Vox clamantis in deserto
Sarah Jane Tribble/Arielle Zionts: Maine and other states deal with threats of federal rural health program clawbacks
Maine population density.
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News (not including map above)
In Maine, state health officials hoped to steer a slice of $190 million in new federal rural health funding to shield hospitals and clinics from the fallout caused by cuts to federal health programs.
Their plan would have helped pay to treat low-income, uninsured patients.
But federal leaders overseeing the five-year, $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program said no.
“It was not our decision,” said Lisa Letourneau, a senior adviser at Maine’s health department.
Letourneau told an audience of health-care providers, advocates, and community groups during a March webinar that the change was “disappointing.”
Maine isn’t alone in having to make changes to plans pitched to win a share of the Trump administration’s new rural health fund.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz praised states’ plans when announcing the rural health program awards last year and said his agency would help states “turn their ideas into lasting improvements for rural families.”
But state officials and health-care leaders said it’s also clear the agency wants to encourage specific policy changes and hold states accountable to the promises they made and rules they agreed to follow.
During the past six months, as states raced to meet the program’s looming federal deadlines, CMS staffers worked with state health departments to make a flurry of changes, including scrapping some initiatives. The federal agency has the power to rescind existing funding — or reduce future awards — if states don’t follow rules or meet their goals. “We will take the money back” if states “don’t abide by what they wrote, if they don’t do a good job,” Oz said at an event this month in Washington, D.C.
Congressional Republicans created the Rural Health Transformation Program as a last-minute sweetener in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer. The funding was intended to offset concerns about the outsize fallout anticipated in rural communities from the law, which is expected to reduce Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade.
“MISUSE OF FUNDS.—If the Administrator determines that a State is not using amounts allotted or redistributed to the State under this subsection in a manner consistent with the description provided by the State in its application approved under paragraph (2), the Administrator may withhold payments to, or reduce payments to, or recover previous payments from, the State under this subsection as the Administrator deems appropriate, and any amounts so withheld, or that remain after any such reduction, or so recovered, shall be returned to the Treasury of the United States.’’
On a call with reporters in December, Oz said “one of the smartest things the president and Congress” did when creating the program was to create a threat of “clawbacks,” or taking money back if states don’t do what they promised in their applications.
Oz went on to describe how the clawback mechanism gives governors leverage to press their legislatures to adopt the Trump administration’s priorities, such as instituting the presidential fitness test in schools.
“This gives you extra umph, a little bit of gusto to go after these issues,” he said.
That message was received loudly and clearly in Tennessee. Michael Hendrix, policy director for the governor’s office, said during a hearing that federal officials said the state “would be more competitive for more funding through policy change.” He said CMS also relayed that “some share of this year’s funding, if policies are not implemented, might be clawed back.”
The threat of rescinding funding has caused fear and confusion among health organization leaders, said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association.
“We’re worried that facilities and organizations won’t apply for the grant money because of the fears of the clawbacks,” he said, adding that he would like the administration to clarify if federal officials could take back grant money that states have already awarded to rural health organizations.
While clawbacks are a “necessary, important tool” to address misuse of funds and ensure the money goes toward helping rural communities, they are also “a dangerous tool,” said Morgan, whose organization represents rural hospitals and clinics.
CMS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
States must file progress reports by the end of August. They then have until Oct. 30 to commit their first-year funding and Sept. 30, 2027, to spend it.
States are progressing at wildly different rates, with some still developing grant applications and others already distributing money, according to a tracker created by Morgan’s rural health association.
In late January, Iowa became the first to award funding. The tracker shows that most states have opened grant applications, but 11 others, including Wyoming, Maine, and Colorado, have yet to post any funding opportunities.
CMS’s tight control over state programs is one reason for such disparity in progress.
Instead of typical grants, the rural health program uses cooperative agreements, which require a back-and-forth partnership, said Charlie Sagona, a grant specialist at Assel Grant Services, a consulting firm that helps organizations manage grants.
“You are going to be working very, very closely with them; things will ebb and flow and change and move,” said Sagona, who is helping several large hospital systems interested in winning some of the rural funding.
Kate Sapra, deputy director of CMS’s Office of Rural Health Transformation, said at a May event that the agency has “many avenues of oversight.” Staffers are tracking applications for state funding and “looking to see when contracts are executed,” she said.
Sapra said the agency wants to “have conversations with states before they get to the point” of putting out something that’s not allowed. It’s “really important to us” for the funding to reach rural providers, she added.
Sapra said her office has filled about half of 30 new slots for project officers. The officers and the states check in “at least twice a month, if not on a weekly basis.”
Vermont Medicaid Director Jill Mazza Olson, who led her state’s rural health application, said the officers are “very responsive.”
Vermont is one of the states that had to ditch or tweak its plans. Olson said the state pulled its plan to increase housing for rural healthcare workers after federal officials said they would evaluate the proposal based on the agency’s guidelines for construction projects at healthcare facilities. Those rules allow only “minor” renovations to existing buildings or campuses.
In Colorado, state leaders changed grant eligibility rules after they “received feedback” from CMS and healthcare providers, said Marc Williams, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
Wyoming legislators and state officials spent months designing, discussing, and voting on a plan to invest most of its award into a perpetuity fund that could have generated $28.5 million for the state to spend every year, “forever,” according to materials presented to lawmakers.
The state had to pull the idea because it “was a degree too innovative for CMS to swallow,” said Republican state Sen. Charles Scott, a veteran lawmaker and cattle rancher. “This whole thing has been a bit of a disappointment to us in Wyoming.”
Stefan Johansson, director of the state’s health department, said Wyoming’s final spending plan wasn’t approved until mid- to late May. He said the department hopes to begin awarding money in late summer or early fall.
“Make no mistake — it is a very compressed timeline,” he said.
Across the country, Maine was forced to rework its plan to reimburse hospitals and clinics when they provide “essential” care to certain uninsured patients.
Letourneau said during her March remarks that federal officials rejected this idea because “provider payments had to be more directly linked to a rural transformation kind of activity.”
Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for Maine’s health department, told KFF Health News that funding will instead help providers transition to reimbursement models that aren’t based on how many patients they treat.
Reworked plans call for spending $28.5 million to support providers, Letourneau said in March.
“But there definitely will be more strings attached.”
KFF Health News correspondent Darius Tahir contributed to this report.
