Vox clamantis in deserto
It only looks ominous
“Mountain Landscape” {in Vermont},(oil on canvas), by Frederic Edwin Church, circa 1849.
Chris Powell: Raising taxes on Connecticut’s rich just an excuse for plunder
Copper Beech Farm, formerly the Lauder Greenway Estate, is a private property in Greenwich, Conn.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut is already nearly the highest-taxed state in the country, as well as nearly the most expensive (in part because its taxes are so high), but on April 15 -- the deadline for submission of state and federal tax returns -- a hundred people from what calls itself the Connecticut for All coalition gathered at the state Capitol to urge state government to raise taxes on the rich.
When it showed up at the Capitol in March, the Connecticut for All coalition was supporting legislation to increase state government's obstruction of federal immigration-law enforcement. That's what Connecticut for All means by "all" -- open borders admitting all illegal immigrants -- as if the state doesn't already have a desperate shortage of housing and expensive schools whose costs are rising in part because they must enroll so many illegal immigrant students who don't speak English.
Connecticut for All's arguments for higher taxes on the rich are as flawed as its arguments for open borders -- especially its argument that taxes should be raised on the rich because some lower-income people pay a higher share of their income in state and local taxes than rich people do.
As is the case with federal taxes, the rich also already pay the overwhelming majority of state and local taxes in Connecticut.
Poor people pay no income taxes and often get various income supports from the government, like earned-income tax credits, medical insurance, and food and housing stipends, which help refund the taxes they pay indirectly -- sales taxes, municipal property taxes (paid through their rents), and federal and state energy taxes.
Besides, the percentage-of-income argument doesn't accurately indicate the practical burden of taxes.
Twenty percent of the annual income of someone earning minimum wage in Connecticut -- $16.94 per hour or $35,000 per year -- is $7,000.
But just 19 percent of the annual income of someone earning $350,000, who is subject not just to sales and property taxes, as the poor are, but also to state and federal income taxes, is $66,500, more than nine times as much.
Who really bears more of the burden of government?
Yes, inflation -- currency devaluation -- benefits the wealthy, since they own property and stocks, whose value rises even as inflation ravages the poor, who own little property. But then why do Democrats, supposedly the tribunes of the poor, like and perpetuate inflation even more than Republicans do?
Maybe what is most disgraceful about the clamor for raising taxes on the wealthy is its sense of entitlement, as was expressed by a college instructor at the Connecticut for All rally at the Capitol. . "It's time to tax the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy and redistribute those funds to the hard-working people of Connecticut," she said.
Of course many wealthy people are not "hard-working" at all but mere beneficiaries of inherited wealth or government patronage. But many poor people aren't so "hard-working" either but collectors of welfare benefits, people who are already beneficiaries of much income redistribution. Poverty is not virtue.
Yes, taxation is always a mechanism of income redistribution, but its original objective in this country was the maintenance of a decent government and a prosperous society. Contrary to the suggestion of that college instructor who spoke at the Capitol, the tax system was not originally meant for plunder, and it should not be regarded as a device for making one's living from the sweat of others. That attitude has produced vast waste and corruption in government.
Raising taxes on the rich in Connecticut isn't yet a matter of fairness; the people advocating it are not trying to calculate mathematically what tax rates are fair. They just want government to control and spend more money.
All able-bodied people, no matter how poor, should share and feel the burden of government, for as was said by a great liberal authority from a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt, the first duty of a citizen is not to vote himself more government subsidies but to pull his own weight.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Robots no longer suicidal?
— Photo by Daimler und Benz Stiftung
“One of my fondest robot memories is of a gorgeous 1971 hydraulic arm at Marvin Minsky’s MIT AI lab at Technology Square {in Cambridge, Mass.} that reached back under computer control and ripped out its own shoulder. Since then Massachusetts robots have overcome their suicidal tendencies and developed caring personalities, military and industrial applications, online avatars, and are even vacuuming rugs.’’
— Bob Metcalfe\ (born 1946), American engineer, Internet pioneer and entrepreneur
Probably a challenge for most of us
“Balancing Act’’ (clay with encaustic paint, balancing a gold wire ball on one end and mixed media "pile" at the other end), by Sarah Springer, a member of New England Wax. She is now showing some of her pieces at Gallery Twist, in Lexington, Mass.
She says:
“‘Balancing Act' was inspired by the constant struggle to make time for the beautiful moments that we all cherish, moments that are rare but equally as weighty as all the mundane and frustrating aspects of our lives.’’
Peter Neill: Urgently asking: Where is the plan for the Maine Coast?
SEDGWICK, Maine
Recently, two ocean-related conferences unfolded here in Maine, where I live. The first was hosted by established marine-research institutes and focused on the so-called blue economy, specifically on emerging aquaculture along our Atlantic coast: shellfish, seaweed, processed by-products, and investment opportunities. The keynote speaker was an old friend, Thor Sigfusson, founder of the Iceland Ocean Cluster, proponent of the innovative utility of “100 percent of the fish” as a unifying policy and successful catalyst for proven ocean-related start-ups worldwide finding value in every element of the catch, from medical services to fashion. The attendees included research scientists, consultants, policy innovators, and investment firms with ocean interest.
The second meeting was the Maine Fishermen’s’ Forum, an annual gathering of local industry representatives, marine scientists, policymakers, support groups, commercial product representatives, and fishermen—the , the workforce behind an industry that is the second-largest revenue producer (after tourism) in Maine.
The back-to-back events caused me to ask a question relative to both: If these perspectives and activities are central to the future of an ocean-driven community, then where is the plan?
My response to both, given the sense of fulsome prospect projected, was the same: Despite the success of the developed lobster fishery, despite the optimism about further exploitation of the state’s coastal resources, the future seemed piecemeal, opportunistic, conventionally framed, and limited by past values, structures, and behaviors, inadequate to a justified investment by state government and serious blue economy investors.
