Vox clamantis in deserto
Engaging with uncertainty
Untitled diptych (flashe and acrylic ink on Arches Aquarelle paper), by Gerri Rachins, in her show “Selected Works on Paper, 2008-2025, at the University of Maine’s Zillman Art Museum, in Bangor, through Sept. 5.
The artist says:
“This selection of abstract paintings …. explores the space between external experience and inner reflection. The work arises from an ongoing engagement with uncertainty—personal, cultural, and perceptual—and reflects a sustained inquiry into the condition of being in flux.
“Working on heavyweight paper, I use process, materials, and physical action to investigate tensions between order and disorder, control and chance, and form and formlessness. Rather than arriving at fixed conclusions, the images remain open, reflecting shifting conditions and competing forces while inviting viewers to question what they see.’’
A lonely trout species
A Wild Eastern Brook Trout.
Excerpted and edited from an ecoRI News article, except image above.
Wild Eastern Brook Trout are the only species of freshwater trout native to Rhode Island, and their numbers are shrinking due to such factors as climate change and habitat loss.
Organizations such as Trout Unlimited and the state Department of Environmental Management believe they speak for the trout, but that doesn’t mean they agree on what the fish have to say — especially when it comes to the question of stocking Rhode Island ponds, lakes, and rivers with brook trout raised in hatcheries.
“The fish, they don’t have a voice. Nobody knows these brook trout exist here. [People] don’t see them, they aren’t like rabbits or deer, they’re invisible,” said Richard Benson, a longtime member of Rhode Island Trout Unlimited (RITU), a nonprofit that supports freshwater and fishery conservation.
These trout used to be found in waters from Maine to Georgia, but their footprint is only about 5 percent of what it once was. Opponents of the practice of stocking fish — the process of releasing fish raised in hatcheries into waterways for anglers to catch — which has been a Rhode Island practice since the late 1800s, say the stocked brook, brown, and rainbow trout compete with wild native trout.
‘Then you can breathe long as you don’t inhale’
Smoke from forest fires in Minnesota and Canada sweeping into New England.
If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
Pollution, pollution!
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap
And get hot and cold running crud!
See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergeons
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly
But they don't last long if they try.
Pollution, pollution!
You can use the latest toothpaste
And then rinse your mouth
With industrial waste.
Just go out for a breath of air
And you'll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
Pollution, pollution!
Wear a gas mask and a veil
Then you can breathe
Long as you don't inhale!
Lots of things there that you can drink
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay
They drink at lunch in San Jose.
So go to the city
See the crazy people there
Like lambs to the slaughter
They're drinking the water
And breathing (cough) the air.
Lyrics for songwriter, performer and mathematician (including at Harvard and MIT) Tom Lehrer’s (1928-2025) song “Pollution,’’ written in 1965.
Fluidity festival
“The Sea” (oil paint and fabric collaged on canvas), by Angel Otero, in his show “The Ocean Forgot Your Garden,’’ at the Newport Art Museum, through Jan. 10.
Image courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth and the Vito Schnabel Gallery
The museum says this exhibition "considers the sea as a metaphor for connection, passage, and the movement of memory across geographies, histories, and lived experience. Splitting his time between Puerto Rico and New York, Otero maintains a deep connection to the island, where the sea is a constant physical, cultural, and historical presence and uses that experience with the sea to create layered, fluid and dynamic representations of the water juxtaposed with domestic objects.’’
‘New England’s God forever reigns’
In Boston’s Central Burying Ground
Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England's God forever reigns.
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
With Prescot and Cornwallis join'd,
Together plot our Overthrow,
In one Infernal league combin'd.
When God inspir'd us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd,
Their ships were Shatter'd in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.
The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet'rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen'rals yield to beardless Boys.
What grateful Off'ring shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,
And praise his name on ev'ry Chord.— Lyrics of the Revolutionary War song “Chester,’’ by William Billings (1746-1800). This version was written in 1778. It was common practice in the 18th Century to label musical tunes with arbitarily chosen place names. Still, each New England state except Rhode Island has a town named “Chester.’’