Presenting manic America
“I Feel Like I'm Just Waking Up,’’ by John Joseph Hanright, at the Samuel Owen Gallery, Greenwich, Conn.
He says:
“To create my paintings, I draw from several strains of American popular culture and art throughout the last several decades. By mining advertisements, magazine headlines, comics, pop art, and iconic imagery, I hope to create complex, layered narratives. From heroes to hookups, these narratives investigate our interpersonal dynamics with a manic verve that is central to the American experience.’’
Linda Gasparello: Now America has its very own Caligula
Bust of Caligula, by Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
If the Roman Emperor Caligula were alive today, you can bet that he would have cheered the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight on the South Lawn of the White House, which President Trump hosted on June 14 to mark his 80th birthday, and the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Caligula, who reigned from 37-41 A.D., hosted lavish spectacles and games for his birthday and other occasions at Roman venues. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, author of “The Twelve Caesars,” these celebrations were notorious for their extravagance and cruelty, including instances where he forced senators to run alongside his chariot for miles or ordered spectators thrown into the arena.
There are many parallels between the twisted Caesar’s reign and the Trump administrations.
For some fast fun, I asked Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, to write an account of Trump’s second administration in the style of Suetonius, whose juicy history of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire is one of the only sources of Caligula’s horrid reign.
Here is the slightly hallucinatory result:
The Life of Donald the Second Ancestry and Early Omens
He was born of the lineage of the Trumps, a clan enriched by the building of great monuments and towers of glass. His father, Fred, had amassed vast wealth in the provinces of New York, which the son multiplied through daring spectacles and the renaming of structures after his own image.
Before his second elevation to the principate, many omens appeared. It is said that a leaden bullet grazed his very ear during an oration in the fields of Pennsylvania, yet he arose bloody and defiant, shouting to the crowds to fight. This escape was viewed by his followers as a sign of divine favor from Mars himself.
The Second Ascent to the Throne
Having once held the supreme power and lost it to the elder statesman Joseph of Delaware, Donald did not retire to quiet contemplation. Instead, he waged a relentless four-year campaign from his seaside villa at Mar-a-Lago, which resembled an imperial court.
In the Year of the Ballot, he routed the faction of the Democrats led by the priestess Kamala, securing not only the electoral college but (narrowly) the popular vote of the entire Republic.
His return to the capital was celebrated with grand spectacles, and the Senate was quickly filled with his most loyal tribunes.
The Purge of the Bureaucrats and the New Court
Upon re-entering the White House, his first decree was the systematic dismantling of the "Deep State," which he likened to a hidden cabal of corrupt patricians.
He stripped thousands of public servants of their protections, replacing them with fiercely loyal clients.
He appointed Elon, a wealthy maker of celestial chariots, and Vivek, a young merchant, to oversee a new commission to hollow out the Treasury's waste.
He banished traditional magistrates and elevated loyal praetorians to head the legions and the courts.
Habits, Vices, and Public Spectacles
In his personal conduct, Donald retained the eccentricities of his first reign, though hardened by age and past grievances.
He eschewed standard imperial dispatches, choosing instead to govern by electronic edicts broadcast at all hours of the night to millions of citizens.
Diet: He disdained the refined banquets of the elite, preferring the charred flesh of cattle and the sparkling syrups of the West.
Amusements: He spent his days on manicured lawns, striking small white spheres with iron clubs, surrounded by courtiers seeking his favor.
Temperament: He rewarded absolute loyalty with high honors, but those who crossed him were subjected to public mockery, branded with insulting epithets, and cast out into political exile.
Foreign Tributes and Border Walls
Toward foreign nations, Donald acted with the unpredictability of a capricious deity.
He demanded heavy tribute from the allied kingdoms of Europe, threatening to withdraw the protection of the Republic's legions if they did not pay.
He placed vast tariffs upon the silks and wares of the Seres (the Chinese), initiating a fierce war of merchants.
At the southern frontier, he renewed the construction of his massive wall with frantic energy, boasting that he had successfully stemmed the migration of the barbarian tribes.
The End of the Reign
As his second term drew to its close, the Republic remained deeply fractured, split into warring factions that could no longer agree on the truth of things.
Some viewed him as a savior who restored the golden age of the Republic, while others whispered in fear of an absolute monarchy.
Having fulfilled the constitutional limit of his rule, he prepared to pass the mantle to his chosen Caesar, James David of Ohio, ensuring his shadow would loom over the state for generations to come.
Linda Gasparello is producer at White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an essayist. She’s based in Rhode Island.
Looking ‘beyond the seen world’
“Spring Emergent” (oil on linen), by Todd Binzen, at Matt Brown Fine Art, Lyme, N.H.
The gallery says:
Mr. Binzen’s “paintings draw upon the natural beauty of Vermont, the transitions of the seasons, and the underlying energies that animate the world. Todd started as a painter of landscapes, still-lifes and people. A desire to explore subjects beyond the seen world moved him to abstraction.’’
Lyme, N.H., from the west.
— Photo by Ascended Dreamer
Gerald FitzGerald: My times and travels with JFK
Historical marker for the Texas School Book Depository. The word "allegedly" was highlighted by vandals.
We never met. Never even saw each other. Yet looking back I know that my high school evolution was shaped largely by the most renowned Catholic sinner in America.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president in November of my freshman year. He was murdered in November of my senior year. And all those frail clergy who inundated my life like Niagara, those Dominican nuns, LaSalle Christian Brothers, those parish priests and Jesuits who purport to speak for God himself, stood stuttering between fractured sides of the man who lifted the spirits of millions but could not keep his trousers up.
We embraced him even as we fell to the wayside. His advocacy for the fitness effects of a fifty-mile hike blazed through the boys of Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School. Yes, I continue to insist I would have completed the hike from Brooklyn had the very route not gone by the front door of our home in Nassau County after roughly 23 miles on a hot day.
It was a mystery the scope of Transubstantiation how me own Dad from Limerick preferred Richard Nixon. Here’s a story of Dad’s fellow CIA employee very early in the Kennedy administration. The friend had drawn duty as the nearest warm staff body to the newly confirmed CIA director, John McCone, overnighting at a Washington, D.C., hotel. Turning in, McCone directed the agent: “Do not wake me for anyone but the president of the United States.”
