So what’s ‘natural’ these days?
“Unnatural Study #21,’’ by Charlotte Niel, at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Mass., through Aug. 17.
Ghost marketing
“Billboard” (skeleton) (watercolor), by William Talmadge Hall, in his “Obstructions to a Landscape” series.
Fine dining for Boston’s rats
A Brown Rat (aka Norway rat— the species found in Boston) looking for food waste in a park.
World War II poster.
A Boston Guardian article by Cullen Paradis. Images above put in by New England Diary.)
(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian’s board.)
Although city government is already implementing new measures to curb Boston’s rat population, such hotspots as the South End and Back Bay still have weeks or months to wait before officials are done collecting data and rolling out new sensors and bins.
Special Project Manager Luke Hines and environmental services’ Assistant Commissioner John Ulrich couldn’t say definitively which neighborhoods have the worst rat problems today, though they hoped to have a clearer picture within two months as new monitoring systems come online.
Zac Brown, a manager with Clancy Bros. Pest Control, was able to supply The Boston Guardian with his company’s call statistics by ZIP code.
This year they got the most calls for rat infestations in Boston’s central neighborhoods from the South End at 43, followed by the Back Bay and Bay Village at 33.
While Clancy Bros.’ geographic breakdown would be affected by any number of business and cultural trends, its overall rat infestation call totals should give a more comprehensive picture of how fast populations are growing. This year’s rodent calls are already 10 percent above 2024’s total, sitting at 1,605 this July compared to 1,456 in the entirety of 2024.
Clancy Bros. responded to 15 rat infestations in the South End’s 02118 area code in 2024, but this year has already had 43. The Back Bay’s code of 02116 called just twice in 2024, but this year has called 33 times.
“There are just so many available food sources with the trash handling and old structures,” Brown said. “I’ve been doing this since I was 15 years old, been in the industry for like 22 years now, and it’s progressively just gotten worse over time. Every season increases more and more. The population in Boston has grown too, and [rats] thrive taking advantage of available food and structures.”
Brown, Hines and Ulrich all agreed that the main problem was trash left accessible, whether in common areas or as part of larger commercial operations. In years past the city has largely blamed a small number of commercial actors improperly disposing of their waste, but officials are now looking at the problem with a broader focus.
That focus has materialized as the Boston Rodent Action Plan, an analysis published with the help of urban rodentologist Dr. Bobby Corrigan back in July 2024. It identified four PANs (Priority Action Neighborhoods) which are Back Bay/Beacon Hill, Allston/Brighton, Dorchester/Roxbury, and the grab bag of District 3, which includes the Downtown, Chinatown, North End, South End, and Haymarket.
A year later, that plan is bearing material fruit as several pilot programs take root around the city. Mayor Michelle Wu herself highlighted new trash cans with lids installed in the North End, and a different barrel design on the Common has its own durable build and difficult to access interior.
Electronic counting traps set up in rat thoroughfares let officials monitor rat populations directly instead of relying on 311 calls for tipoffs about rat numbers and movement.
There are some tradeoffs, with newer designs requiring more maintenance, more money to buy and slightly more effort to access. But Hines said workers actually preferred servicing the new, more complex designs in initial trials. It turns out opening a lid is less frustrating than arriving on site and finding the trash barrels full of holes and garbage strewn around the street.
Today officials are collecting data with the sensors they’ve deployed to inform exactly where countermeasures are needed, a process that should finish by September. In September the sewer traps in the North End will be expanded into the Back Bay, followed by another six weeks to measure how effective new countermeasures are compared to control sites.
Until then, Brown recommends that residents keep an eye out for rat problems and report them before a property’s population balloons. The city does also perform inspections of potentially infested properties if they are reported to 311. An online public meeting is planned for August 12 at 6pm for residents that want to know more about the city’s rat control programs.
Chris Powell: Euphemism can’t erase doubts about sex-change therapy for minors
A young transgender woman before and after two years of hormone-replacement therapy.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Is “gender-affirming care" good or bad?
Whatever it is, it's a euphemism, a term of camouflage to prevent something from being plainly understood and to present it in a favorable light -- in this case to diminish the controversy that would be recognized if the proper neutral, impartial, and descriptive term was used: sex-change therapy.
