 30 years, behind only the 2018 election cycle.
As a scholar at CIRCLE who studies young people and their voting behavior, I think it’s helpful to understand some of the factors that motivated so many young people to vote – and to cast their lot with the Democrats.
Understanding young voters
Among youth, being enrolled as a college student or not did not make a big difference in who they voted for during these midterms.
But there are some voting trend differences based on young people’s educational attainment, especially in the gap between young people with an education level of high school or less, and those with at least some college experience and more. Those with only a high school degree or less voted Democratic by a 24-point margin, compared with a 42-point margin among those with at least some college education.
College students who are young men also voted Democrat by a 24-point margin. Female college students, meanwhile, voted Democrat at a 45-point margin. A similar gender gap appears among young voters who aren’t in college.
Overall, this gender gap has persisted at least since 2024, as young women then were also voting more Democratic than men were.
People vote on Nov. 3, 2026, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
Latest youth voter trends
About 66% of young people ages 18-29 voted for a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, compared with 31% for a Republican candidate, our data shows. This marks the highest percentage of support for Democratic candidates among all age groups.
Within this group, 70% of young women voted for a Democratic U.S. House candidate in the midterms, as opposed to 59% of young men.
Partisan trends among young voters have fluctuated over the past few decades – in 2000, for example, 49% of young people voted Democratic, while 48% voted Republican.
In 2026, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black and Latino young people gave Democrat candidates the strongest support, at 81%, 79% and 71%, respectively. By comparison, 61% of white young people voted for Democratic House candidates, with 36% voting Republican.
Young people are focused on the economy
Across race, education, income and geographic location, young people overwhelmingly indicated that the economy and jobs was their top issue in this election.
Healthcare and the Iran war also showed up as areas of importance for young voters. All three of these issues are connected to young people’s concerns about the cost of living.
We found that voting preferences did vary according to how young people viewed their own financial circumstances, a pattern that held among college students.
Low-income students were more likely than their affluent peers to vote for Democrats.
The issues that matter most to young people have shifted considerably over the past several years.
In 2020, we were seeing different groups of young people prioritize social issues like racism, climate change and gun control.
In 2022, we began to see young people prioritize the economy – their concern about inflation was the second-most important issue to them after abortion.
Now, after the economy, healthcare was ranked second for young voters. The third-most important issue was the war in Iran. This is striking, because in the past, we’ve polled young voters about foreign policy issues like the war between Israel and Palestinians and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Young people have never really ranked these other foreign policy issues as a top area of concern.
Students listen during a Democratic get-out-the-vote rally on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus on Oct. 20, 2026. Scott Olson/Getty Images
On the sidelines
Youth voter turnout generally tends to be much weaker in midterm elections than in presidential elections. In 2018, there was 28% turnout for young people – a midterm turnout that was considerably higher than 2014, when only 13% of young people turned out to vote.
Campaigns seem to recognize that young voters tend to be less politically engaged. For example, our research shows that during the 2024 presidential election cycle, more than 1 in 3 young people were never contacted about the election. Among those without college experience, 48% were never contacted.
Our research still shows that college students face logistical barriers to voting.
Young people are frequent movers, which means they might need to reregister whenever they change addresses. The fact that college students may be living on campus while they’re registered to vote from their parents’ address can also create complications.
College students still have more voting information than young people who are not in college. But compared with other age groups, young people receive less voting information – making their turnout in the 2026 midterms all the more remarkable.
Sara Suzuki is a senior researcher and research assistant research professor at CIRCLE, Tufts University. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.
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An exhausting prospect
“If Our Days Rolled on Forever,’’ by Jim Dodds, at Morse Block Deli, Barre, Vt., through Jan. 2, in association with Studio Place Arts.
The gallery says:
“Dodds's computer art with psychedelic and Art Nouveau sensibilities emerges from his pencil sketches, photos and poetry.’’
The fear effect in a coastal marsh
A fearsome Atlantic Blue Crab
The Great Marsh in Plum Island, Newbury, Rowley and Ipswich, Mass.
— Photo by Doc Searls
Excerpted from an EcoRI News article
“Fear changes behavior. For a ribbed mussel clinging to a New England salt marsh, the presence of a blue crab nearby can mean eating less and holding tighter to the marsh platform, bracing for danger. The crab doesn’t even have to attack.