She’s seen a lot
“Portrait of Lois Dodd” (oil on canvas), by Marjorie Kramer, in her show “Then and Now,’’ at The Front gallery, Montpelier, Vt., through Aug. 2.
The gallery says:
“Kramer’s paintings draw on a vitality or ‘spirit resonance’ palpable to the viewer that comes from working directly from life.
“She shows landscapes, flowers, portraits and still lives.
“Some highlights from the show include a portrait from many years ago of the painter Lois Dodd (they traded portraits), a majestic wide summer landscape done near Kramer’s Vermont home that could be coupled with a winter landscape that could only be Vermont with its bright February raking light, and intimate still lives that show the meaningful in nature’s everyday acts.’’
After consulting with your wealth manager
“Morning Match,’’ by Jonathan McPhillips, at Lily Pad Gallery, Watch Hill, R.I.
Boston needs a lot of rain now
From The Boston Guardian; article by Jules Roscoe
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is The Boston Guardian’s chairman.)
Boston’s groundwater levels are trickling downwards amid a two-year statewide drought and the lowest precipitation levels recorded in 26 years, according to the Boston Groundwater Trust (BGT).
Much of Boston is built on infilled land, which is supported by wooden piles. Those piles need to be fully submerged in groundwater in order to be stable and preserved. If groundwater levels drop too low, the piles become exposed to air, which opens the door for bacteria, fungi, and bugs to eat away at the wood and weaken the entire base structure of the city. Groundwater levels, therefore, are critical, and the BGT is responsible for monitoring them.
During the winter thanks to some intense snowstorms, groundwater levels were looking up, BGT Executive Director Christian Simonelli said at the time. But the city would need substantial rain during the spring and summer months to keep that boost, and it did not get it.
“We need rain,” Simonelli said. “The first six months of this year are the driest that we’ve ever tracked.”
Simonelli wrote in a BGT newsletter last week that Boston typically receives more than 22 inches of precipitation during the first half of the year.
“However, this year, we have recorded 11 inches,” the newsletter said. “This total is the lowest we have ever recorded for the first six months since we began tracking in the year 2000.”
Massachusetts has been in a drought since August of 2024, and the Energy and Environmental Affairs department lists the northeast region of the state, including Boston, as Level 3, Critical Drought status.
“We’ve been seeing these prolonged periods of drought more recently within the past five years,” Simonelli said. “The city of Boston is generally consistent between 45 to 50 inches of precipitation. But some years over the past five years, we’ve had 60. And then other years, we’ve had 30. There’s much less consistency than there ever has been before.”
The levels aren’t the lowest they have ever been, though, which Simonelli attributes to city and state partnership to improve sewer and pipe infrastructure. The BGT monitors groundwater levels through observation wells throughout the city, and when a particular spot dips, it asks the owner of that infrastructure to check for a structural problem, like a leak or a burst pipe, that could be impacting the water. “We own the wells, but we don’t own the infrastructure that directly affects the groundwater,” Simonelli said. “That’s why those agencies are so important. We’re the canary in the coal mine jumping up and down saying something’s wrong. But it’s them going out there, investigating the underground infrastructure. And when they find an issue, like a pipe that may be broken, a manhole that may be leaking, they go ahead and fix that.”
The BGT has noticed some hotspots of low groundwater levels at Copley Square and along Dartmouth Street in the Back Bay. Observation wells in the latter are recording their lowest groundwater levels on record.
“While the recent lack of precipitation has undoubtedly contributed to the decline, the sustained downward trend points toward a likely infrastructure-related problem,” the newsletter stated. The BGT said it would continue working with the city to inspect all manholes, pipes, and sewer laterals in that area to find the potential problem.
Will they let Amtrak straighten this route?
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It was good to hear that Amtrak has begun to study ways to improve the railroad’s section between New Haven and Providence. Parts of the route should have been straighten long ago. The railroad says that it wants to “develop strategies to preserve and increase the frequency, speed, reliability and resiliency” of intercity and commuter service. But there’s a big catch: Amtrak said it would be “mindful of critical historical, environmental, and cultural resource concerns.”
