Chris Powell: Trump isn’t what’s wrong with Conn. public education
1839 caricature by George Cruikshank of a school flogging.
The Hartford High School building constructed in the early 1880’s and, sadly, demolished in the 1960’s. (This is a 1911 postcard.) Public secondary education in Hartford started in 1638, the second-oldest equivalent of a high school in America. The first is the Boston Latin School, founded in 1635.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and state Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker are being cheered for refusing to certify to the U.S. Education Department that state government is in compliance with the Trump administration's view of civil-rights law. The administration's view is that ‘‘diversity, equity, and inclusion," the slogan of what I see as leftist education, is unconstitutional because it means that government is enforcing racial preferences in schools.
Exactly what racial preferences are Connecticut's schools enforcing? The Trump administration's letter to the state Education Department didn't say. The Education Department's reply said the state, with its "diversity, equity, and inclusion," is following federal law. So now, for not nodding politely at the Trump administration, Connecticut is at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal education grants, and millions may be spent in litigation to determine what, if anything, it all means.
The governor and education commissioner should have provided the certification the Trump administration sought and left it to the administration to cite specific reasons for canceling grants to the state. But no -- the governor, the commissioner, and Democratic state legislators want to be seen fighting Trump and to look like they're standing up for education.
The governor grandly proclaimed: “In Connecticut we're proud to support the incredible diversity of our schools and work tirelessly to ensure that every child, regardless of background, has access to a quality education and the best opportunity at the starting line in life. From our educators, who are mentoring and inspiring the next generation of young people, to our curriculum, our commitment to education is what has made our schools nationally recognized, and we plan to continue doing what makes our students, teachers, and schools successful."
Oh, really?
It's not because of Trump that, despite all that “diversity, equity, and inclusion," Connecticut's schools are still heavily segregated racially.
It's not because of Trump that Connecticut's schools long have had a mortifying racial performance gap.
It's not because of Trump that, according to the little standardized testing state government dares to permit, student proficiency has been declining for decades even as per-pupil spending has risen sharply.
It's not because of Trump that Connecticut legislators and educators have decided opportunistically to pretend that more spending equals more education even as decades of test results contradict them.
It's not because of Trump that Hartford's and Bridgeport's school systems are dysfunctional educationally, administratively, and financially and are undergoing audits by the state Education Department even as state government refuses to accept responsibility for their longstanding catastrophic failure and take control of both.
Nor is Trump to blame for the Hartford school system's graduating an illiterate student last year, and presumably many others, nor for the refusal of the city's school superintendent and the state education commissioner to investigate and report about the case.
Trump isn't why the foremost policy of public education in Connecticut is social promotion, which crushes the incentive of students to learn, especially when they lack parenting, as many do.
Racial preferences in government are unconstitutional and unjust, though the country got used to them for many years when they were euphemized as “affirmative action." As a practical matter “diversity, equity, and inclusion" is just a righteous slogan available to euphemize more racial preferences and to distract from the continuing failure of so much of public education.
But if “diversity, equity, and inclusion" ever meant what they should mean -- integration and more equal opportunity -- they might be worth something. The country never will be prosperous, healthy, harmonious, and safe while it keeps creating and sustaining an impoverished and uneducated underclass.
Schools and teachers play the hands they are dealt -- the demographics of their communities. Some schools and teachers are extraordinary but in the end, all together, they will be only average, and, on average, demographics will rule.
So the education problem is far bigger than education itself. It's more a matter of how Connecticut can get more of its children ready and eager to learn in school. It won't be with empty slogans and political posturing.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
‘Evil but calming’
Banner promoting John Kenn Mortensen’s show “Dream Homes,” at the Brattleboro (Vt.) Museum and Art Center, through Nov. 1
The curator of the show, Brattleboro Museum Director Danny Lichtenfeld, says:
“I can’t remember what I was searching for—or what the algorithm had me chasing—one sleepless night, when I stumbled into the exquisitely creepy world of John Kenn Mortensen’s “Sticky Monsters’’. I was immediately smitten by the oversized, shaggy, more-cuddly-than-scary beasts. As one online commenter has noted, “They’re evil, but also calming. And there’s something very kind about them.