Wouldn’t you know the telephone rings a little later. On the line is Dwight David Eisenhower, who, until a few days earlier, had been president of the United States for eight consecutive years. In a sweat the agent takes the briefest of moments then decides to gently wake McCone. To the agent, the ensuing conversation sounds smooth, quiet, respectful. After replacing the phone in its cradle, an icy McCone turns to the agent and says: “I told you not to wakeme for anyone but the president of theUnited States.” According to Dad, the poor guy spent much of his following career stationed in some place like Boise, Idaho.
By the way, forget all that baloney about the FBI being limited to investigating domestically and the CIA to scrutinizing internationally, Dad’s CIA office, disguised as a Treasury space, was on Wall Street in the Sugar Building near the East River and his beat was mostly New York City. No one, including my mother, knew he was in the CIA until he was out. If he were away for a few days, I’d check the top drawer in his bedroom high boy to see if his revolver was gone with him; I thought he was some kind of Treasury cop. He assumed many false names and guises to interview subjects. He targeted for search the luggage of travelers he considered to be suspicious before allowing it to be claimed; he facilitated bench “drops” in Central Park, and, prior to the advent of electronic eavesdropping, he planted a waiter to serve (and overhear) visiting Soviet dignitaries as they dined. The planted server was not only fluent in Russian. He lipread Russian.
When Kennedy launched the luckless Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, in April 1961 my dad was working security for the government set to replace Fidel Castro– including support staff—being housed at the Waldorf-Astoria, in Manhattan. He drove with them to Idlewild Airport (later renamed for JFK), in Queens, to be flown to Cuba until he was tipped to abort and take them all to Philadelphia and then contacted again to take everybody back to the Waldorf. That fiasco apparently triggered Krushchev to site missiles in Cuba which spurred Kennedy, when the attempt was discovered 18 months later, to trigger the Cuban missile crisis. That brought us twelve days of the closest we’ve yet to come to nuclear war.
The only reason I know all this is that when Nixon apparently created a mandatory retirement age of 65 instead of 70. Dad applied for the higher covert-level pension stream and Nixon’s people denied him. My old man was like a manic dog on a trouser cuff and he appealed by creating a hand-written litany of everything he’d ever done covertly. He was denied again anyway. He kept a copy and when he died, I found it in his home.
He and my mom had divorced after 33 years. Therefore, she was not his widow; she couldn’t draw any of his CIA pension. Then she got a call from a friend of Dad still working who tipped her to special one-day window legislation being drafted by Congress to benefit the ex-wife of former CIA director William Colby who had just died in a canoe accident. Family tradition says thanks to that info my mom and the former Mrs. Colby were authorized to receive pensions closed to others in similar straits.
I recall once coming into the kitchen of our home from working out back on a hot Saturday when the only telephone in the house rang. I answered to the voice of a stranger asking for Tom Somebody. I was a moment away from replying that we had no Tom when the hands of Dad rushing in from pushing the mower grabbed my shoulders and tossed me out of his way.
“This is Tom ___ with Bishop’s Service,” said Dad. I paused but knew better than to linger and listen despite having no clue what was happening.
My brother inherited the sterling silver cigarette case engraved and given to Dad by an aide to the Shah of Iran after Dad helped to fulfill the guy’s secret desire to eat an American hot dog. Dad drove him out to Jones Beach to try some.
President Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963. Two days later my sisters and I were sprawled on the Sunday noon floor watching the black and white television which had barely been turned off since the trigger was pulled. We watched the police moving Lee Harvey Oswald through the bottom floor of the station alongside adjacent underground parking so that the accused killer could be taken to county jail. Then we watched Jack Ruby shoot Oswald to death at point blank range.
By the time three more years passed there was something else appearing regularly on TV-- the Vietnam war. This was of particular interest to me as a male turning 20 who’d flunked out of college, was unmarried and who’d passed his draft physical. (During the physical the doc scribbled something on his clipboard so I stretched to read it over his shoulder: “flat feet.” Before I could smile, he looked at me and said: “Not flat enough.”) So, near the end of 1966 I phoned my local draft board to ask when I might be called up. They answered: February 1967. I gave notice to my employer figuring I’d take a month or so vacation thumbing across the nation before getting drafted. The only mandatory stop I scheduled enroute to California was to visit Dallas to see where President Kennedy was killed.
I left New York City with $50 and longtime English friend Keith Aitken. But we were busted for hitchhiking by state troopers somewhere near Albany. They took us to their barracks and sat us down on a bench inside while they watched us from another room. Shortly, Keith took something from his wallet and slid it into his boot. Turned out it was a Social Security card which he shouldn’t have possessed since Keith’s visa did not permit him to work in the country while visiting. Within minutes the staties put Keith on a bus back to New York, likely after flagging Immigration, and they released me alone somewhere in Albany to figure my own way out. I hitched on to Cleveland to spend a couple of nights with friends and reconnected with Rich Hollows, with whom I had roomed in New York. Rich was up for joining me on the trip to San Francisco, a place being checked out by other mutual friends. I still had a chunk of my $50. Rich was broke but carried a Shell credit card good for gasoline and Sheraton Hotels which he’d been issued while working in the mail room at Shell Corporation when we roomed together. Hitch-hiking we made pretty good time nearly as far as Memphis, Tenn., where we found ourselves in a farmer’s plowed field as night broke across the east bank of the Mississippi.
In the morning we rolled up our sleeping bags and found a diner within walking distance. Within the diner we sat down at the counter on either side of Walter Brennan. No, not the Caucasian elderly actor who’d won three Academy Awards before becoming one of The Real McCoys, but the African-American trucker, perhaps early 30s, with postcard biceps highlighted by a green sweatshirt with sleeves cut off at the shoulders above a paratrooper’s large tattoo pledging “Death before Dishonor.” He drove a blue White Freightliner hauling an Air Force missile launcher bound for Viet Nam via the Los Angeles docks.
I have no memory of asking Walter for a lift west but I would not have let that opportunity pass. He must have turned us down, probably citing regulations. What I do recall clearly is experiencing one of my very worst days of hitchhiking ever which, by 9 p.m., had brought us only to another plowed field on the other side of both Memphis and the river. Next day our luck revived and we made it all the way to Dallas, where we checked into a Sheraton downtown and ate like kings on Rich. Next morning we started at Dealey Plaza and hiked past the Texas Book Depository staring up at the sixth-floor window where Lee Harvey Oswald had fired down at the president in the open limo. Then we continued to hoof Elm Street a little past downtown where I snapped a photo of Uncle Sam’s Pawn Shop’s sign showing an oversize caricature of the mythical Sam pointing right at us saying: “I want to sell YOU a gun!” This on the same Elm Street where Kennedy had been shot. After seeing these points of interest, we started to hitchhike out of Dallas. Almost immediately we were busted by city cops who took us into custody and brought us down to the Dallas police station. Incredibly, they brought us into the parking level adjacent to the station and through a door into the hallway where Ruby murdered Oswald. Hell, I couldn’t believe the cops were taking us through the same hallway. I half-expected to see bloodstains on the linoleum floor. I looked but there were none.