Since “gender-affirming care" is politically correct and most journalism seeks to be, journalism uses “gender-affirming care" to pretend that there is nothing questionable about it. After all, who could be against “care"?
But of course there are questions about it, and the controversy can't be concealed any longer now that the Trump administration is siding with the politically incorrect side of the issue.
First the Trump administration turned the federal government against transgenderism -- men in women's sports, bathrooms, and prisons -- and now it is using the federal government's enormous power over medical policy to dissuade hospitals from using drugs and surgeries to change the sex of minors.
As a result, Connecticut Children's Medical Center, in Hartford, is getting out of the sex-change therapy business for minors, and Yale New Haven Health is canceling its use of drugs in sex-change therapy for minors while continuing to provide minors with mental- health treatment for gender dysphoria.
Most hysterical about this in Connecticut is state Atty. Gen. William Tong. “This is the next ugly front in the ongoing war on American patients, doctors, nurses, and health care providers," Tong shrieks. “This is about scaring patients from seeking care and scaring doctors from providing care, regardless of who is harmed and the lives that will be lost. It's unconscionably reckless and yet another disturbing intrusion of partisan politics on our private lives and choices."
In Politically Correct World, where the attorney general resides, it's impossible to have a good reason for objecting to drug and surgical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria -- impossible to object because drugs and surgeries can have life-altering and irreversible effects on people who, according to law, are incapable of making such decisions for themselves, incapable of informed consent.
In P.C. World the issue of informed consent simply vanishes amid gender dysphoria, even though many minors who have undergone sex-change therapy have come to regret it, and many, if not most, young people with gender dysphoria seem to outgrow it.
Not only that, but in P.C. World anyone who does object cannot possibly have good intentions and cannot sincerely be concerned about the children who are to be subjected to life-altering drugs and surgeries. No, as the attorney general says, such people are just aiming to “scare" doctors and patients and are "unconscionably reckless."
As for what Tong calls the “disturbing intrusion of partisan politics on our private lives and choices," he hardly objected a few years ago when government was ordering people to submit to inadequately tested vaccines on pain of losing their jobs. Of course, back then those vaccines, like the attorney general himself, were politically correct, though not so much now as harmful side-effects are more recognized.
Like it or not, with government so heavily involved in medicine, politics is heavily involved as well. If you lose an election, the government may change medical policies contrary to your liking. That's democracy for you.
Tong and P.C. World seem not to remember that the party of political correctness lost last year's presidential and congressional elections in part because of its exaltation of transgenderism. But even if, as the attorney general insists, objecting to men in women's sports, bathrooms, and prisons while upholding longstanding protections for minors is fascism, it's a pretty tame version.
Gov. Ned Lamont is less hysterical than the attorney general but not much more thoughtful as he seeks to get his P.C. ticket punched. Responding to the change in federal policy on sex-change therapy, the governor says “In Connecticut we do not turn our backs on kids in need." Then maybe someone else can explain the thousands of Hartford and Bridgeport students recently reported to lack critical “special-education" services.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Sky work in Burlington
“Prying into the Secrets of the Sky” (detail) (paper, bamboo, acrylic, wood and Dacron), by Jacob Hashimoto, in his show “Jacob Hashimoto: a lowercase sky,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts through Sept. 14.
The gallery explains that the show is an “immersive, site-specific installation combining traditional kite and design-making techniques, printmaking, and collage.’’
Whatever it takes to stay up
“Suspended By Belief” (collage, acrylic, gouache on board), by Samira Abbassy, at Moss Gallery, Portland, Maine, through Aug. 30.
The artist explains:
“The subject of much of the work evolves out of the question: How do I create a figure that embodies the metaphysical aspects of the figure? The work is an inquiry into how to reveal the figure as a psycho/emotional being, encountering its various internal states: the violence, ecstasy, and epiphany within. The key to my approach in painting the figure lies in an idea taken from Dante’s Inferno; that figures are“contorted according to their sin.” This implies an embodiment of psychological states, where the physical states mirror psychological dilemmas. Rather than portraits, the figures are archetypes, revealing themselves from the inside out; showing how it feels to be human, and their specific identities help uncover elements of a more universal Self. At times, the figure is represented as many selves, or many aspects of one unified Self, expressing an array of psychodynamic and existential realities.’’