What seemed absent was a larger integrated plan to justify and motivate adequate funding beyond first-round capital. There seemed to be best intent but again, there did not seem to be much of a plan.
Here are some of the forces affecting the future of the lobster industry in Maine: sea-temperature change; related species migration and relocation; inflation and the rising costs of bait, fuel, labor, and transportation; access to shifting offshore harvests; increased capital costs and interest rates; lack of adequate processing to capture full added value; loss of profits to export markets; impact of volatile tariffs; single-species focus, with limited investment in associated fisheries, byproducts, new applications and new markets; seasonal limit for equipment and on-the-water skills; reduction in next generation supply, not only of infant lobsters, but of new fishermen to react to any expanded opportunity, human capital to meet new demand.
Add to that the implications of reduced working-waterfront facilities, the certainty of more extreme weather, comparable offshore dis-opportunity by limiting wind and ocean-geothermal energy, industrial aquaculture, future desalination needs, coastal transportation, and community development, and you realize that there is no comprehensive plan. Given no plan, how can any investor assume a context for success? Rejection of offshore-wind projects, coastwise aquaculture, industrial seaweed cultivation, diminished salt-water access, and little federal or state seed-funding seems more a plan for failure, not success.
State government has reacted to the larger implications of climate change, with the multi-year effort of a commission to define adaptation and mitigation of impacts, well-documented and predictable. Slowly, specific reactions with limited funding are being legislated with specific, albeit similarly limited outcomes. As the federal government has denied the climate reality, and has worked to cancel funds for further research, development, and infrastructure preventions and improvements, the financial climate has also changed for the worse, and without economic subsidy, private capital has no interest in augmenting scale and speed of the outcome. We are dead in the water.
I came away from these conferences despondent about the subversive reality of perverse intent. The plans can be there, and they can be realized by imagination, commitment, and acceptance of blue economy interest. What is so tragically ironic is that failure to shape a future, internationally, nationally, locally, and personally, is the worst investment of them all. And the inevitable payout is only loss.
Where is the plan?
Peter Neill is founder of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based resource for science-based and educational information committed to the health and future of climate and ocean. He is also host of World Ocean Radio, a weekly syndicated radio show and podcast that inspired this essay.
Smiling and dividing
“Ice Pick — Division 2026’’ (oil on canvas) by Brian McClear, in his joint show with Jim Biglan “Still Matters,’ at Alofft Gallery, Litchfield, Conn., through May 8.
The gallery says that the show "explores the persistent tensions shaping today’s American political landscape. The exhibition title's double meaning references both the still-life tradition central to McClear’s work and the enduring relevance of the issues both he and Biglan examine."
Llewellyn King: I remain a lover of riding the rails, even Amtrak with its frustrations
A Northeast Regional train, with an ACS-64 locomotive and Amfleet I passenger cars, at New London, Connecticut’s Union Station.
— Photo by Pi.1415926535
This is being written on Amtrak’s Northeast Regional Train 171, in coach, en route from Providence to New York. I am in my happy place.
I am a trainman. Given a choice, I would ride the rails over any other mode of transport — except flying when I owned a plane.
Something happens to me when the train pulls out of the station. I get a sense of well-being.
Rail travel does things for my soul, puts me into a place of euphoric comfort. Everything becomes possible; things are good and may get better.
Ships do something similar — not cruise liners but ships going somewhere; ships providing transportation not geared to escapism, working ships.
I can trace my train addiction to a journey when I was 5 years old. It was the longest train trip ever and I wouldn’t care to repeat it, although it was the greatest: the adventure of adventures.
It was a train trip from Cape Town, South Africa to Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). It took six days; it was a long, long time on the train.
The distance from Cape Town to Harare is slightly over 1,500 miles, but the train wound through endless miles of desert in what was then Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and stopped for long periods for water.
It was, of course, a steam train and steam engines are big, beautiful, thirsty monsters. They could carry enough coal for a fair distance of travel, but water was essential and pumping in remote stretchers of the Kalahari Desert was a slow business, and at times the pumps had to be operated by hand. That could mean hours to water the engine.
But as someone said to me years later, “There is plenty of time in Botswana.”
Later, I would ride an overnight train from Salisbury to Umtali (now Mutare, Zimbabwe) to supervise the production of a newspaper. I rode second class and usually shared a carriage with another man, and sometimes a third and a fourth. As a teenager, I thought of those long discussions through the night as my university.
More steam trains in England, but much faster. The British steam locomotives, before the switchover to diesel, scooped up water from open rail-side troughs as they rushed by at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.
My work took me weekly by train to Scotland or the North of England, and at times to the Midlands. Those trips were always an adventure in the people I talked to, the great meals on board, and the wonder of falling asleep to the click-clack of the rails.
I took the overnight train to France, before the Channel Tunnel, when the train would leave London, make its way to the coast, be loaded in the dead of night onto a steamer, and continue in France the next day. Good night in England and bonjour in France.
In the 1960s, you could still take a sleeper train from Washington to New York. It isn’t very far and doesn’t require a sleeper, but many took it because it was fun and saved a stay in a hotel in New York. Now Amtrak will get you there in three hours, no muss, no fuss, no romance.
I have train-traveled in Russia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, and I am frequently on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains. Amtrak’s on-train service is excellent, with courteous and helpful conductors, but booking tickets on its site requires an AI agent or a tech-savvy kid to fathom.
Twice this year, as my wife and I were heading from Washington to Rhode Island on the last Northeast Regional train of the day, we were told that the train would “terminate” in New York, due to a problem on the line north of the city. Things do happen in train travel.
Both times, Amtrak failed to offer any suggestion as to how the stranded passengers might finish their journeys. Many of the stranded were students and people who couldn’t afford a New York hotel room or rent a car. Quite a few of the stranded didn’t speak English very well.