The cops seemed like they were just killing time. They asked us each a few questions and then decided to drive us out of their jurisdiction to the Fort Worth city line. That was fine by me. I had welcomed the inside view of the Kennedy-related tour. It was getting on to dusk and I worried about the heavy, fast traffic on the connector where the police dropped us. I carried a big duffel bag that I should have left at home or traded for a knapsack. Dark was coming upon us nearly as fast as the traffic. All of a sudden, I looked up at a semi drifting quickly off the highway onto the shoulder coming right at us with no sign of slowing. I yelled to Hollows and we jumped out of the way. Before it rolled past us, I looked dead into the cab and saw nothing at all but white teeth smiling, like something out of Disney. With much squealing the rig burned to a stop. We ran abreast of it and recognized Walter Brennan behind the wheel still wearing his sleeveless green sweatshirt.
Walter greeted us heartily and waved us into the capacious cab, including its sleeper. Restrictive regulations appeared to have evaporated and, as it turns out, continued to do so. By the time we cleared Texas into New Mexico Walter told us he would stop at a rest area to replace the mandated Interstate Commerce Commission authority signs taped to his cab’s doors, to gas up, and to call the Air Force to send out a Military Police escort to be certain he made it to L.A. in time. Or maybe he didn’t have the proper authority posters and figured a military escort would help to blow him right by state police who usually checked such things. I don’t know.
I remember that Rich floated the full tanks of diesel on his Shell card charging Walter only half-price for cash in return. Walter made his call and fiddled with his signs and then gave us a choice: since the coming military escort would not allow Hollows and me to ride illegally in the cab either we could leave at the truck stop or conceal ourselves under the tarps covering the missile launcher on the steel flatbed to ride the last 800 miles or so to L.A. There were no sides of any kind to the flatbed and no padding. Foolishly, we accepted Walter’s invitation to continue.
The MP escort arrived in the form of two cruisers with flashing lights after Hollows and I had crept beneath the tarps and looked for something to hold onto. We each found a rope long enough to grip while seated on the flatbed but not enough to tie around ourselves. The cruisers apparently took up positions fronting and backing Walter’s vehicle. Their supposed purpose for being there was to add speed to the delivery. They did so. Walter drove out of that rest stop like there was no tomorrow and he never slowed down. Hollows and I started screaming and we never stopped. No one heard us. Or no one cared. We slammed up and down, bouncing on the flatbed or, with every shift in direction, bounced off the insides of the steel frame of the missile launcher. We screamed and cried and clung to our ropes every second of every hour in a titanic whirl of fear and bruising as the Freightliner hurtled in darkness through the freezing desert night. We were thoroughly battered long before we saw L.A. It was a ride I would relive periodically in nightmares or fever throughout my life.
We arrived late that night and checked into a Sheraton on Wiltshire Boulevard with
Walter, who remained dubious of our ability to glide through luxury on a gasoline credit card. I think it took a couple of hours before either Rich Hollows or I could stop shaking even with full tilt room service steaks and a bottle of Chivas Regal scotch which we promptly killed. The next morning, I could tell Walter was still nervous about departing with his wallet intact. We got on an elevator containing a bellhop. Walter couldn’t help himself. He actually asked the bellhop if there was some way we could leave the hotel through the basement or at least without passing reception! The bellhop said nothing but leaned forward to press “lobby,” thus ensuring that the door would open in front of the reception desk. Happily, the Shell card went down like ice cream.
Rich and I stood outside waving goodbye as Walter turned his rig onto Wiltshire Blvd. in the wrong direction to find the docks, then made an illegal U-turn pulling his horn full blast in farewell, with that big smile on his face, still wearing the sleeveless green sweatshirt.
Gerald FitzGerald is an essayist based on the Massachusetts South Coast. He has also been a newspaper editor and reporter, prosecutor and defense lawyer.
‘Immersion in forces that remain unstable’
“Suspension Drift 2” (painting and projection installation), by Iwalani Kaluhiokalani , in the show “Suspension Drift,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through June 28.
The gallery explains that the show is “an immersive installation of painted wallpaper, suspended scrims, video mapping, and sound. Painting and projection function as equal agents: One gathers trace, sediment, and atmosphere; the other sets the space into motion through drift, fragmentation, and fleeting alignment. The work opens a shifting field shaped by wā, a Hawaiian understanding of time-space as interval and relation, and pō, generative darkness as source and return. A planetary form emerges across layers, briefly coheres, and disperses again. Drawing from Polynesian navigation, Indonesian seafaring knowledge, and collective movement, the installation unfolds through passage rather than fixed perspective. It does not begin from a single root; it forms roots as it moves. The sublime is felt here not as distance, but as immersion in forces that remain unstable, relational, and in motion.’’
Chris Powell: Conn. judge dismantles due process by impaneling anonymous jurors
People in jury pool waiting to be selected or rejected for duty.
“The Jury,’’ an 1861 painting by John Morgan, of a British jury, all of whom then had to be men.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Even the Trump administration hasn't yet tried to mangle the criminal-justice system and civil liberties as much as a judge in Meriden (Conn.) Superior Court is trying to do. Where are Connecticut's "No Kings" people when they're needed close to home?
In what seems unprecedented, at least outside of totalitarian jurisdictions, the judge, Maria del Pilar Gonzalez, has decided to empanel a jury in a murder case while concealing the identities of juror candidates from the defense and the public.
Judge Gonzalez isn't doing it for fun. She aims to keep the defense and the public ignorant of juror identities because the prosecution has accused the defendant of conspiring to threaten jurors during his first prosecution for murder, which ended in a mistrial in 2024. The accusation arose from a statement given by a man who was imprisoned with the defendant, but the defendant has not yet been tried on the charge and there seems to be no evidence that any juror was threatened.
So with little evidence the judge presumes that the defendant is probably guilty of jury tampering and she wants to guard against it happening again.