It said it would “identify and evaluate new potential rail alignments alternatives and/or improvements to existing rail lines,” but “does not have a preconceived preferred alternative alignment or set of improvements.”
Translation of all this: The route could and should be made more direct, and therefore faster and smoother but Amtrak worries that affluent and so politically powerful people along any new “alignment’’ in coastal Connecticut and adjoining “South County,” Rhode Island, would fight it tooth and nail, whatever the greater good for the public of a realigned route.
Energy savers
“Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair” (oil on canvas, 1912), by John Sloan, at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.
We’re in there someplace, tired, wrinkled and folded in 2026
“We the People” (mixed media on panel), by Emily Blaschke, at the Portland (Maine) Art Gallery.
Philip K. Howard: Follett — Pioneer in management thought; she’d be a sharp critic of what ails U.S. democracy now
Mary Parker Follett
1889 map
Ford Motor Co. assembly in 1913.
At a time when American factories outnumbered office buildings, Mary Parker Follett invented the ideas that made the modern workplace. Her critique of our democracy is the part nobody wants to hear.
Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) was a seminal thinker in management theory. In the early days of large industrial organization, when Frederick Winslow Taylor was preaching the gospel of “scientific management,” Follett emphasized the social aspects of any group enterprise. Taylor was not wrong—improving efficiency remains an ongoing goal of successful manufacturers. But his efficient workplace could result in mind-numbing repetition. Follett understood that workers had human needs—for variety, for agency, for mutual understanding.
Follett originated the idea that, in the words of former Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria, “organizations perform best when they operate on the basis of shared responsibility and not . . . command and obedience.” Rigid organizational hierarchies, Follett argued, were counterproductive; the people on the spot should have the authority to adapt to “the law of the situation.” This, she saw, requires a system of “management with authority all down the line.” Follett understood that a “final authority” is always needed, but explained how better choices and better understanding resulted when “decisions are usually reached through a process” of interaction. The practice of exploring solutions and reconciling differences melds people into a common unit: “The strength of the group,” she wrote, “does not depend on the greatest number of strong men, but on the strength of the bond between them.” Healthy organizations have an “invisible leader—the common purpose.” (Unless otherwise noted, the quotes by and about Follett are from the 1995 book Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of Management.)
Follett came to her understandings not through study but through life. Her father, a shoe-factory machinist in Quincy, Mass., died when she was a teenager. With an ailing mother and a young brother, Follett was thrust into the role of head of the household. She taught school in Boston and could pursue her studies only intermittently, eventually graduating summa cum laude at age 30 from the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women—which became Radcliffe College, part of Harvard University. While teaching and studying she published her first book, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1896), which described how the speaker consolidates and wields power. In a laudatory review, Theodore Roosevelt called it a “really notable contribution to the study of the growth of American governmental institutions” and praised Follett for presenting “facts as they are.”
After graduation, Follett became a social worker, creating a network of community centers for vocational training in Boston. These hubs for self-improvement succeeded, Follett realized, when people felt a sense of ownership and a part of how the centers worked. Their success would inspire hundreds of other American cities to build similar programs.
Follett’s pioneering insights on management are today broadly acknowledged. Far less known is her prescient critique of modern democracy. In her 1918 book, The New State, Follett argued that the power of American democracy did not derive from citizen suffrage or from individual rights but from people working together in groups with specific goals.
Follett emphasized the social aspects of any group enterprise.
Defining freedom as a “conception of the separate individual” is a “fallacy,” Follett wrote: “You may as well break a branch off the tree and expect it to live.” She explained: “The essence of freedom is not irrelevant spontaneity but the fulness of relation.” A healthy society is one of interlocking groups, Follett thought. Only in groups with a human scale can people work out their differences and arrive at new understandings. Only in groups can people develop mutual commitment and pride. Follett’s philosophy is closely aligned with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, and she explicitly called for “taking more and more responsibility for the life of the neighborhood.”