In the first stranding, we were warned by the sole representative Amtrak had helping abandoned passengers at the Moynihan Train Hall, in New York, that not everyone would be able to get the first train out in the morning or the second. He said graciously that our original tickets would be honored on whichever train we were able to continue our journey north.
On neither occasion did we wait for Amtrak’s gracelessness to play out: We took an Uber home on the first, and a Lyft (a bit cheaper) on the second. For each road trip home, we paid, with tips, over $600.
But I am a constant lover, and I am still riding the rails. Happy man typing!
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he he’s based in Rhode Island.
Tell it to the Russians
“May Ukraine Have Peace” (acrylic on canvas), by Alan Shulman, at AVA Gallery and Art Center, Lebanon, N.H.
Conn. physicans step up their medical-debt suits against patients
This article is a Kaiser Family Health News and Connecticut Mirror collaboration
BRISTOL, Conn.
Many hospital systems in Connecticut have stopped suing their patients over unpaid bills, stung by criticism about the harm caused by aggressive collection tactics.
Have you been forced into debt because of a medical or dental bill? Have you had to make any changes in your life because of such debt? Have you been sued or pursued by debt collectors for a medical bill? We want to hear about it.
But physicians, dentists, ambulance companies, and other health care providers are still taking their patients to court, a Connecticut Mirror-KFF Health News investigation of state legal records shows.
Lawsuits by doctors and other nonhospital providers now dominate health care collections in Connecticut, the records show, accounting for more than 80% of cases filed against patients and their families in 2024.
That’s a major reversal from just five years earlier, when hospital system lawsuits made up three-quarters of health-related collection cases in the state’s courts.
The shift is moving medical debt collections into a less regulated realm. Most hospitals, because they are tax-exempt nonprofits, must make financial aid available to low-income patients and follow federal regulations that limit aggressive collection activities. Other medical providers, such as private medical groups, are generally exempt from these rules.
The lawsuits are typically over bills of less than $3,000, but the impact on patients can be devastating. Lawsuits are among the most ruinous byproducts of a health care debt problem that burdens an estimated 100 million people in the U.S.
Lawsuits can lead to garnished wages, liens on homes, and hundreds of dollars of added debt from interest and court fees. They also pile additional financial strains on struggling families, prevent patients from getting needed care, and sap trust in medical providers.
“It’s really messed up,” said Allie Cass-Wilson, a nurse in Bristol, Connecticut, who was sued over a $1,972 debt by an OB-GYN practice where she’d been a patient years earlier. “How can they do that to people?” She did not contest the lawsuit, court records show.
Cass-Wilson, who is 36 and lives in a small apartment just off an expressway on-ramp, said she learned of the outstanding debt only when she was sued. When she tried making an appointment, she said, she was told her doctor wouldn’t see her. “They said I was blacklisted,” Cass-Wilson said. “I was so confused. I couldn’t believe that my medical provider let my care be interrupted like this.”
Cass-Wilson ultimately sought medical care elsewhere.
Radiologists, Dentists, Ambulances
Overall, CT Mirror and KFF Health News identified more than 16,000 health care-related debt cases in Connecticut courts from 2019 to 2024. The database was assembled from online court records with the help of January Advisors, a data science consulting firm that helped extract and sort the data.
Over the six-year period, most of Connecticut’s more than 25,000 licensed physicians and dentists did not pursue patients in court for outstanding balances.
But records show that more than 400 medical providers, including several hospital systems, sued their patients. Among those filing lawsuits were radiologists, anesthesiologists, eye doctors, podiatrists, allergists, and pediatricians.
Dentists, periodontists, and other dental providers filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against patients. And ambulance companies sued more than 140 people.
Med-Aid, a company based outside New Haven, Conn., that provides orthopedic braces and other medical supplies to patients, sued more than 400 people, the court records show. The company’s president, Frank Dilieto, did not respond to repeated interview requests.
Cass-Wilson was sued by Briar Rose Network in Bristol. It’s a member of a large network of OB-GYN practices across Connecticut called Physicians for Women’s Health. The network’s members sued close to 100 patients in 2024, records show.
Paula Greenberg, CEO of Women’s Health Connecticut, a private equity-backed company affiliated with Physicians for Women’s Health that manages business operations for the network, said the lawsuits represent a small fraction of the more than 300,000 patients the network sees every year.
“This is an organization committed to patients,” Greenberg said. She noted that the group offers options to help patients pay, including installment plans and financial aid.
Geoffrey Manton, president of Naugatuck Valley Radiological Associates, said his practice also will work with people who say they can’t pay. But, he said, patients sometimes stop responding to their bills.
“Hiding from your problems isn’t going to solve them,” Manton said. “If we didn’t take any action, there could be that person that is in that late-model Mercedes that just chooses not to pay any bills.” The group sued more than 125 patients from 2019 to 2024, according to the court records.
Many medical providers say that aggressive collections stem from the growing prevalence of high-deductible health plans that leave patients with thousands of dollars of bills before their coverage kicks in.
Greenberg and Manton said each of their physician groups must collect. “This is a business,” Greenberg said. “We have to look at our operating costs.”
Critics of medical collection lawsuits note that the patients are typically sued over relatively small debts that are likely to have little impact on multimillion-dollar medical practices.
The average patient debt that members of Physicians for Women’s Health sued over in 2024 was less than $1,100, court records show. The physician group’s annual revenues are typically in the tens of millions of dollars, according to Greenberg.
Even relatively small debts — which often include interest — can place substantial burdens on families struggling to keep up with their bills, especially while dealing with a serious illness, patient advocates say.
“We don’t have a realistic choice in using health care,” said Lisa Freeman, who heads the Connecticut Center for Patient Safety and has advocated for patients struggling with medical bills. “To then get sued for it, when people have less and less funds available for anything extra, that’s very disheartening.”