But the judge would be wrong even if the defendant had tried to corrupt his first jury. For the identification of jurors to the defense and the public in criminal cases is basic to due process of law. Jurors must be screened against prejudice and improper motives, and they must be accountable for their service. That can't be achieved if their identities and backgrounds are concealed when jury candidates are examined by the court. If Judge Gonzalez's decision stands, the jury in the murder case she is trying could be rigged against the defendant and no one besides the judge and prosecutor might know.
If there is a credible threat to a jury's integrity, the court can guard against it by other means, as by surveying jurors individually in private or even giving them police protection. Empaneling anonymous jurors compromises justice as much as threatening, blackmailing, or bribing jurors does.
The murder defendant's lawyer has filed an emergency appeal with the state Supreme Court. Meanwhile Judge Gonzalez plans to continue selecting jurors without identifying them. The Supreme Court urgently should undo this secrecy rather than risk the time and expense of appeals that surely will follow a verdict rendered by an anonymous jury. It would be astonishing -- and terrifying -- if eventually a state or federal appeals court didn't punt Judge Gonzalez's decision back to medieval times.
* * *
A NEEDLESS EXPERIMENT: With Gov. Ned Lamont’s signature on the legislation last month, Connecticut began its experiment with what has been called "no-excuse absentee voting." People now may vote by mail for simple convenience; they no longer need to assert a reason such as illness, disability, religious observance, military service, or absence from the state.
The more absentee voting there is -- the more that people are separated from the direct casting of their ballots, the more that people other than election workers handle their ballots -- the greater will be the risk of election fraud. But the governor and General Assembly have decided that the risk is small and worth taking.
Another risk has gotten less consideration -- the risk that opening tens of thousands of additional mailed ballots and running them through tabulation machines will delay the calculation and announcement of results and present opportunities for adjusting the results in political emergencies. Even now Hartford and Bridgeport, always the repositories of huge Democratic pluralities, seem unable to report their final results by dawn the day after the election.
With luck "no-excuse absentee voting" will start slow. People have to apply for absentee ballots in person at town hall or by mail, and then complete and mail the ballot, and for some people that may be more trouble than going to their polling places, especially since Connecticut now provides 14 days of early voting in person so that Election Day crowds can be avoided. That’s all the convenience and security an election needs.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Science, not voyeurism
Atlantic Horseshoe Crab orgy.
Excerpted and edited from an ecoRI News article (image above not included)
As the full moon rose above the shoreline near Conimicut Point Park, in Warwick, R.I., about 100 people gathered along the estuary and belted out “crabaoke,” a crab-themed twist on karaoke. The crowd sang in unison: “She said, shut up and spawn with me!”
Scientists, doctors, artists, community organizers, teachers, and students from preschool through college knew they would meet near the park, rain or shine. What they didn’t know was whether the guests of honor would show up.
One of Earth’s oldest living species comes out of the Atlantic and onto beaches to mate at high tide during the full and new moons of late spring. One year, the group found a single horseshoe crab as if he hadn’t been given the address to the orgy.
Rhode Islanders gathered May 31 to celebrate Atlantic Horseshoe Crabs, which have survived five mass extinctions and have been pushed to the brink by humans, prompting conservation groups to call for federal protection before these spawning events vanish. But those groups and federal government agencies are clashing on how the species should be managed and protected.
Ghost herd
“Running White Deer, County Wicklaw, Ireland” (injet print), by Paul Caponigro (1932-2024)
— Courtesy of Maine Media College, in Rockport
In conjunction with posthumously naming photographer Paul Caponigro (1932-2024) its 2025 Visionary Award recipient, the Maine Media College has organized a show of around 20 of his photographs, most of them gelatin silver prints, dating from 1958 to 2008.The exhibition includes a number of Caponigro’s most celebrated images.
He was famed for evoking nature’s mystical elements.
Gen Tracy: The war to keep Boston ‘pure’
Seal of the public-morals policer The Watch and Ward Society
From The Boston Guardian
By GEN TRACY
(The Boston Guardian’s chairman, Robert Whitcomb, is editor of New England Diary.)
From the late 1800s through most of the 20th Century, a notable group in Boston was tasked with keeping the city “pure,” The New England Watch and Ward Society (NEWWS).
The group, founded in 1878 and originally named The New England Society for the Suppression of Vice, banned books and plays while discouraging gambling until 1975.
The organization was open to anyone who wanted to join and made a monetary donation. Members then elected a committee to run the group.
“It was something about the proliferation of impure literature, and in that instance not just novels, but things people wrote that were suggestive and thought a little bit risqué or a little bit outside of polite society. They would ban the book,” said Anthony Sammarco, a Boston Historian.
During the group’s banning of books, it became an “incorporated organization.” It had staff who would read the books and keep tabs on what was being sold in Boston.
“It was all supposed to be for something that would ban corruption. Corruption of who? Adults, young adults and teenagers,” said Sammarco.
He also explained, “People began to realize in some ways, they really did have clout.
They could ban books in the public library. They advocated that books not be used in curriculum of both private and public or even parochial schools.”
As the organization grew, it moved from banning books to taking a closer look at plays.
One of these plays, Strange Interlude by Eugene O’Neill, was considered too suggestive for Boston. The plot centered on a married couple whose wife had a child out of wedlock with another man.
The play was so suggestive and “unfit for Bostonians” that the city’s mayor at the time, Malcolm Nichols, called the NEWWS himself to have it banned in September 1929 after attending a performance in New York.
The NEWWS also targeted women during this era for striptease, which was one of the main ways for women to make money at the time. Gambling was also affected to the point that entertainment for anyone was hard to come by.
However, as time passed, the arrests of women, gamblers and authors did not work as intended for the NEWWS.
Women would get arrested on purpose for the publicity to help strengthen their careers and get more people to watch them dance.
Writers such as H.L. Mencken held demonstrations in front of crowds to gain publicity for their work. Mencken sold his banned magazine American Mercury to the NEWWS’ chief agent, J. Frank Chase, on Boston Common and was promptly arrested.
“Publicity was something that backfired, and in a lot of ways, they continued to do it. It was a very ignorant way of trying to keep Boston pure,” said Sammarco.
Citing the diversity of Boston during the 20th century, Sammarco has always wondered if the arrests were targeted.
“Was it a subtle form of discrimination?
Was it selective? Did they choose which ones to go after, and did they allow others to just basically pass under the radar? I do not know.” said Sammarco.