‘A cottage industry’
Part of South Boston.
“South Boston {aka ‘Southie’} was, and arguably still is, the most politically active community in Massachusetts. It abounds both in widely known politicians and aspirants lusting to replace them in office….Politics was a cottage industry, a spectator sport and, I suppose, the nearest thing we had to a real-life drama, sitcom or game show.’’
“Billy” Bulger in the late ‘80s.
— William M. Bulger (born 1934), from South Boston, served as president of the Massachusetts Senate and as president of the University of Massachusetts. His brother was the infamous mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.
Looking for connections
From the Library of Congress:
“Map of the European and North American Railway, showing its connection with the railways of the United States & Canada; made by direction of His Excellency John Hubbard, Governor of Maine under the resolve of Aug. 20th 1850.’’
Fend them off and/or use them
Black Swallow-Wort flowers
Photo by jacilluch
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Invasive plants keep moving into southern New England from the southwest, aided by global warming. They crowd out some native plant species and harm certain native animal species, too. Some are poisonous.
Spotted Lanternfly
— Photo by WanderingMogwai
Invasive creatures are also moving in as New England’s climate becomes more like that of the Middle Atlantic states – e.g., those creepy but pretty Spotted Lanternflies, a menace to crops and trees.
In this hot and humid summer, the aggressive plants are growing particularly fast! Among them: Barberry, Black Swallow-Wort, Glossy Buckthorn and Oriental Bittersweet. They’ll keep coming. And wait till Kudzu, that invasive vine from Dixie, really gets going around here, strangling everything in sight.
But we can slow down these plants’ population explosion by pulling them out as soon as we see them and by using plant diseases and/or insect predators from their home range. Then there are man-made chemical herbicides, which of course must be used very carefully. (My favorite plant killer is vinegar.)
But some of these infuriating, fast-growing plants have medicinal uses!
Green Crab
This reminds me again of Green Crabs, those little invasive creatures that came over here from southern Europe and have been spreading along the New England coast as climate change raises seawater temperatures. The crabs consume vast quantities of high-value shellfish and tear up the ecological treasures that are marshes and eelgrass beds.
But it turns out that they can be eaten and create excellent stock for soups and stews. And they’re good bait. And so some entrepreneurs have started businesses to catch them. Let’s hope that this helps stem the worst of their aggression.
A Rhode Island company, Dune Brothers, serves Green Crabs.
‘The weight of displacement’
“Kathe’s Blues” (photo transfer on patinaed metal), by Lisa Cohen, in her show “Beneath the Layers,’’ at the Wellfleet (Mass.) Preservation Hall, through Aug. 31.
The curator explains that the show is “a deeply personal and evocative look at the journey and challenges faced by immigrant families through the artists’s family experience fleeing Europe in World War II. Lisa Cohen captures the emotional weight of displacement, the resilience of the human spirit, and the enduring power of family bonds through her artwork.’’
Sonali Kolhatkar: Fatal Fall River fire displayed the assisted-living crisis
Gabriel House before the fire.
Via OtherWords.org
A deadly fire at Gabriel House, an assisted living facility in Fall River, Mass., claimed 10 lives on July 13-14.
In the aftermath, horrific scenes emerged of elderly residents trapped inside smoke-filled rooms and hanging out of windows, desperate for rescue. Victims ranged in age from 61 to 86.
Over the years, Gabriel House owner Dennis Etzkorn has faced several charges over sexual harassment and kickbacks, but was not indicted. Regulators cited the facility for violations around staffing and emergency preparedness but never followed up. Former staffer Debbie Johnson told CBS Boston that the facility was “horrible,” dirty and understaffed.
Etzkorn reportedly owns several care facilities for elders in Massachusetts. This sort of consolidation in ownership of assisted living and other senior-centered facilities is increasingly common across the country.
And that, says author Judy Karofsky, is a serious problem — even when the owners are nonprofit corporations. “There really is no difference in the performance [whether they are nonprofit or for-profit],” Karofsky told me.
Her book, DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice explores her personal experience navigating the system to care for her mother. “My mother was injured, my mother was sexually assaulted. My mother had many, many falls because there just wasn’t enough staffing,” said Karofsky.