A Stroke, Then a Lawsuit
Matthew Millman, 54, lost his job as an IT support worker after having a stroke. Then Meriden Imaging Center sued him over an $1,891 bill.
Millman and his wife said they tried to explain their financial situation to the center, which is affiliated with Midstate Radiology Associates, a large physician group that operates imaging centers and doctors’ offices across Connecticut.
“It was very frustrating,” said Millman, who lives in an aging apartment owned by his wife’s family in New Britain. Millman, his wife, and their teenage daughter are barely getting by on his two part-time jobs — one bagging groceries, the other helping homebound seniors. Together, the jobs pay about $1,500 a month, he said.
The imaging center, after winning the collection case against Millman, tried to garnish his wages, though that was unsuccessful because Millman had lost his IT job.
“It’s all about money,” Millman said, shaking his head. “If you are trained in helping somebody with their health, it shouldn’t be about the money first. It should be about their health.”
Court records show that Midstate Radiology, Meriden Imaging Center and affiliates filed more than 1,000 collection lawsuits against patients from 2019 to 2024, making them the most litigious nonhospital providers in the state. As is common in medical debt lawsuits, the plaintiffs prevailed in most cases, records show.
Midstate president Gary Dee, a radiologist, didn’t respond to emails and messages left at his West Hartford office.
Across town from Millman’s apartment in New Britain, Joseph Lentz lives in a cramped apartment with his wife and daughter. He used to oversee operations at a Boy Scout camp but is now unemployed. Lentz lost his job during the pandemic. The family home went into foreclosure, he said.
In 2023, Orthopedic Associates of Hartford sued Lentz over a $3,644 bill the practice said he owed after having shoulder surgery in 2018.
‘
“I’d pay it if I could, I guess,” said Lentz, 59. “But I don’t even know where next month’s rent is coming from. I’m trying to climb out as best I can. I guess this is just one more thing to shovel in.”
The orthopedic group filed more than 580 lawsuits against patients from 2019 to 2024, prevailing in most, records show.
The medical group declined interview requests. But chief executive David Mudano said in a statement: "As an independent physician practice, we strive to balance compassion for patients with the financial responsibility required to sustain our practice.”
Old Debts and Disputed Claims
Lentz, who did not contest the lawsuit, said he has no reason to doubt he owes the debt. But in many cases reviewed by CT Mirror and KFF Health News and in interviews, patients being sued questioned the accuracy of their medical bills, citing care they thought health insurance should have covered or, in some cases, bills for services they never received.
This reflects broader problems with aggressive collection tactics like lawsuits when disputes over the accuracy of medical bills and delayed or denied insurance claims are so widespread in American health care.
A 2022 report by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that nearly half of the medical debt complaints fielded by the agency involved bills that consumers said were erroneous in some way or that consumers said they’d already paid.
“We know people are billed incorrectly,” said Lester Bird, who studies debt collection lawsuits at the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts. Bird noted that courts are ill equipped to sort through disputed medical charges or insurance claims, especially when there is little documentation in most debt collection lawsuits.
“It’s complicated before it gets to the courts,” Bird said, “and it’s very complicated when it gets into the courts.”
This can create headaches for physicians and other providers. But billing problems ultimately affect patients and their families most, said Connecticut state Sen. Saud Anwar, a Democrat who is also a physician. “Patients are left to deal with it.”
Andrew Skolnick, an attorney in Milford, outside New Haven, was sued in 2023 by an imaging center where his wife had received services in 2020.
Skolnick said that when the couple, who were covered through his job-based insurance, originally received the bill from Diagnostic Imaging of Milford, he tried to tell the imaging center it had submitted the claim to the wrong insurance plan, but he said they wouldn’t speak with him.
The center later filed the lawsuit, alleging he owed more than $2,000, plus almost $300 in interest.
Despite interview requests, officials at Diagnostic Imaging of Milford did not comment for this article.
Unlike most patients who are sued, Skolnick had the resources and expertise to contest the suit. He said he offered to pay what would have been his responsibility under the plan if the imaging center had filed his claim correctly. He ultimately settled for $1,700, court records show.
“It wasn’t a tremendous amount, but I knew that they had made a mistake,” Skolnick said. “The system is not working.”
More Protections?
Anwar, the state lawmaker and physician, expressed concern that lawsuits undermine patients’ faith in their doctors.
“It’s a sacred relationship,” he said. “If your physician, who is taking care of you, is suing you for money, that’s a problem.
Many hospitals, facing bad publicity from suing patients, have stopped taking patients to court over unpaid bills. Hospital collection lawsuits identified by CT Mirror and KFF Health News in Connecticut court records plunged from more than 4,900 in 2019 to fewer than 300 in 2024.
Also, in recent years, several states, including Connecticut, have expanded protections for patients with bills they can’t pay.
Connecticut now bars medical debt from consumer credit reports, and legislators are pushing to get hospitals to provide more financial aid to patients. Other states have restricted the use of wage garnishment and property liens to collect medical debt.
But state efforts to rein in aggressive medical debt collections have mostly focused on hospitals. That may need to change, said Connecticut state Sen. Matt Lesser, a Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s Human Services Committee.
He is a key backer of a bill introduced this year that would bar hospitals from billing patients who receive public benefits like food assistance or who make less than twice the federal poverty level, about $32,000 for an individual.
The restriction would not apply to bills from physicians and other nonhospital providers, however. “We may have to go bigger if that’s where the heart of the matter is,” Lesser said.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat who spearheaded an initiative to cancel medical debt for more than 150,000 state residents, also expressed concern about physicians suing the people in their care.
“Everyone should do the right thing by patients,” he said.
Analyzing Conn. Health Care Debt Collection Lawsuits
How often do health care providers sue patients over unpaid bills?