“Based in Denmark, Mortensen is a writer and director of children’s TV shows and the father of twins. The humans in his drawings tend to be children, but they rarely appear scared of the monsters around them. More often, they seem to be getting on as owner and pet, or as friends on a meandering adventure together.’’
Even in the somewhat libertarian Granite state
Apartment building in Manchester, N.H., built in 1864 to house workers in the city’s once-huge textile industry.
Adapted from an item in Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com.
We might do well to watch New Hampshire, where conservative Republicans are joining with Democrats to change communities’ zoning ordinances that, by mandating such things as big minimum-lot sizes (aka “snob zoning”), blocking housing in commercially zoned areas, and very long permitting times have made it very difficult for many places to add to the housing supply.
The Granite State (where I used to live) has long worshipped the glories of local government control, but spiraling housing costs have become enough of a crisis that many state officials increasingly realize that the state must step in to overrule localities’ long-entrenched rules.
Colonists’ Jarring climate surprise
The yellow and green have been moving north.
From The Colonial Society of Massachusetts
“Of all the preconceptions English people brought with them to New England, perhaps none was so important or so mistaken as that about the American climate.
Colonists came with the common sense idea that climate would be constant in any given latitude around the world. New England, whose latitude is the low forties, was expected to have the climate of Spain or southern France. The debilitating effect of excessive summer heat on English character was the promoters’ main fear in the early years.
What they found, of course, was that New England was in fact very hot in summer but that it was also extremely cold, much colder than England, in winter. Colonists were forced to make sense of their actual experience of America’s climate, explaining why New England deviated from the ‘normal’ European climate, as well as trying to understand what would grow and how life should be constituted here.’’
‘Imagined coastal Images’
“Intertidal,’’ by Phyllis Ewen, in her show “Inundation,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, April 3-June 1
She says:
“I explore how our imagination and memories interact with the natural world. The movement of the earth’s surface has been a source of inspiration and imagery for more than a decade. The surface of the earth has many forces that affect it.
“My ‘Sculptural Drawings’ - three-dimensional reliefs - have been “in the ocean” for many years, but in this show my pieces move on land as the waters flood our coasts.
“Maps, charts, and photographs form the basis for my work. I invite viewers to imagine themselves within the landscape, in topographical waterscapes I scan charts and weather maps, alter them in Photoshop, and print them.
“Then they are reassembled to form imagined coastal images – the effects of anthropogenic global warming.
“Although maps imply a viewer looking down at the landscape, I hope that the dimensional qualities of my images allow us imagine ourselves within it; to inhabit the seas as another way of understanding.’’
Gillette shows plans for Huge Boston Project
P&G Gillette image of Boston project
Edited from a New England Council report
P&G Gillette, has revealed plans for redeveloping its 31-acre Gillette campus in South Boston along the southern edge of the Fort Point Channel.
The 5.7 million-square-foot overhaul will include 1,800 housing units across nine buildings, 3.5 million square feet of office and laboratory space, 200,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, 250,000 square feet for hotel space, and a 6.5-acre public park along the channel.
The new plans come with the company’s program to revamp its two Massachusetts sites, as it relocates its manufacturing out of South Boston to prepare for the 20-building redevelopment. The bulk of the company’s manufacturing will shift to Gilette’s other local property, in Andover, Mass.
The plan awaits feedback from the Boston Planning Department. The entire project could take a decade or more to be completed.
“‘We’ve long been proud of our heritage here in Massachusetts. We’re excited about the legacy we could leave behind through this plan,’ said Kara Buckley, vice president of community affairs at Gillette.
Joanne M. Pierce:What will happen at Pope Francis’s funeral
Pope Francis
Joanne M. Pierce is a professor emerita of religious studies at The College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester.
Joanne M. Pierce does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.
Except for image above, this is from The Conversation
The 88-year-old pontiff had been well aware of his fragile state and advanced age. As early as 2015, Pope Francis had expressed the desire to be buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, a fifth-century church in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was so devoted to Mary and her basilica that after each of his more than 100 trips abroad, he would visit it after returning to Rome to pray and meditate.
No pope has been buried in Santa Maria Maggiore since the 17th Century, when Pope Clement IX was laid to rest there.
I’m a specialist in Catholic liturgical history. In earlier centuries, papal funerals have been elaborate affairs, ceremonies befitting a Renaissance prince or other regal figure. But in recent years, the rites have been simplified. As Pope Francis has mandated, here are the steps that the ritual will follow.