Years later, under the leadership of Dwight Strong, the NEWWS became the New England Citizens Crime Commission and focused its work on criminal rehabilitation.
Then in 1975, the group was merged with the Massachusetts Correctional Association because of its emphasis on prison reform.
“They perceived it as something that was benefitting the public, but in essence, what they were doing is stemming the tide of the freedom of speech, to read or to discuss anything that you thought was of interest,” said Sammarco.
‘Small-scale theaters’
“Approaching Provincetown on a Hazy Day, Small Waves Gather and Break” (pastel), by Daniel Marcus, through June 28, at The Front gallery, Montpelier, Vt.
He says:
"My work involves a descent into the Imaginal Realm, dropping into the unconscious to find the archetypal images and stories that speak to me. Whether in the image of the Sacred Mountain or in the person of the Lost Child, these symbols call out to be represented. Using pastel, collage, or a combination of both, or even digital images, I assemble them into small-scale theaters, endeavoring to create worlds of delight, beauty and wonder, snapshots of the larger stories we’re all a part of. "
Llewellyn King: Microgrids offer community solution to electricity challenge
A typical scheme of a microgrid with renewable-energy resources in grid-connected mode.
—Graphic by Le Anh Dao
See this about microgrids in Massachusetts.And this. And in Rhode Island.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
You may have heard of microgrids in passing, maybe at a town meeting or when the future of your electricity supply is under discussion. Mostly, they aren’t headliners like data centers.
But microgrids are becoming an important part of the future electric infrastructure. They provide a valve to release some of the pressure building for more electricity supply for data centers and transportation.
Burns & McDonnell, an architecture, engineering and construction firm, figures that by 2030, 50 percent of in-city deliveries will be made with electric vehicles of all types, and these will have to be charged daily.
There are about 700 microgrids operating in the United States, and over 7,000 are planned or under construction. While they got off to something of a slow start, they are now going full-speed ahead.
Originally, microgrids were seen as appropriate for military bases, college campuses, and other uses where there was a defense or social purpose, or in remote locations far from the grid.
Utilities were cool or actively hostile to them — although it can be argued that the first microgrid was established by Thomas Edison in Manhattan.
One utility executive said to me four years ago, “What is it about ‘micro’ that the promoters don’t understand?” Now utilities are beginning to embrace microgrids as part of the solution, not a raid on their customer base.
A microgrid, as explained by the futurist-entrepreneur Chase Weir, CEO of Distributed Sun and its spinoff truCurrent, is a way of bringing “kilowatt-hour liquidity” to the electric sector, smoothing out the periods when demand meets maximum capacity, often beginning as the sun sets.
It is a self-contained electric generation and localized distribution entity, using storage, renewables and, at times, traditional generation to create a grid that can operate either independently of the national grid or be connected to it. It is usually separated from but linked to a utility.
Oisin O’Brien, senior director of commercial solutions at truCurrrent, walked me through the dynamics of a microgrid that the company is building for a large food distribution company in Northern California.
Its assignment was to develop a charging station for 30 Daimler electric-tractor trailers used for food distribution. The challenge: To provide 2 megawatts of power for charging the Class 8 trucks during largely off-peak hours. Each truck has a 200-mile range on a single charge, and must be charged daily.
On this project, O’Brien explained, truCurrent is working closely with the local utility, PG&E. “We were able to harness the utility’s flexible service program,” he said.
The full power plant — which is awaiting permission to operate from PG&E — will team 800 kilowatts of solar power with battery storage to create a contained system.
Currently, solar collectors are being installed on the facility’s roof, but two dozen of the company’s trucks are already using the charging points in the parking lot. The 180 kilovolt (which equals 1,ooo volts) fast-chargers can fully recharge a truck in three to four hours.
This first-of-a-kind pilot is remarkable in that it has brought “speed to power,” going from contracting to charging in 13 months. It meets the food distribution company’s need for charging when they need to do so, brings resilient backup and load flexibility, and provides a price hedge at a time of record-high diesel prices.
“Our solutions are only becoming more valuable as cost, reliability and power availability worsens,” said Weir.
According to O’Brien, truCurrent has plans to deploy microgrids across the nation, utilizing a system of turnkey installations where the infrastructure is owned and operated by the local company or the community, but the planning, procurement and installation is provided by truCurrent.
“This project was driven by regulatory pressures in California, the company’s sustainability targets, and the increasing economic benefits with updated analysis, showing lower operating costs for electric fleets compared to diesel [pre-Iran war calculations],” O’Brien said.
The truCurrent project is for transportation usage, but there is a growing demand for microgrid deployment in suburbs, and even in apartment complexes.
It is an example of Weir’s vision for the electrical grid of the future which, in addition to liquidity and speed, must be designed for abundance and affordability.
The project “turned every challenge into an advantage for the developer, the customer, the utility and capital markets,” Weir said.
Shared prosperity with a microgrid: What’s not to like
Llewellyn King, a veteran international energy consultant, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Celebrating Shaker craft
“Big Rocker,’’ by Mitch Ryerson, in the show “American Beauty: Shaker Furniture and Contemporary Craft from the Collection,’’ at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Mass., through Sept. 6.
The museum says:
The show is part of “‘Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026,’ a nationwide Semiquincentennial initiative to showcase the importance of the handmade throughout our history and in contemporary life," according to the organization.
The exhibit at the Art Complex Museum pairs Shaker-made furniture with contemporary craft, showing how the work of the Shakers continues to influence craftspeople today. "Featuring works in wood, clay, fiber, metal, and mixed materials, [the show] celebrates craftsmanship that balances utility and beauty, tradition and innovation, and honors the enduring artistry of the handmade,’’ says the museum.
Chris Powell: Housing achieves racial integration better than regional schools
“The Problem We All Live With,’’ by famed artist Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), of Stockbridge, Mass., is a 1964 painting done as an illustration for Look magazine and considered an iconic image of the U.S. civil-rights movement. It depicts Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old African-American girl, on her way to William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white public school, on Nov. 14, 1960, during the New Orleans school desegregation crisi
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Some years ago racial integration in education used to be at least a nominal objective in Connecticut. Not so much anymore.
The state's law against racially imbalanced schools -- schools whose student racial composition is far out of proportion to the racial composition of their municipality -- has been disregarded for years by two schools in Greenwich, one in Fairfield, and two in West Hartford. A recent count says 16 more schools -- including more in Greenwich and West Hartford as well as some in Bloomfield, Branford, Hamden, Milford, and Montville -- are about to slip into imbalance.