In most states, that’s nearly impossible to answer because courts don’t typically identify which debt collection lawsuits involve a medical debt versus other kinds of debt, such as rent, credit cards, or cellphone bills.
But Connecticut is different. Debt collection cases filed in small-claims court for unpaid medical or dental bills must be classified as health care debt. We worked with the data science consulting firm January Advisors to pull these cases from the Connecticut court database and analyze them. (January Advisors has worked with nonprofits and researchers across the country to collect debt collection data from state courts. The firm did not have any editorial input in our project.)
We started with health care collection cases filed in small-claims court from 2019 to 2024. But this covered only cases involving debts smaller than $5,000. We also wanted to know about cases in which providers sued for bills exceeding $5,000. Connecticut courts don’t assign a “medical” category for large-claim cases. So we pulled all large-claim records for any plaintiff — hospital or nonhospital provider — that appeared in medical small-claims cases. We also included cases with plaintiffs that didn’t appear in that dataset but had common medical terminology in their names, like “hospital” or “DDS.”
We then went through each case manually to confirm that the plaintiff was a medical or dental provider. We determined whether the provider was part of a larger hospital or physician group. And we categorized each plaintiff by a provider type (e.g., hospital system, dental, physician group).
In some cases, the data we pulled was incomplete, so we looked up the court records online and manually entered the information into our database. The Connecticut Judicial Department purges case records from its online portal after a certain amount of time. In those cases, we asked the agency to provide summonses and claims so we could manually enter the case information into our database.
We removed cases with out-of-state defendants or out-of-state plaintiffs and any cases in which missing records made it difficult to confirm information about the provider.
Gerald FitzGerald: My terrific brother’s adventurous nuptials
“The Wedding Dance,’’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (around 1530)
We’d drifted into The Old Landmark, first bar on Bowery, for my big brother’s bachelor
party. There was no plan, just the assurance of youth. Two brown lookers in leotards of
multi-colored, glittering spangles heaving voluptuously above great lengths of fishnet stockings
tended bar while I wondered why I had never so much as peeked inside the place previously.
The bar was on the southeast corner of East Fourth Street and Bowery, in Lower Manhattan. We lived a half-block away in a fifth-floor, one-bedroom walkup, where about a dozen close friends were to spend the night before the wedding. Tomorrow would be the luckiest day of brother Chip’s life. He was then a week short of his 23rd birthday and about to marry Ellen Dee, 20, out on Long Island. Young Rascals’ “Good Loving’’ was en route to Number 1.
Whether the two Puerto Rican men who hosted that evening had, with or without their
ladies, bought or leased the premises is unknown to me, but memory insists that it was their opening
night. What’s clear as a bell is that Terry Dooley, from East Aurora, N.Y., about 20 miles
southeast of Buffalo, pulled in alone, shouting encouraging words and slapping a wad of cash
on the bar barely a month after losing his dad to an appalling airplane crash against Mt. Fuji.
Within hours perhaps, 20 young men from upstate New York, as well as Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, New Jersey and elsewhere, had crammed the place partying hard. I think that the new proprietors thought it would be like this every night, as if they had stumbled onto a gold mine.
There was maybe an inch of beer and possibly a tilt on the Old Landmark’s floor because
some specifically recalled Dooley shout “Watch this!” and then throw himself chest down across
that shallow lake, bodysurfing nearly the length of the bar. New York leisure spots were
dangerously free of restrictions back then, with a drinking age of 18 and generally a 4 a.m. closing time.
Chip and Ellen had recently leased an apartment on West 92nd Street, where the
groom and I, the best man, were to stay overnight with groomsmen Ralph and Paul, because
that’s where the rental tuxedos hung to change into. In the morning, we were to get into
Ralph’s 1956 DeSoto – acquired from a former girlfriend’s mother—before going down to St.
Francis Xavier Church, on 16th Street, to pick up the priest and then drive about 30 miles to the church in Merrick, the suburban town where Chip and I had grown up, arriving by 11 a.m. for Mass outside the rail (Ellen wasn’t Catholic.)
When the party was over, there was a problem: Paul was gone, and no one knew where. Chip and
I and Ralph got in the car and began to drive through the West Village on our way uptown. Paul
would show up somewhere. It was a warm night, and our front windows were down. Ralph
drove, I sat shotgun and Chip was in the back seat.
We stopped at a red light. There were four or five guys standing on the sidewalk. It was late to be just hanging on a corner, but we didn’t think much of it until Ralph asked me: “Who they beating on?” I shook my head and looked out to see the group flailing on somebody. Idly, I turned to Chip in the back seat. He wasn’t there.
How or why he silently left the car remains a mystery.
Ralph and I jumped out simultaneously. We waded into the group and started pulling
strangers off of Chip. We got him back into the car and locked his door. I jumped back in,
pushed my lock button down and slid away from a head and hands reaching for me through my
open window. I made as if I was trying to slide onto Ralph’s lap while he started the car, then
raised my right leg to slam a booted foot into the attacker’s face. He dropped like a branch in
the forest about the time Ralph gunned it.
We made it to 92nd Street, parked, then went inside. Still no sign of Paul.
I figured that I had set the alarm because I woke up on the living room couch with a droning noise in my head but could not immediately find where to shut it off. Chip was sleeping soundly on
the floor. I crawled over and shook him gently, saying “Get up, Chip. It’s your wedding day.” His
left eye opened briefly and his right fist caught my jaw. “Tomorrow,” he grunted. I was plenty
hung over, but now my jaw hurt more than my head. I got a quick glass of water from the
kitchen faucet, took a sip, and then – leaving some distance between us-- poured the rest onto my
brother’s face. I’d like to say we shaved, showered and dressed quickly, but I wouldn’t swear to
all of it. I do not recall the time, but we were running late already. There was still no word of
Paul as we headed out.