First station: Preparation of the body
The funeral rites take place in three parts, called stations. The first takes place in the pope’s private chapel, after medical professionals have certified his death. Until recently, this stage had taken place at the pope’s bedside.
After the body lies in rest in the chapel, the cardinal serving as the pope’s camerlengo – the pope’s chief of staff – will make the arrangements for the funeral. He is also tasked with running the Vatican until a new pope is elected. The current camerlengo is Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, appointed by Francis in 2019.
As has been done for centuries, the camerlengo will formally call the deceased pope by the full name given to him when he was baptized as an infant – Jorge Mario Bergoglio. There are narratives or legends stating that, at this time, the pope was also tapped three times on the forehead with a small silver hammer. However, there is no documented proof that this was actually done in earlier centuries to verify a pope’s death.
Traditionally, another ancient rite will also take place after the declaration of the pope’s death: the defacing of the pope’s ring. Each pope wears a custom-made ring with an engraved image of a man fishing from a boat, hearkening back to the gospel of Matthew, where Jesus calls St. Peter a “fisher of men.” This Fisherman’s Ring, with the name of the current pope engraved over the image, could act as a seal on official documents. The camerlengo will break Francis’ ring and smash the seal with a hammer or other instrument to prevent any other person from using it.
The pope’s apartments will also be locked, with no one allowed to enter; traditionally, this was done to prevent looting.
Second station: Viewing the body
The deceased pope will be dressed in his simple white cassock and red vestments, then placed in a simple wooden coffin. This will be carried in procession to St. Peter’s Basilica, where the public viewing will take place for the next three days.
The pope’s body will be left in the plain, open casket during this viewing period in order to emphasize the pope’s humble role as a pastor, not a head of state. The earlier practice would have been to place the body on top of a tall raised platform, called a catafalque; this ended with the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI in 2022.
Pope Benedict was also the last pope to be buried in the traditional three coffins of cypress, lead and elm. Two coffins contained specific documents about his pontificate; the first coffin also held the traditional three bags of coins – gold, silver and copper – representing each year of his pontificate.
At Francis’s funeral, after the public viewing, a plain white cloth will be placed over the pope’s face as he lies in the oak coffin, a continuing part of papal funerals. But this will be the first time that only a single coffin will be used; it will likely contain a document describing his pontificate and a bag of coins from his pontificate as well.
The funeral Mass will then be celebrated at St. Peter’s, and there will likely be a crowd of believers outside, assembled on the plaza. The homily will reflect on the life and spirituality of the deceased pope; Francis himself preached at the funeral of his retired predecessor, Pope Benedict. And the future Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, preached at the funeral of Pope St. John Paul II when Ratzinger was the leader, or the dean, of all senior church officials – what’s known as the College of Cardinals.
The current dean is 91-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, and it is unclear whether he will be able to continue this tradition due to his advanced age. Masses will continue to be said in Francis’ memory for nine days after his death – a period called the Novendialis. This ritual was inspired by an ancient Roman tradition prescribing a mourning period ending on the ninth day after a death.
Third station: Burial
Why does Pope Francis want to be buried in St. Mary Major and not in the Vatican?
Popes in the past have been buried in several different places. Until the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, popes would be interred in the catacombs, the burial grounds on the outskirts of Rome.
Afterward, popes could be buried in a number of different locations, such as the Basilica of St. John Lateran – the official cathedral of Rome – or other churches in and around Rome. A few were even buried in France during the 14th century, when the papacy moved to the French border for political reasons.
Most popes are buried in the grottoes underneath St. Peter’s, and since Pope Leo XIII’s burial at St. John Lateran in 1903, every pope has been buried at St. Peter’s. According to Francis’ wishes, however, there will likely be a procession across Rome to Santa Maria Maggiore, including the hearse and cars carrying others who will attend this private ritual.
After a few final prayers and sprinkling of holy water, the coffin will be placed in its final location inside the church. Only later will the area be opened to the public for prayers and veneration.
After so many journeys from Rome to visit Catholic communities in countries across the globe, and so many visits to this basilica for prayer and meditation, it seems fitting that, at the end of his life’s journey, Francis would make one last trip to the church he loved so much to be laid to rest forever.