Of course many schools in Connecticut's cities, including Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport, have student populations that are overwhelmingly from racial and ethnic minorities, without the slightest racial balance at all, just as many other school systems in the suburbs and rural areas are overwhelmingly white. But under the law that's OK, since the law requires racial balance in schools only within a municipality, not racial balance on a regional basis.
Racial residential patterns are such that substantial integration in schools could be achieved only by massive transfers of students, which would be educationally and financially impractical and impossible politically.
The state Education Department hasn't been pressing for action on racially imbalanced schools and is unlikely even to acknowledge the issue in a state election year. While municipalities might racially balance their schools fairly easily with little expense by redrawing school districts, redistricting always aggravates parents and students, especially when resources don't differ much between schools and most townspeople don't care much about racial balance, though society would be better for more integration.
These days there are second thoughts about racial integration in Hartford itself, where the push for integrated schools began more than 60 years ago with a small, voluntary program of busing minority students to the white suburbs, Project Concern. In recent years that push culminated with the Sheff v. O'Neill integration lawsuit.
The lawsuit led state government to establish three dozen regional schools in Hartford and its suburbs, and to the promise made in the lawsuit's settlement that there will always be room for any Hartford student who wants to enroll outside the city school system. As a result many students have entered the regional schools, leading unfortunately to still more racial concentration in Hartford's neighborhood schools and to what the city's Board of Education considers extra expense, since when students leave the city school system, it loses state money while incurring extra tuition and transportation costs.
So the board is hiring a public-relations company to try to lure some regional school students back to city schools. This has angered the Sheff case advocates, who see any strengthening of the city's schools as undermining the settlement of their lawsuit.
While the PR campaign may indeed reduce integration, it wouldn't violate the Sheff settlement as long as any Hartford student could still get into a regional school. Besides, it's fair to wonder whether the limited amount of integration achieved by the regional schools is worth the hundreds of millions of dollars they have cost.
In pursuit of integration it might be better to examine why some of Hartford's inner suburbs that a few decades ago were overwhelmingly white -- such as Bloomfield, East Hartford, Manchester, and Windsor -- have become thoroughly integrated racially with integrated schools. These towns suggest that integration is mainly a matter of a variety of housing options and economic gains for minorities.
Of course new housing can be controversial but to assist integration it doesn't have to be housing for the poor -- just market-rate apartments and condominiums.
Not everything retrograde in race relations in Connecticut comes from white suburbanites.
Black civic leaders in New Haven want the city to establish a satellite campus of a "historically Black college" to help Black students in the city feel more comfortable about higher education. But that would be more racial separatism, which seems to be politically correct lately. Black students must understand that they can and indeed must succeed without it.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Ivis García: Two moral hazards of federal flood insurance, a program that favors the wealthy
Flooding in Marblehead, Mass., caused by “Superstorm” Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012.
From The Conversation, except for image above.
Anyone who has been through a flood or hurricane knows the scene: waterlogged furniture piled on curbs, gutted homes with mold creeping up the walls, families displaced for months. But the recovery isn’t the same for everyone.
While federal flood insurance subsidizes risky coastal and waterfront development for wealthier homeowners by lowering the cost of living in these areas, many low-income households in flood-prone areas remain stuck with risky properties and little help.
As a disaster recovery researcher, I’ve witnessed how perverse incentives create different cycles of vulnerability across income levels. The problem with federal disaster insurance today isn’t just about subsidizing wealthier coastal homeowners – it’s equally about leaving low-income households systematically underinsured without resources to either protect themselves or leave.
The National Flood Insurance Program was established by Congress in 1968 to provide affordable flood insurance to the public while encouraging floodplain management.
Communities that participate in the program are required to adopt regulations to reduce flood risk in their areas for their residents to qualify. The insurance policies, around 4.7 million today, are purchased either through the program or insurance companies but administered and underwritten by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the nation’s disaster response agency. When the policy cost is lower than the risk, the property is being subsidized by the federal program.
The National Flood Insurance Program did succeed in providing accessible insurance for many people, but it also produced a “moral hazard,” where people take on risk without bearing its full consequences. What’s less well understood is that this operates differently by income level.
Water rises toward homes in Hampton, New Hampshire, on Jan. 10, 2024, after a storm with high winds, heavy rain and high seas. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
FEMA is currently working to adjust flood insurance prices to more closely match each property’s actual risk. The program’s Risk Rating 2.0 changes, which began in 2021, aimed to transition policies to full-risk pricing for everyone. The annual premium increases are capped by law at 18% for primary residences, so full-risk pricing won’t be fully reached until around 2037, according to federal estimates.
But there’s another, less visible problem: Federal flood insurance already wasn’t affordable for many people.
In low-income neighborhoods, more than 90% of households are estimated to be underinsured, and their uninsured losses when they experience flooding often exceeds 20% of their annual income.
Many homes along creeks and rivers in western North Carolina were devastated by flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Helene in 2024. Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Many families are unable to afford federal flood insurance premiums – only 37% of all policyholders pay less than $1,000 per year, according to FEMA. Instead, homeowners may skip insurance, gambling that disasters won’t strike. When floods do occur, these households can face catastrophic uninsured losses.
Homeowners and renters may also choose federal flood insurance plans with lower premiums but that provide less coverage in a disaster, and even those plan costs can be high.
Because the federal flood insurance program doesn’t specifically help those who cannot afford premiums, this creates a structural trap: Wealthier homeowners receive government-subsidized insurance support for risky properties, while many lower-income households fall outside the system entirely.
Severe repetitive loss homes
FEMA’s repetitive loss properties also tell a story. Roughly 1% of National Flood Insurance Program properties are considered “severe repetitive loss” homes – those with multiple flood events over a 10-year period. Historically, those properties have accounted for nearly 30% of all claim payments.
Low-income households that can’t afford to move can end up experiencing repeated losses, depleting their savings and leaving them facing persistent instability.
My research in Puerto Rico has shown how this repeated rebuilding deepens vulnerability, trapping families in a cycle where each disaster pushes them further into poverty and housing insecurity rather than allowing them to recover, what sociologists call “downward mobility.”
A National Flood Insurance Program map shows the number of repetitive loss properties within a 5 kilometer radius as of 2023. The highest rates are along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, as well in some inland river valleys. FEMA with Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, EPA, USFWS
Breaking both cycles
Addressing these moral hazards requires different responses.