We were on at least the second floor; I think the third. There was a little trouble opening the downstairs
front door because a pile of somebody was sleeping it off in the foyer hugging the
threshold. It was Paul. I suddenly connected the droning in my head to his curved nail scissors
jammed between the apartment’s buzzer button and its housing. It must’ve been blaring all
night. We roused the panic within him, pushing Paul back upstairs then into his tux and shiny
shoes.
You ought to hear a bit about my brother. He was as good as they come, usually. He was
always four grades ahead of me since he skipped a half-year once. The evolution of his thinking
is the evolution of mine. Mom provided much love and incredibly good food, while Dad mostly provided discipline, softened slightly by stories of Ireland. Dad was a police officer who’d never seen the inside of a high school, but he’d gotten his GED and attended Columbia University nights. We
kids would leave our homework out on the dining room table and he’d check it over when he
got home after we’d gone to bed. If he objected to what he saw he would come upstairs to wake the
offender and bring him downstairs to review. Without exception, I think, the “him” was me.
On weekends and in summers I was pretty much assigned to shadow Chip. The
best part was that if Chip minded the assignment he never really let on. We shared a room from
the get-go. Don’t get the wrong idea. There were plenty of nights he was so annoyed that he
told me if I fell asleep first, he would get out of bed to get a clear shot at punching me in the
stomach. This made me sit up, back to the headboard, and struggle to stay awake while he
secretly slept. He built a crystal radio from scratch. He got much better grades and was very
popular, particularly with girls. As young kids we’d scour the apartment houses for bottles and
newspapers to haul to the junkman. The money from that usually bought us Saturday
double-feature movies with cartoon, newsreels and popcorn.
After freshman year at college, Chip came home with the family’s first record player since an
early gramophone that only played 78’s. He acquired the stereo with a pawn ticket bought from
a classmate for five bucks, redeemed it and then bought an album of composer Maurice Ravel’s music.
With our younger sisters we’d open the doors and windows and play Bolero with the volume
as loud as possible. Until the day I retired from practicing law if I had a trial or serious motion to
argue I still played Bolero full blast all the way to court just to gin me up to fighting mode.
On Chip’s first college Christmas he gave me a subscription to the National Review in his
conservative phase. Next Christmas my gift subscription changed to The Catholic Worker,
edited by socialist Dorothy Day. Chip attended meetings of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee in New York and came home talking about Stokely Carmichael. Then
he nursed me through Jack Keroauc’s On the Road, The Dharma Bums and Maggie Cassidy as well as Beat poetry. Soon after he got married he became a junior high English teacher in The Bronx, but that
morphed into fire spotter, wheat farmer and newspaper sports columnist from a log cabin in
northern Alberta, Canada. He and Ellen went on to raise four kids and a couple of First Nation
foster children, starting with learning to build that oil lamp-lit log cabin by the White Mud River
where you could meet a bear while waiting for the school bus.
Chip was the kind of brother who invited me up to visit for a week when he worked two full-
time summer jobs at Lake George, N.Y. I never asked him why he did that, but he knew that since I was 15 years old I’d jump at such a furlough.
Our dad was off in World War II when Chip was born. They didn’t meet until after Chip turned two. That may have affected their relationship.
I don’t recall that Chip ever flunked a course in school whereas I could bring home a quarterly report
with five of six grades writ bright red. If it weren’t for the New York State Regents exams –you passed
the test, you passed the course—I would still be in high school. Yet my brother took Dad’s
displeasure more to heart than did I. I assume that Chip must have been hit by Dad
occasionally, but I don’t remember one such instance. I, however, progressed to the full leather-
belt treatment twice.
Back to Chip’s wedding day. With less than an hour to go, we picked up the Rev. Eamon Taylor, the curate from St. Francis Xavier, and headed out to Long Island. By coincidence or otherwise, Ellen had endured the pre-Marriage-at-Cana conference scrutiny and the commitment of unborn children to Holy Mother Church at the very same Manhattan parish in which my mother had been married more than 25 years before. Unlike mom, who converted, Ellen chose to stick with Martin Luther. Father Taylor did not seem to mind, and Ellen liked him very much.
We had not yet found the exit off the Southern State Parkway as the radio announced the
upcoming 11 a.m. news. I was not eager to be late but given that our car contained the priest,
the groom, his best man and two ushers I was willing to bet that the bridal party would wait a
few minutes.
The four guys in our car besides the driver focused out loud on getting off the parkway as the
Merrick exit came into view. Nevertheless, Ralph missed it. I think that’s the reason we were
20 minutes late to the church. We had to go to the next exit and then drive back to Merrick.
The Mass was long, yes, but I spent most of it kneeling next to Chip while using my shoulder
to help him to keep looking vertical. Before the reception at The Thatched Cottage, in
Centerport, Chip gave Father Taylor a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. After the reception the
only guy sufficiently sober to drive the couple to the rather cheap Times Square Hotel for their
wedding night was Ellen’s younger brother, Charlie, who wasn’t yet old enough to have a
license.
Chip and Ellen each flew to Miami impersonating friends. Chip went with an ID supplied by
Ralph to qualify as young enough to fly standby student rate. Ellen got hers from former
roommate Mary Lynne Warren to use in Florida to meet the older drinking age.
Their marriage lasted 38 years until my brother passed away.
Gerald FitzGerald, who lives on the Massachusetts South Coast, is a writer and lawyer. He has served as a state prosecutor, defense lawyer, newspaper reporter and editor.
‘How we tell our stories’
From the show “Together, Apart, Away: Snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Collection,’’ at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H., starting May 7.
The museum explains:
“Family road trips. Budding friendships. Sibling rivalries. These are just some of the human moments captured by everyday photographers in snapshots from the collection of Peter J. Cohen. Individually, each snapshot welcomes you into a recognizable world. As a whole, they tell a story about how we tell our stories. Get ready for a moving, nostalgic, and hopeful exhibition.’’