She would likely be appalled by the current state of American democracy. The red tape state is designed for “one-size-fits-all,” not separate groups that inspire human creativity and experimentation. The modern insistence on individual rights corrodes the integrity of group norms with moral relativism and the demands of the lowest common denominator. “The corruption of politics,” Follett concluded, “is due largely to the conception of the people as a crowd.” Only when politics empowers the freedom of groups to do things in their own ways, she said, can people enjoy “the variety which the human soul needs for its nourishment.”
Philip K. Howard, an author, lawyer, New York City civic leader and photographer, is the founder and chairman of Common Good, a nonprofit legal-and-regulatory reform organization. His books include The Death of Common Sense.
Chris Powell: Will Conn. have a real campaign or just Lamont commercials?
Connecticut River as seen from Gillette Castle, East Haddam, Conn.
—Photo by It'sOnlyMakeBelieve
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont may have the campaign for governor all to himself. His vast wealth is being deployed again and is stuffing Connecticut's airwaves and internet channels with commercials and deluging journalist e-mailboxes with press releases.
While the governor's challenger in the Democratic primary, Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott, has almost qualified for $3.75 million in state Citizen Election Program campaign funds, he hasn't received the money yet and so hasn't deployed it yet even as the primary is only six weeks away, on Aug. 11. People who are eager for state government to grow and spend know that Elliott is their candidate and don't need advertising to push them, but the volume of the governor's advertising may be effective with other Democratic voters even if it never criticizes Elliott directly.
Meanwhile the Republican nominee for governor, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, lets most days go by without having anything to say, not even via "earned" news coverage. This is too bad, since news reports frequently expose mismanagement in state government. Even the governor's press releases and commercials should prompt some talking back from his rivals but aren't getting any.
For example, Lamont recently joined nine other governors in opposing federal legislation that would immunize oil and natural gas companies against state laws seeking to fine them for the pollution caused by use of their fuels. The silly rationale for these state laws is that oil and gas producers fooled the public into thinking that oil and gas are pollution-free, as if, since the industrial age began, nobody ever noticed what was coming out of smokestacks and tailpipes, and as if every state government and the federal government didn't accept that pollution is the price of the most practical forms of energy and didn't happily tax them rather than outlaw them.
Of course the oil and gas producers didn't burn most of their fuels themselves. Ordinary people did -- the constituents of the governors who, like Lamont, now want to blame the producers for pollution. Also, of course, those governors are not prepared to give their constituents much practical alternatives to oil and gas. They want to pretend that conventional fuels are the result of an evil conspiracy of plutocrats and not the result of longstanding policy.
Lamont and the other governors opposing the federal legislation to foreclose state laws punishing oil and gas producers are scapegoating and demagoguing. One proof of this is Lamont's failure to propose legislation to prohibit use of oil and gas in Connecticut. Like the other governors opposing the federal legislation, Lamont doesn't want to outlaw oil and gas and thereby stop pollution; he wants to tax them more in the name of recovering the damages of pollution, which could never be quantified specifically in regard to any particular producer.
Lamont is airing a commercial in which he claims to be protecting Connecticut against President Trump's "chaos." Trump is indeed producing chaos in Washington and around the world but Connecticut has plenty of its own chaos that has little to do with the president.
Apart from all the mismanagement and even corruption in state government, every week brings the usual murders, shootings, and stabbings, as well as incidents of child abuse and neglect that are overwhelming the state's child protection agency; more reckless and even crazed driving; fires in dilapidated housing in the impoverished cities; worsening drug and alcohol abuse; and more psychotic episodes from troubled people. Trump didn't cause those things. Neither did the governor. But getting them under control in Connecticut is the governor's responsibility, not Trump's.
Another Lamont commercial says he wants to end "corporate welfare." But he has been governor for 7½ years and if Connecticut has still has corporate welfare, he must approve of it.
Connecticut should discuss these things. But the only thing Elliott seems to find wrong about state government is that it doesn't spend enough enriching the government class. As for Fazio, for the state to know what he thinks, he'll have to show up.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years\ (CPowell@cox.net).