The assisted-living industry relies heavily on immigrant laborers who are overworked and underpaid. According to Karofsky, “We need to honor them, understand who they are, what they’re willing to do.”
Karofsky’s mother loved many of the people who cared for her, but “some of them …were so unhappy or frustrated in their situation, they really couldn’t give the kind of care that she needed.” Many held multiple jobs, moved from one facility to another, and were offered only temporary positions.
The crisis of care in assisted living boils down to funding — or lack thereof.
Because these are a relatively new sort of institution — different from nursing homes or hospice care facilities — assisted living facilities are ruthlessly frugal and notorious for cutting corners. There’s little federal regulation, and not enough funding for staff training or the sort of memory care that elderly people increasingly need.
“Yes, we are living longer — good for us,” said Karofsky. “Now we have an obligation to provide health facilities, care facilities till the end of our days and not cut back on the sources of funds that would ease our passage.”
There’s a powerful analogy with child care. Most parents rely on the childcare industry, and yet it’s increasingly unaffordable, even though most childcare workers are underpaid. Yet the well-being of children is at stake.
“It’s profiteering. It’s exploitation,” said Karofsky of the assisted living industry, whose facilities are growing more expensive each year even as workers struggle for fair pay.
How is it that industries like these are simultaneously in high demand, exploitative to workers, and unaffordable?
It takes an enormous amount of work for humans to take care of other humans. That’s one of the best reasons for public taxation — to consolidate resources so we can pay people like us fair wages to care for people like us.
Instead of using our tax dollars for things like elder care (and child care), politicians are increasingly cutting funds from programs like Medicaid, as President Donald Trump and the GOP’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” recently did.
Wealthy elders will get the luxury care they need. The rest of us — if we’re lucky enough to live into our 70s and 80s — may find ourselves living in assisted living facilities in our golden years.
Don’t we deserve well-regulated, well-funded institutions where we can enjoy independence, safety, and robust care — rather than abuse, accidents, and tragic deaths like the ones at Gabriel House?
“We need to be more concerned about our elders,” said Karofsky. “We can offer better care and more… compassionate care.”
Sonali Kolhatkar is an OtherWords.org columnist.
Our little lives
“A Rising Tide Lifts All...’’ (encaustic) by Providence-based painter Nancy Whitcomb.
‘Between forged and found’
“Garganta Cueva,’’ by Estefania Puerta, in her show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Greenwich, Conn., Sept. 18-Jan. 11.
The museum says:
“‘Estefania Puerta’ marks the artist’s first solo museum presentation, featuring two new wall reliefs alongside ‘Garganta Cueva’ (2023). Born in Manizales, Colombia, Puerta immigrated to the United States at age two, settling with her family in East Boston. Drawing from her experience growing up undocumented, her work recasts the terms of categorization—blurring the lines between what is forged and found, felt and repressed, spoken and withheld. Influenced by literature, mythology, and psychoanalysis, she delves into themes of shapeshifting and transformation, reflecting on what is gained or lost through cultural and material translation.’’
The key ecological role of bats in New England
A Big Brown Bat Big (species found in New England) in flight.
— Photo by Rhododendrites
From an article by Frank Carini in ecoRI News’s series Wild New England, except for picture above.
“Across North America dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and other pesticides had a significant impact on bats from the 1940s through the ’60s. Since the ban of DDT, in 1972, bat populations had been slowly recovering, until a fungal disease appeared three-plus decades later.
“Bat populations crashed again, when white-nose syndrome was discovered in a New York cave in 2006. The fungus that causes the disease spread rapidly across much of the United States, and the number of bat species that hibernate in caves and mines plummeted….
{But bats seem to be overcoming their latest challenges.}
‘‘These mammals play a vital ecosystem role. The nine bat species found in southern New England are insectivores, meaning they eat insects such as mosquitoes and some moths humans would label pests. It’s been estimated that an individual bat can eat 600 insects an hour. Nearly 70% of bat species feed primarily on insects. Some eat fruit, rodents, frogs, and fish….’’
Llewellyn King: Sorry, Trump, solar and wind power will keep growing in U.S.; utilities urgently need them
BlueWave's 5.74 MW DC, 4 MW community solar project in Orrington, Maine. It’s one of the largest such facilities in New England.