A simple and honest achievement
In the northern section of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Viewed from the northwest side of Mount Washington. From left to right are Mount Clay, Mount Jefferson, Mount Adams, and Mount Madison.
— Photo by Fredlyfish4
“Mountains are different and unique from anything else you will face in life in that they are the truest, cleanest representative of life’s challenges in physical form. There is no mistaking the end goal, and there is no mistaking who got you there. You have to count on you, and your arrival at the summit is the simplest and most honest achievement for your soul that you can experience.”
— From 4000s by 40: Tackling Middle Age in the Mountains of New Hampshire, by Matt Larson
We ask that Trump apologize for insulting the Catholic Church
Seal of the Ancient Order of Hibernians
Irish Famine Memorial in Boston
— Original work: Robert Shure Depiction: Phillip Capper
Statement by The Ancient Order of Hibernians, which based in New York.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the nation’s oldest and largest Irish Catholic lay organization, with chapters in all fifty states, has issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s public attack on His Holiness Pope Leo XIV and the posting of an AI-generated image depicting the President in the likeness of Christ:
People of good faith may disagree on matters of public policy. No Catholic should be asked to accept language that treats the Holy Father as though he were a partisan figure whose duty is to please the political expediency of the moment, or defer to a secular ruler. To Catholics, the Pope is the successor of Saint Peter; he does not hold his office at the pleasure of any leader of this world.
President Trump’s remarks went well beyond reasonable disagreement. To call the Holy Father “weak,” to suggest that his election was engineered as a political response to an American president, and to speak of the papacy as though it should be aligned with a secular agenda is an insult not only to Pope Leo, but to the dignity and independence of the Catholic Church.
President Trump amplified the offense of his remarks by posting an image presenting himself in unmistakably quasi-religious terms, as a radiant healer laying hands on the afflicted, in the style of classical depictions of Christ. To attack the Holy Father and then cast oneself in the role of Christ is not political commentary; it is sacrilege and a defamation of the faith of millions of Christians. When a president mocks the Vicar of Christ and then cloaks himself in Christ’s image, he has left the realm of politics entirely. He has committed an act of desecration against a faith held sacred by over a billion souls.
Americans do not worship presidents. Our Constitution prohibits religious test acts and the establishment of a state religion. Americans do not bend the knee to political messianism from any quarter. American Catholics have always faithfully followed Christ’s teaching to render unto Caesar what is justly Caesar’s, while reserving that which belongs to God alone.
Founded to protect the Church and defend the faith, the Ancient Order of Hibernians speaks without hesitation when either is attacked. The Holy Father has both the right and the duty to speak on moral questions touching war, peace, justice, human dignity, and the conduct of nations. In doing so, he speaks as the successor of Peter, not as an instrument of any political faction. People may discuss and disagree on how those principles are applied in public life, but such disagreement should be civil and dignified.
The AOH calls on President Trump to withdraw these remarks, offer a sincere and unambiguous apology, and show the respect due to the papacy and to Catholics throughout the world. The Chair of Peter is not an instrument of politics, and no president of the United States should ever mistake it for one.
Fun for a while
“Pool Slide”(oil on board), by Bruce Ackerson, at Rice Polak Gallery, Provincetown, Mass.
R.I. eyes creating a state medical school to boost primary care
URI’s main campus, in semi-rural southern Rhode Island.
— Photo by Quintin Soloviev
Edited and excerpted from a report by The New England Council
“The University of Rhode Island is set to receive an initial $5 million in state funding to establish a medical school {on the university’s main campus, in Kingston} as part of a sweeping 17-bill legislative package unveiled by Rhode Island Senate leaders on March 12 aimed at addressing the state’s strained health-care system.
“The funding, sponsored by Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, would be used to hire a founding dean and senior leadership, recruit core faculty and administrative staff, begin the accreditation process, and develop curriculum. The legislation outlines a funding trajectory of $7 million in fiscal year 2028 and $9 million in fiscal year 2029, totaling $21 million in state investment over three years. The proposal follows a unanimous January recommendation from a state legislative commission that establishing a medical school at URI is a critical step toward addressing Rhode Island’s shortage of primary-care doctors. URI will be required to report to the governor and General Assembly by January 1, 2028, on fund usage, accreditation progress, and a projected development timeline.
“‘As the state’s flagship public research university, we are committed every day to advancing our state and enhancing the quality of life for Rhode Islanders,’ said URI President Marc Parlange. ‘Through our health-focused colleges, we are improving health outcomes across the state. We remain dedicated to working with state leaders, health care providers, and community members to address primary care challenges. I am deeply grateful to the commission members for their ongoing, important work on this issue that touches the lives of every Rhode Islander.”’
‘An inner logic’
“Blue Note’’ (work on paper), by Mary Bablitch, in her show “Spirited Geometries,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, May 1-June 1.
The gallery says that the Lexington, Mass.-based artist’s “painted paper works inhabit the charged space between painting and collage, construction and composition.” She says: "My work always emerges from color, I paint flat hues onto large sheets of paper, pairing shapes and forms according to an inner logic.’’
The gallery notes that “Sheets are cut and assembled into layered constellations of form that assert a physical presence while remaining resolutely two-dimensional. Warm earth tones, sienna, ochre, deep burgundy — collide with cool slates and unexpected passages of acid green, creating chromatic tensions that animate the overlapping planes.’’
Chris Powell: Coming — a new golden age for governmental unaccountability in Connecticut
What is believed to be the first newspaper classified ad in America, in The Boston News-Letter of April 24, 1704.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut is nearly the highest-taxed and most expensive state in the country, and though state legislators are prattling about making the state more "affordable," most of this year's session of the General Assembly has been a scramble to spend more money. Indeed, the legislature long has been most remarkable for its inability to audit government for actual results and to discover any substantial spending that can be reduced.