On its fragrant flow to the sea
“Santuit River Upstream’’ (oil), by Al Rich, at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, Mass. (on Cape Cod).
Environs of the Santuit River.
‘The Beat’ in New Britain: ‘Harmony and dissonance’
John Hitchcock’s “We Are Defined by the Beat’’ show at the New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, through Nov. 29.
The museum says:
“Home to artist, educator, and musician John Hitchcock (b. 1967), the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribal lands of Medicine Park, Oklahoma, lie between the sacred Wichita Mountains and Wildlife Reserve—a refuge for buffalo, deer, and elk—and Fort Sill, a United States Army post and artillery range established in 1869 during the Indian Wars.
“Within this environment, the sounds of cicadas, birds, and wildlife mingle with the percussion of artillery and helicopters, while the songs of Kiowa and Comanche people echo in counterpoint to military anthems. This coexistence of harmony and dissonance—of nature, culture, and conflict—is central to Hitchcock’s evocative work.
“For over three decades, Hitchcock has transformed the sonic and cultural rhythms of his homeland into a distinct visual language. An enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma with Comanche and Northern European ancestry, Hitchcock merges personal expression with references to intertribal powwows, the Wichita Mountain landscape of his youth, and the symbols and languages of Great Plains Native populations. Working across printmaking, neon, textiles, sound, and video, he merges traditional and contemporary art forms to pay homage to his ancestors, confront histories of Indigenous displacement and trauma, and celebrate community, resilience, and survival.’’
John Lowrey: How to get more food from grocery stores to food banks and pantries
Volunteers sorting food for Greater Boston Food Bank.
From The Conversation (excepting image above)
BOSTON
Low-income Americans need more help getting enough to eat, but not much of the food retailers that sell groceries could potentially donate is given away. Only 13% of it ends up at food banks, according to a 2026 report produced by ReFED, a nonprofit that studies and tries to prevent food waste.
The rest is composted; turned into animal feed, biofuels and other industrial products; sold at a deep discount shortly before its use-by date; or disposed of in landfills and incinerators.
Given that millions of Americans are losing access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and grocery prices are rising, why isn’t more food sent to food banks?
I’m a supply chain scholar who studies food banks. I conduct research about how food retailers and food banks work together to save food that would otherwise be wasted. I’ve found that those retailers don’t regularly tell food banks how much food they have available. That lack of communication, combined with capacity constraints at food banks, limits the volume of what food banks can get from supermarkets and similar stores.
No way to plan with precision
Food banks are large-scale warehouses that procure, store and distribute donated food from businesses, including supermarkets. Food pantries, by contrast, are smaller nonprofits that distribute food directly to those in need, such as faith-based soup kitchens and community food assistance programs.
Food banks are largely responsible for picking up food that retailers wish to donate and would otherwise discard. The donated food is then distributed to food pantries, where it is ultimately provided to low-income individuals and families.
This arrangement is mutually beneficial. Food banks generally want more donations, and retailers often have strong social and economic reasons to provide them.
Food banks manage fleets of vehicles of various sizes. Food bank logistics managers design routes and dispatch vehicles to visit as many retail store locations as often as possible. A food bank’s procurement territory could stretch across 20 counties and include hundreds of stores.
However, a big problem is that retailers rarely tell food banks how much food to expect, making all logistical decisions even more complicated than you might expect. For example, food banks usually don’t know how big a truck to send, how many staff members and volunteers will be needed to load and unload, or the quality and remaining shelf life of the donated items.
Consequently, food banks set somewhat arbitrary schedules.
A standard pickup schedule might involve dispatching a tractor-trailer to the local Costco store each day, while sending a smaller box truck to a rural Kroger supermarket once per week. This approximately matches the food banks’ pickup capacity with the stores’ demand for pickups or the expected volume of food available to donate.
Not enough trucks or labor
Scheduling pickups week in and week out helps food banks make long-term plans. They can figure out, for example, how many trucks they need in their fleets to haul donations.
But it doesn’t help with short-term planning. Without accurate information about what to expect, there’s no way for food banks to change course to accommodate any unexpected change in the volume of food available to donate.