Holding Hands in the fake forest
Norway spruce
“In the false New England forest
where the misplanted Norwegian trees
refused to root, their thick synthetic
roots barging out of the dirt to work on the air,
we held hands and walked on our knees.''--From “The Expatriates,'' by Anne Sexton (1928
-1974), Massachusetts poet
The honor of being Booed
Pedro Martinez in 2010.
“It actually made me feel really, really good. I actually realized that I was somebody important, because I caught the attention of 60,000 people, plus you guys [reporters], plus the whole world watching a guy that if you reverse time back 15 years ago, I was sitting under a mango tree without 50 cents to actually pay for a bus. And today I was the center of the attention of the whole city of New York.’’
— Former Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez (born 1971) on being booed by Yankees fans at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 13, 2004 in Game 2 of the American League Championship series.
Down to essentials
“Sun, Manana, Mohegan” (1907 oil on canvas), by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), in the show “Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island,’’ at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, through June 1.
Global Warming Throws off New England species
A Saltmarsh Sparrow. The species is predicted to go extinct in the next 15 to 20 years as rising sea levels flood marshes along the East Coast.
Text excerpted from an ecoRI News article
“This is part of an ecoRI News series called Wild New England . The region’s collection of native species is under threat on several fronts, most notably from humanity’s shortsightedness. Humans aren’t giving the natural world the space it needs and deserves. We’re crowding out non-human life, which, in turn, makes nature less productive and us less healthy. Wild New England examines the animals and insects most at risk.’’
“The work of Charles Clarkson, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s director of avian research, has documented the challenges birds face as the climate crisis increases the unpredictability of weather. Species that have timed their migratory movements over thousands of generations to coincide with gradual spring warming or autumn cooling are finding themselves out of whack with the plant and insect communities they rely on.
“This climate mismatch is leading to avian population declines, particularly with those species that undergo long-distance migration, such as the common yellowthroat, the wood thrush, and the American goldfinch.’’
U.S. is Perilously behind in rare earths Arena
A fine-grained volcanic rock (trachyte) that hosts rare earth elements niobium and zirconium, considered critical mineral resources. This rock was found on Pennington Mountain in Maine.
— Image courtesy of Chunzeng Wang, University of Maine-Presque Isle
Geologists have identified Pennington Mountain as potentially a very important source of rare earth minerals, which are essential for key U.S. industrial sectors. Read Llewellyn King’s column on how America has failed by a long shot to adequately develop rare earth mining and processing.
Chris Powell: Welfare hides in Conn. Electricity Bills; toilets on the Green
Electricity transmission line in Brookfield, Conn.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Why should Connecticut's electricity grid be incorporated into the state's welfare system? Why are electricity users in the state who pay their own electric bills being charged extra to subsidize discounts for electricity used by poor people who don't pay? Why aren't those subsidies financed by general taxation?
Those questions were prompted by a recent report from Connecticut Inside Investigator's Marc E. Fitch, who discovered that the Low-Income Discount Rate Program of the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is giving $137 million in electricity discounts ranging from 10 to 50% to low-income electricity users. They are automatically enrolled for the discounts through the authority's data-sharing arrangement with the state Social Services Department.
Everyone classified by the welfare department as being poor in one respect or another is identified to the state's major electricity distributors, Eversource and United Illuminating, and then the companies are required to reduce bills accordingly.
The discounts are recovered through higher rates to everyone else.
This exploitation of electricity customers has been going on in Connecticut in various forms for a long time. The Low-Income Discount Rate Program, begun last year, is just the most extreme form, since, predictably enough, it has turned out to cost many millions more than estimated. The program is one reason why the “public benefits" surcharges on electric bills are so high.
Republican state legislators argue that welfare expenses should be transferred out of electricity bills and into the state budget. Democratic legislators, who hold a large majority in the General Assembly, oppose such transparency but have never clearly explained why.
That's why the questions reiterated above remain compelling even though their answers can be inferred. Democratic legislators like hiding taxes in electricity bills, for then the public blames the electric companies for high electricity prices instead of the mistaken and deceptive government policies that actually have driven them up.
TOILETS ON THE GREEN: Homeless people and their political advocates gathered at a school in New Haven the other day to berate Mayor Justin Elicker for not yet having turned the city's downtown green into a homeless encampment complete with plenty of sparkling-clean portable toilets.