But not anymore. The other week the state House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill that would repeal the old state law requiring municipal governments to give formal notice of their plans and actions by purchasing legal notices in newspapers.
The legislation's rationale is that posting the notices on municipal Internet sites will alert the public sufficiently to what local government is doing and that it will be free, saving municipal governments altogether maybe $2 million or $3 million every year.
The money is real but the claim that sufficient notice can be achieved by municipal government Internet sites is laughable. For the audience of municipal government Internet sites is tiny. By contrast, even as newspaper readership declines, newspapers still have a substantial audience. More important, legal notices alert news organizations to what government is doing, and in turn news organizations alert the public both in print and on their Internet sites.
Since newspapers charge for legal-notice advertising, the notice requirement can be viewed as a subsidy to newspapers. But that is not how the advertising requirement originated. The requirement buys a service of value -- and not just notice to the public about the particular item being advertised but also local news reporting generally, which is in serious decline because the Internet and social media are drawing the audience away from local news and because civic engagement is declining along with literacy generally.
If the advertising requirement is repealed, then for everyone who reads legal notices on his municipality's Internet site there may be hundreds or even thousands of people who lose access to local news as newspapers adjust to their loss of income by reducing their news coverage and frequency of publication.
Municipal officials have been advocating repeal of the legal notice advertising requirement for many years, and saving money is not the only reason for their enthusiasm.
The advertising requirement is a relic of the era of limited government, which is long gone. The current era is one of virtually unlimited government with many more people drawing their livelihood from government.
As the primary mechanisms of accountability to the public, news organizations annoy government officials. Government is so much easier without journalism -- which is not to say that government without journalism would be more efficient but rather that government's inefficiencies, mistakes, and crimes would be disclosed less often.
That's why while the legislature finds it almost impossible to reduce or eliminate government spending anywhere else, it seems about to proclaim that journalism about government is readily expendable.
The state Senate's approval of the House-passed legislation and Gov. Ned Lamont's signature on it may inaugurate a golden age of unaccountability in government in Connecticut, a more expensive and mysterious age.
GAMBLING'S DAMAGE: According to a report other week in Connecticut's Hearst newspapers, some state legislators are having doubts about state government's expansion of legal gambling in recent years, particularly about sports betting, which has compounded with casinos, Internet casino gambling, and what now may seem like the deadly first step back in 1972, the state lottery.
Gambling addiction has exploded in the state, damaging thousands of lives, ruining families, helping to corrupt national sports, and recently snaring even New Haven's police chief, all while making a very few people rich in the guise of reparations for ancient wrongs to Indian tribes that no one alive today suffered from. Gullible Connecticut is supposed to believe that casino gambling is social justice.
Legislators and governors have thought that getting money through gambling -- indirect rather than direct taxation -- is worth the awful consequences to society. It isn't and remains a matter of political cowardice.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Lot of life in that ooze
“Slow Move Through the Creek” (acrylic on canvas), by Douglas H. Caves Sr., at Portland (Maine) Art Gallery.
Nick Collins: To protect Seaport District, pass the Mass Ready Act
Former warehouse repurposed as housing and a restaurant, on Commercial Wharf, Boston.
— Photo by Ingfbr
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, in the Seaport District
— Photo by Generaltso
From The Boston Guardian, except for images above)
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is also chairman on The Boston Guardian.)
Few neighborhoods in Boston have changed as quickly as the Seaport. What was once wide open is now one of the city’s most sought after places to live and visit, a transformation I’ve seen firsthand over more than a decade representing this neighborhood.
With that growth comes a new responsibility. The Seaport now has a clear identity, shaped by residents working to define its character. But that effort will fall short if we do not address rising sea levels and the growing impacts of climate change.
These discussions are thoughtful and detailed but planning without action is not enough.
One of the biggest challenges is not identifying what needs to be done, but how long it takes to do it.
Climate-resilience projects in dense coastal areas often face a maze of permitting requirements that can delay progress for years. These efforts cross property lines, jurisdictions and agencies. Yet our system was not built to move them forward quickly or at scale.
That is why, in the State Senate, we advanced the Mass Ready Act, a $3.64 billion environmental bond bill that protects infrastructure from climate change and severe weather, safeguards drinking water, and advances environmental protection, including limits on single-use plastics.
As part of that effort, I filed an amendment to establish a commission on resilient urban coasts to identify barriers that delay climate resilience projects and streamline permitting so communities can act more quickly.
That includes large-scale solutions that protect entire neighborhoods, not just individual properties, and projects that cross municipal boundaries and public and private land.
Just as importantly, the commission brings together state officials, environmental experts, and local stakeholders to align priorities and cut through the fragmentation that often delays progress.
This is about turning plans into action on a timeline that matches the risks we face.
At the same time, the bill makes targeted investments in coastal communities across Boston.
That includes funding for nature-based solutions and real time monitoring along our waterfront and harbor, helping us better understand and respond to changing conditions.
It also supports major capital improvements to the Boston Harbor Islands, protecting one of our region’s most important natural and recreational resources.
Closer to home, the bill invests in resilience upgrades at the Boston Children’s Museum and along the Fort Point Channel, safeguarding key cultural and economic assets in the Seaport.
It also advances critical planning and engineering work in Dorchester, from Davenport Creek to the Dorchester Bay Basin and nearby parks.
Together, these investments strengthen flood protection and reflect a more comprehensive approach to climate resilience.
This is not about one project or one neighborhood, but about protecting our city’s entire coastline.
Passing the Mass Ready Act moves us beyond planning and ensures we build the infrastructure it takes to be a resilient Boston.
Nick Collins represents the Seaport/South Boston, South End and parts of Dorchester.