—Courtesy: BlueWave
The small wind farm off Block Island.
Vineyard Wind 1 is partly operating.
This commentary was originally published in Forbes.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
President Trump reiterated his hostility to wind generation when he recently arrived in Scotland for what was ostensibly a private visit. “Stop the windmills,” he said.
But the world isn’t stopping its windmill development and neither is the United States, although it has become more difficult and has put U.S. electric utilities in an awkward position: It is a love that dare not speak its name, one might say.
Utilities love that wind and solar can provide inexpensive electricity, offsetting the high expense of battery storage.
It is believed that Trump’s well-documented animus to wind turbines is rooted in his golf resort in Balmedie, near Aberdeen, Scotland. In 2013, Trump attempted to prevent the construction of a small offshore wind farm — just 11 turbines — roughly 2.2 miles from his Trump International Golf Links, but was ultimately unsuccessful. He argued that the wind farm would spoil views from his golf course and hurt tourism in the area.
Trump seemingly didn’t just take against the local authorities, but against wind in general and offshore wind in particular.
Yet fair winds are blowing in the world for renewables.
Francesco La Camera, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, an official United Nations observer, told me that in 2024, an astounding 92 percent of new global generation was from wind and solar, with solar leading wind in new generation. We spoke recently when La Camera was in New York.
My informal survey of U.S. utilities reveals they are pleased with the Trump administration’s efforts to simplify licensing and its push to natural gas, but they are also keen advocates of wind and solar.
Simply, wind is cheap and as battery storage improves, so does its usefulness. Likewise, solar. However, without the tax advantages that were in President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, the numbers will change, but not enough to rule out renewables, the utilities tell me.
China leads the world in installed wind capacity of 561 gigawatts, followed by the United States with less than half that at 154 GW. The same goes for solar installations: China had 887 GW of solar capacity in 2024 and the United States had 239 GW.
China is also the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles. This gives it market advantage globally and environmental bragging rights, even though it is still building coal-fired plants.
While utilities applaud Trump’s easing of restrictions, which might speed the use of fossil fuels, they aren’t enthusiastic about installing new coal plants or encouraging new coal mines to open. Both, they believe, would become stranded assets.
Utilities and their trade associations have been slow to criticize the administration’s hostility to wind and solar, but they have been publicly cheering gas turbines.
However, gas isn’t an immediate solution to the urgent need for more power: There is a global shortage of gas turbines with waiting lists of five years and longer. So no matter how favorably utilities look on gas, new turbines, unless they are already on hand or have set delivery dates, may not arrive for many years.
Another problem for utilities is those states that have scheduled phasing out fossil fuels in a given number of years. That issue – a clash between federal policy and state law — hasn’t been settled.
In this environment, utilities are either biding their time or cautiously seeking alternatives.
For example, facing a virtual ban on new offshore wind farms, veteran journalist Robert Whitcomb wrote in his New England Diary that the New England utilities are looking to wind power from Canada, delivered by undersea cable. Whitcomb co-wrote (with Wendy Williams) a book, Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Energy, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future, about offshore wind, published in 2007.
New England is starved of gas as there isn’t enough pipeline capacity to bring in more, so even if gas turbines were readily available, they wouldn’t be an option. New pipelines take financing, licensing in many jurisdictions, and face public hostility.
Emily Fisher, a former general counsel for the Edison Electric Institute, told me, “Five years is just a blink of an eye in utility planning.”
On July 7, Trump signed an executive order which states: “For too long the Federal Government has forced American taxpayers to subsidize expensive and unreliable sources like wind and solar.
“The proliferation of these projects displaces affordable, reliable, dispatchable domestic energy resources, compromises our electric grid, and denigrates the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape.”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration puts electricity consumption growth at 2 percent nationwide. In parts of the nation, as in some Texas cities, it is 3 percent.
On X: @llewellynking2
Bluesky: @llewellynking.bsky.social
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. He’s based in Rhode Island
In The Green Mountain State’s short swimming season
“Couple on Bridge” (watercolor), by William Talmadge Hall, in his “Obstruction to a Landscape” series. He grew up in Vermont and Rhode Island.