Food banks also manage the flow of food from other sources besides retailers, such as federal commodity programs, items that food banks buy from wholesalers and donations from farmers, manufacturers and distributors.
Managing this diverse portfolio of food sources tends to exceed what a food bank’s fleet and staff can handle. Because every pickup requires trucks, labor and time, capacity constraints often prevent food banks from collecting donations from every retail store on a daily basis.
A food bank truck is parked outside a Weis grocery store in Pennsylvania in 2021. Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
Food pantries join the pickup game
Over the past decade, I’ve seen most U.S. food banks adjust their supply chains to boost donations
.
Starting in 2016, the usual system began to change. Many stores now donate directly to food pantries, bypassing the food bank altogether. A hybrid model, with both food banks and food pantries picking up food from stores, is especially popular with the high-volume, big-box retailers that are located far from any food bank warehouse. In those cases, local pantries are often closer by.
Operations management scholar Ken Boyer and I studied what happens when food pantries begin to pick up donated food directly. We observed what happened at five big-box stores from April 2017 to March 2018 as food pantries began to directly pick up more donated food.
We found that while food pantry pickups can increase donations, it also shifts and intensifies bottlenecks down the food donation supply chain.
The best-performing store increased its average monthly donations from 972 pounds (441 kilograms) across five pickups to 2,066 pounds (937 kilograms) across 16 pickups, a 110% increase in donation volume alongside a 220% increase in pickup frequency. But we couldn’t estimate the donation rate at that store or the other four due to a lack of data on how much food was available for those in need.
Unpredictable staffing was also an issue. Since food pantry pickups often relied on volunteers with their personal vehicles, rather than a food bank’s paid staff driving its own trucks, those pickups were much less reliable. And when a food pantry missed a scheduled pickup, it significantly disrupted in-store donation processes and undermined the store managers’ confidence that donated food would be collected as planned.
This uncertainty affected whether food was set aside for donation or thrown out.
Today, most food banks across the country have incorporated at least some pickups by food pantries from retailers into their donation systems. Yet data on what food will be available, at what time and at which store is still missing. This data could go a long way in closing the gap between the amount of food that’s available to donate and what actually is donated.
It is worth noting that food pantries have tighter budgets than food banks, with stronger preference than food banks for certain kinds of food, such as meat and produce. They also have less storage space than food banks, compounding the capacity constraints that were already limiting donations when only food banks were picking food up from stores.
Better data and more reliable staffing would go a long way in making sure that more donated food gets to those who need it the most.
John Lowrey is an assistant professor of supply chain and health sciences at Northeastern University and the founder of Food ALERT, a B2B SaaS platform that helps retail grocers achieve 100% donations. He is also on the Board of Directors for the Arizona Association of Food Banks.
Incited by ‘distance and absence’
“White Elephants, Gajasimhas and Buildings” (visuals drawn by students in Cambodia, silk threads, printed and woven), by Linda Sok, in her show “Linda Sok: Warped Archive’’ at the Brattleboro, Vt., Museum and Arts Center, July 11-Nov. 1.
Sok says she "engages with French-colonial documentation of disappeared textiles at the National Museum of Cambodia ... [to] imagine new designs for contemporary tapestries….Distance and absence become inciting moments; my practice emerges as acts of weaving, rituals, and translations of physical materials.’’
Llewellyn King: An immigrant from Britain and Africa’s defense of immigration
Net migration rates per 1,000 people in 2023. On net, people generally travel from redder countries to bluer (and richer) countries. (Russia gets a lot of immigrants from Central Asian nations.)
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Migration, people moving to new lands, is as old as human history, and as fraught.
Today it is a global problem complete with layered hypocrisy, cruelty and, always, hope among those on the move. War and extreme poverty collude in driving people to seek a livable future.
There is no simple solution, no slogan that encompasses a fair and reasonable course of action for the receiving country.
I moved from a British African colony, Southern Rhodesia ( now Zimbabwe), to the homeland, Britain, when that was our birthright, and to America a few years later.