“That response — what scientists call a ‘fear effect’ — is at the heart of research by University of Rhode Island graduate student Maja Nielsen. A master’s student in URI’s Biological and Environmental Sciences program working with assistant professor of watershed ecology Shelby Rinehart, Nielsen is studying whether fishing-driven shifts change how ribbed mussels respond to the threat of predation.
“‘There’s some evidence that the fear effect may be even more important in determining ecosystem functions than the consumptive effect,’ Nielsen said, ‘because predators can scare a lot more prey than they can eat.”’
Not just snowy owls
“A Bluebird Day on Dog Mountain,” by Anna Yakubovskaya, in the show “Show Your Gift,’’ at the Gallery at WREN, Bethlehem, N.H., in the White Mountains.
The Dog Chapel at Dog Mountain, in St. Johnsbury, Vt.
Llewellyn King: We need many more engineers in Congress
Milas Hall, at the Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, Mass.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
I am a sucker for big engineering. I respond to it the same way other people respond to a great painting or a superbly sung opera.
You may be enthralled by a football game. But if one of those tall, skinny skyscrapers is going up in New York City, I am at the sidelines, watching with rapt attention.
I marvel at how the engineers keep those buildings standing, allowing for the sway in the wind and designing elevators that are fast enough to compensate for a long ride into the sky.
I get sentimental over nuclear-power plants, nearly lose it when looking at a great ocean liner such as the Queen Mary 2, and see the beauty and wonder of an aircraft carrier.
Yes, I like big iron, but I also love such small, intricate things as mechanical watches.
The simple universal joint in a car axle inspires me. How it solves a problem: One wheel turns faster than the other in a turn. That is clever stuff and routine.
I am more at odds with computer engineering. If I can’t see it, I don’t love it. I could see the engineering in a typewriter, but the engineering in the computer on which I am writing this is spooky science to me.
I love engineering because it moves the human project forward, improves our lot on earth and now points us to the distant sky, to the Moon and Mars and way beyond.
Poets – writers, my people — can talk about the spacious firmament, but engineers put us there. I am amazed at how airplanes leave the ground in defiance of logic.
When I was a private pilot and “rotated” at takeoff speed, I was always thrilled that the aircraft left the ground. I didn’t calculate it as a power-lift-equation. For me, it was the mystery of engineering — and life — in my hands.
I preferred to think of it as engineered magic and I, by moving the joystick back a few inches, could leave the ground and fulfill my desire, and that of humans for thousands of years, to fly.
The imagined future is with engineers, not poets.
Which gets me to this point: There aren’t enough engineers in Congress. It is a place dominated by lawyers and public-affairs professionals. It does seem to me that many of the challenges facing the nation are at heart engineering, not legal.
Engineers build and fix. Lawyers dispute, refute, argue, and settle. Compromise is in their DNA. Lawyers will struggle — as do journalists with whom they have an affinity -- to understand AI, data centers, space science, the electric grid, small modular nuclear reactors, carbon capture, sea level rise, and drone warfare.
When it comes to crafting law to deal with those and myriad other technical subjects, an engineering degree, it seems to me, would be more useful than many others.
There are no accurate tabulations yet of the professional backgrounds of the elected members of the brave new 120th Congress. But in the past, only 1-4 percent have had an engineering background.
The problem of balance in Congress has been with us for a long time. It is a logical progression to go from the courtroom to the legislature. It is less so to leave a construction site or a drafting computer for politics.
It is worth asking if we are getting the best of our talent in politics? I would say no, and no again.
Running for Congress is a horrible experience. You and your family, even your pet, will be vilified, denigrated, lied about, and held up to ridicule. You will be forced to raise a lot of money and to endure the pleadings of shafts of people.
Alas, the cream of the nation, including its imaginative engineers, stays away.
There is a talent deficit in Congress along with the fiscal one. What has just happened in the election hasn’t solved that challenge.
On X: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King, an international energy-sector consultant and former publisher, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island.
‘Besieged’ in Northampton
From Harriet Diamond’s show “Besieged,’’ at A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, Mass., Nov. 12-Dec. 12.
The gallery says:
Diamond’s artistic impressions, gathered and distilled from photo and print journalism, eyewitness reports and the poetry of Palestinian and Jewish authors, led to her creation of 25 life-size figures and numerous small figures that are joined by floor to ceiling paintings.