Using beach debris to make some statements
“Five Articles Selected for the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (painted salvaged plastic, ink, wax), in the show “Duke Riley: What the Waves May Bring,’’ at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, Mass., through Sept. 14.
The museum says Mr. Riley “transforms salvaged plastic collected from beaches and waterways into intricate mosaics and sculptures inspired by maritime history and folk traditions. The exhibition features finely crafted artworks that reference 19th Century nautical history and maritime crafts — such as scrimshaw, fishing lures, and sailors’ valentines—yet are made from contemporary debris. Through these unexpected materials, Riley offers a striking commentary on corporate greed, ocean degradation, and the stories we choose to preserve.’’
Chris Powell: Why Trump is squeezing Yale, et al.
In simpler times: Front view of “Yale-College" and the chapel, printed by Daniel Bowen in 1786.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
For many years the ravenous far left in Connecticut has advocated taxing Yale University, in New Haven. Yale's endowment long has been managed spectacularly well and now totals more than $40 billion, the second-largest university endowment in the country, trailing only Harvard's.
Indeed, the popular joke is that Yale is a hedge fund masquerading as a university. The popular resentment is that about 57 percent of real estate in New Haven is exempt from municipal property taxes and most of that exempt property, worth about $3.5 billion, is owned by Yale.
Financial aid from state government and “payments in lieu of taxes" makes up for some of the foregone property-tax revenue but far from all of it. Of course, if Yale's property was fully subject to the city's property tax, the city wouldn't be any better off, given its awful management, but city employees might be able to retire at full pay after only two or three years on the job, since the satisfaction of its employees is city government's highest objective.
Now reform is coming to Yale not because of leftists in Connecticut but, ironically, because of President Trump and the narrow Republican majority in Congress.
Their new federal tax and spending law imposes progressive taxes on college endowments. The biggest endowments, like Yale's, will be taxed at 4 percent a year, and one study estimates that this will clip Yale's for $1.5 billion over five years.
Of course Trump and the Republicans aren't taxing college endowments out of any liberal belief in wealth redistribution. They are taxing the endowments because higher education has become a great engine of the political left and the Democratic Party, which is also why Connecticut state government, a leftist Democratic operation, has declined to tax the endowments of private colleges (Yale's particularly) and has declined to subject private colleges (again, Yale particularly) to municipal property taxes.
The Republicans want to cut higher education down to size politically while the Democrats want to keep it a strong source of patronage and propaganda.
Trump and the Republicans are right for the wrong reasons, but that's better than being wrong. For as the college loan disaster has shown, higher education's importance to the country is grossly overestimated. The country's education problem is lower education, as shown by the few proficiency tests still permitted in elementary, middle, and high schools in Connecticut, and by their disgraceful racial performance gaps.
COWARDLY, UNACCOUNTABLE, PATHETIC: How much more does anyone really need to know about the corruption and incompetence of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities System than something that was reported a week ago?
The system is still embroiled in the scandal over its departing chancellor, Terrence Cheng, who last year was caught abusing his expense account despite his annual compensation of nearly $500,000. The system's Board of Regents decided he had to go but feared that the contract the board had given him, which extended to next July, might be construed in court to prevent his dismissal. So it was agreed that he would leave the chancellorship on July 1 and become "strategic adviser" to the board for another year, doing amorphous stuff for the same compensation.
An interim chancellor, O. John Maduko, lately administrator of the community college system, has been appointed to serve for a year at a salary estimated at $425,000, not counting fringe benefits.
Fair questions remain about the college system's administration and state legislators continue to criticize it. So a week ago, the Hartford Courant asked for an interview with the chairman of the Board of Regents, Martin Guay. He refused.
How cowardly, unaccountable, and pathetic for the chairman of a major government agency.
Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, who appoints most of the regents, should be embarrassed.
Democratic state legislators should be embarrassed too. They should be emboldened to ask more critical questions of the regents and college administrators generally. Legislators could start with: Is it really impossible to hire a competent, public-spirited administrator for less than a half million dollars per year?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Horses still allowed to share?
Map of the various alignments of the Boston Post Road. Scanned from S. Jenkins, The old Boston Post Road, (G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York and London, 1914)
Quick, before they wilt
“An Echo of Gratitude’’ (archival inkjet print), by Widline Cadet, in a group show through Aug. 22 at The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Mass.