Income-based assistance programs such as FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance grants can help ensure families aren’t priced out of safety. For example, the upfront cost of home improvements that could reduce a home’s flood exposure, such as elevating the home or flood-proofing the property, can be too high for many people to afford, but assistance programs can help.
Voluntary buyout programs can also be effective in helping low-income homeowners relocate from risky properties – if those programs offer fair market value, meaningful relocation support and timely implementation. Prolonged, underfunded buyout processes can be harder for households with less cash available to manage.
The National Flood Insurance Program has another ongoing problem as more people move to flood-risk areas and as property values and storm damage rise. By early 2025, the program was about $22.5 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury, even after Congress canceled $16 billion in debt in 2017. That debt accumulates $1.7 million in interest daily – costs borne by current and future policyholders through their premiums.
I believe fixing federal flood insurance will require an approach that prices risk accurately for those who can afford it while providing genuine assistance for low-income homeowners, for example, through affordable insurance, aid for projects that reduce homes’ vulnerability or equitable buyouts.
The water will come again. Flooding will strike both the insured mansions on the coasts and the uninsured mobile homes inland. The question is whether U.S. policies will continue leaving different forms of moral hazard for rich and poor or whether the government will finally align the country’s disaster response with reality.
Ivis García is associate professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at Texas A&M University, in College Station.
She has received funding from the National Science Foundation; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Institute for Transportation and Communities; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; JPB Foundation; Ford Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation; Chicago Community Trust, SBAN, Texas Appleseed, Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, Urban Institute & UNIDOS, and Natural Hazards Center.
Good excuse for a walk in the Vermont woods
“Pachamana’’ (metal), by Silvina Mizrahi, in the Bennington Museum’s annual outdoor sculpture show, now until November.
—Photo courtesy of Bennington Museum
Since 1998, this exhibition has brought public art to the streets, parks and forests of Bennington. The museum says the show "presents sculpture within thoughtfully curated outdoor settings where landscape, material, and artistic intent intersect.’’ This year, the work of 21 artists is spread across the grounds of the Bennington Museum, with more work on display around North Bennington.
Lucky in its fish
UuThe “Sacred Cod” suspended over the Massachusetts House of Representatives chamber.
Atlantic Cod
“As for what you’re calling hard luck – well, we made New England out of it. That and codfish.”
–Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943), American writer
‘The whimsy of what could be’
“in the light, shadow, and meadow-we dream, eat, and sleep’’ (paper collage), by Veronica Pham, in her show “Dream/Mộng,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, July 10-Sept. 12.
The gallery says that the show explores how “the ephemeral nature of the human subconscious and the intrinsic fragility of paper intersect in imaginative artworks about identity, folklore, and humor. Pham creates a diverse body of work, ranging from delicate paper collage to wall-mounted sculptures that are enmeshed with her Vietnamese heritage and cultural traditions. Addressing such topics as diasporic identity, the artist delves deeply into her past experiences and personal dreamlife to share the whimsy of what could be.’’
Running Latin American agriculture from Boston
Trucking bananas off ships in Boston in the 1920’s, when Boston-based United Fruit Co. was effectively running several Latin American nations.
Many well off New Englanders in the first 40 years of the 20th Century took winter cruises on these United Fruit ships. Originally designed to transport tropical fruit without ripening them prematurely, the ships doubled as luxury passenger liners.
Adapted from paragraphs in Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary’’ in GoLocalProv.com
Trump likes to threaten countries too small to seriously fight back. So it is with the crumbling Communist dictatorship of Cuba, which he threatens to invade.
This is another big “what if’’ of history.
Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 from the gangster-style dictator (the kind the Trumps like to do business with) Fulgencio Batista, which had helped turn the island nation into a paradise for the American Mafia. And Cuba had long been a kind of American economic colony, providing sugar, fruit, tobacco (especially for cigars) and coffee.
Because it was based in Boston, I grew up learning about the United Fruit Co., especially its bananas. That company, along with other large U.S. large enterprises, had big power on the island, including politically, and basically ran Central America.
And refining Cuban sugar was for many years very important in Greater Boston. I heard a little of this because of my relatively poor-boy father’s friendship with members of the extended Snare family, who were major economic and social powers on the island. The power of American capitalists naturally caused a lot of resentment, even if, like Frederick Snare, the founder of the family’s business empire, they weren’t rapacious.
American visitors tended to see Cuba, especially around Havana, as romantic, recalling lyrics about “tropical splendor” and swaying palms in 1935 song “Begin the Beguine”.
Of course, things weren’t particularly romantic for those toiling in the sugar-cane plantations.
Here’s an offbeat memoir about pre-Castro and later.
Castro came in promising to get better deals for his people after the long very inequitable economic relationship with America. His regime pressed for reform (based on a section of the 1940 Cuban constitution) and the expropriation of many American assets, with U.S. owners to be compensated via 20-year bonds.
But this depended mostly on Cuba making money on sugar exports to pay American companies. However, the U.S., wanting a return to the quasi-colonial relationship that existed under Batista, launched an embargo and made plans to overthrow the Castro regime. It’s unclear to what extent Castro was a Communist or just socialist when he gained power, but there’s no doubt that U.S. policies tended to push him into the arms of the Soviets. So Moscow became the island’s main economic supporter.
And then there was the usual problem of power corrupting: Castro loved being dictator of what he turned into a sometimes Orwellian police state.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, aid from abroad fell off sharply but some Russian help continued, and to this day is one of the few things staving off Cuba’s complete collapse and starvation in the face of U.S. sanctions, which Trump has turned into a merciless blockade. It’s hard to believe that this hasn’t killed some vulnerable Cubans.
Meanwhile, consider the, er, paradox: Russia continues to economically aid Cuba and militarily aid Iran even as Trump remains a Russian asset undermining Western democracies.
Craig Unger has done a splendid job investigating Russia’s hold on Trump.
The Trump 0rganization would like nothing better than to return Cuba to something like the land presided over by Batista, with, say, lots of casinos and beach resorts.
Bundling sex
“There was a curious New England custom …called bundling, which was love-making under peculiar circumstances….Boys and girls who bundled went to bed together, with their clothes on, and stayed until morning. Sometimes they got married afterword. And sometimes they didn’t….Many Mayflower Descendants have a bundling ancestry, though they never mention it.’’
—Eleanor Early, in A New England Sampler (1940)