I did that because it was the place I wanted to be, the happening place, the place of all possibility and challenge.
I didn’t plan to stay, and now it is more than 60 years later. And, yes, I was elated to become a citizen.
In those days, if you were British, immigration was no harder than filling in some forms and swearing that you weren’t a communist and wouldn’t live in “moral turpitude” when you got to America. That reprehensible state of “turpitude” wasn’t described.
To me, America was more than a country, it was, and remains, a state of mind.
At its best, America is generous, caring, open and empathetic to the world and its hurts. Yet, how human a country! It is replete with hideous mistakes from the Palmer Raids, to McCarthyism and the Red Scare, to the Vietnam War. The gash of slavery hasn’t healed, and racism has left its mark.
America’s genius is that it realizes itself as a work in progress.
Our major weakness, it always seemed to me, was the obverse of our strength: wishing our ways on others; wanting them to see the light we see.
Like so many others, my attitudes are conflicted, hypocritical and without a simple, elegant defense.
About 30 years ago, I first raised the issue of the impact of immigration on the nation. My concern then was that Spanish was becoming a second language. If that were to happen, I feared the country would enter into the same debilitating, two-nation status that has divided Canada and Belgium.
Also, I have argued against the way immigration has left its mark on Europe, especially from North African migrants who have set up enclaves where there is no attempt to integrate and where their religion has maintained them in isolation; angry minorities in their urban strongholds. That undermines the value of the journey both to the migrant and the host country.
I have come to believe that Spanish isn’t the threat it appeared at that time, and that our ability to absorb and prosper as a result of immigration is at a real-and-present danger of being wasted, denying us the talent flow that has made us a beacon to the world.
Never forget that every deportation is a human disaster: a life and a family sent into an unknown purgatory.
Recently, I had a weeklong stay at a Rhode Island hospital and marveled at doctors who were from distant lands, including Iran and Arab countries.
In the late reaches of one night, I had a crisis. My room was flooded with nurses and their assistants, all helping and caring. From their accents, I was certain that at least four of my angels weren’t born here. I was glad of them.
Just as I am glad that we lead the world in high tech and at the apex of its leadership sit immigrants. They dominate at the top tech behemoths.
Not every immigrant has added to America’s greatness, some have brought with them creeds that are hard to accommodate, some have brought crime. But overall, each wave of immigrants has lifted America and its people to new heights.
From those early settlers to the German filmmakers, to the Scandinavians who planted the Great Plains, to the Irish who have informed our culture, to the Italian builders, to the German filmmakers, who came in the 1920s and 1930s and created the Hollywood we know and treasure, to the Jewish refugees from Europe who gave us everything from great music to the magic of Broadway, to high science and lifesaving medical research.
When I first arrived in New York, I wrote to a friend, “This is an extraordinary place, less of a mixing bowl and more of a stew, where all of the ingredients remain intact and yet work together in a kind of wondrous unity.” I wouldn’t withdraw or amend a word of that more than 60 years later.
People move because they aspire to a better life for themselves and their families. Grabbing those who slipped in and sending them to all they sought to leave behind is, to this grateful immigrant, un-American.
We are a big country, big-hearted, too, and we have room for these big contributors to our future.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and and an international energy consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Patriotic faith
On Traverse Street, Providence
- Photo by William Morgan, Providence-based architectural historian and photographer.
By ‘exaggerating details’
“Purple Shimmer” by Leah Barranco, in her show “Color & Scale,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, July 10 through Sept. 12,
The arts center explains:
“In ‘Color & Scale,’ Leah Barranco translates the physical world, examining and exaggerating details found in nature and illuminating the overlooked beauty of the wilderness that surrounds us. Using pattern, varying brushstrokes, opacity, and vivid colors, Barranco presents nature through a new vibrant lens.
“Focusing on the aquatic creatures found within the waterways of Vermont, the visible qualities of moving water mask an elusive underwater realm. Barranco explores a microcosm that is filled with life, color, and radiance – each creature with their own brilliant color palette and unique pattern. Through the medium of paint, we can experience the world from a new perspective.’’