The mayor was at the school to discuss his city budget proposal but dutifully explained that the portable toilets already installed on the green are hard to maintain because people sometimes use them for prostitution, drug injections, and disposal of hypodermic needles and other trash. Elicker noted that toilets in city libraries are free for the homeless to use. But maybe those toilets are not as suitable for everyone because libraries expect decent conduct.
Nevertheless, the homeless people and their advocates urged the mayor to add $500,000 to his budget for more portable toilets on the green.
Homelessness is a worsening problem in Connecticut. Part of it is the state's shortage of housing, the result of long-negligent state government policy, and part of it is the mental illness of the homeless themselves.
But Mayor Elicker isn't responsible for the problem. To the contrary, his administration is greatly facilitating housing construction in the city. Meanwhile Governor Lamont's administration plans a substantial increase in “supportive housing" for people recovering from addiction.
One of the homeless advocates berating the mayor the other day asked why the city doesn't get more money to spend by taxing Yale University, which owns much tax-exempt property in New Haven. The mayor said he'd like to tax Yale but the city doesn't have that authority. He might have added that state government, controlled by members of his party, has the power to tax Yale but for now has left the university as one of the few things in Connecticut that isn't taxed, and that the homeless might go to the state Capitol and ask about that.
Better still, the mayor also might have asked the homeless what they plan to do to help themselves and the city. They didn't volunteer to keep the portable toilets clean and as usual seemed to think that the world, or at least the city, owes them a living.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
A few years ago: Part of the New Haven Green, without homeless people or portable toilets.
Part of a panoramic view of The New Haven Green in a “souvenir folder" mailed in 1919. The New Haven County Courthouse is the building with six pillars, left of center.
William Morgan: Will this give MAGA design ideas?
I am forever searching boxes of postcards in antique stores and junk shops, looking for scenes of New England houses, villages, or landscapes. Imagine my surprise, when amidst a bunch of old Easter Bunny cards, Adolf Hitler appeared.
Like an horrific version of a commemorative first-day cover, this was postmarked less than a month after the Anschluss — the forced unification of Germany and Austria into “One People, One State, One Leader’’.
There must have been thousands of these cards ready to mail. The cards had stamps of both countries, but the German one packs punchier nationalistic realism, with two handsome Aryan youths waving the swastika flag.
There have recently been a lot of memes, satirical skits, and genuine concern about parallels between the current American presidency and 1930s Germany. For example, will the word Anschluss be resurrected if the United States invades Canada? After all, we are two former British colonies sharing (mostly) the same language and somewhat similar cultures, as do Germany and Austria.
Politics aside, Hitler’s propaganda machine had better designers than our current maximum leader has, and this relentless artificially tanned tyrannical toddler, with his Palm Beach Baroque gilded backdrops, will never be half as handsome as the 20th-Century’s maddest madman.
In any case, our wannabe strongman, like the unsuccessful Viennese art student, may well implode in a fiery Götterdämmerung.
Everything about Hitler is grotesque, yet his Wagnerian propaganda had a certain style that precluded clownish long red neckties
William Morgan is an architecture writer based in Providence, and author of numerous books, the latest of which is The Cape Cod Cottage (Abbeville Press). He’s a descendant of one of the Lexington Minutemen. The Battles of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775, launching the American Revolution.
Easter formal
A heavily hatted Easter in Boston in 1940.
From Anthony Sammarco’s book Easter Traditions in Boston
“Having attended Easter Services at Trinity Church in the Back Bay, these people walked along Clarendon Street headed toward the Commonwealth Avenue Mall for the Easter Parade in 1940.
“Women wore hats and corsages, white gloves, and their coats had mink, ocelot, chinchilla, and fox furs. In the distance is the entrance to the Brunswick Casino in the Hotel Brunswick. The Casino, which in the early twentieth century was a popular place after dinner, was an elegant club with dancing to the Shelley Orchestra.’’
A safer bedmate?
Work by Lulu Wiley in the group show “Spring 2025 Solo Exhibition,’’ at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, through June 22.
Bucolic Manchester in 1913.
Silken Engineering at Tufts
Silkworms
Edited from a New England Council report
Tufts University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is pursuing new projects in its Silklab.
“With the help of silkworms, the lab is developing various materials to be integrated into traditional clothing, surgical implants and other novel applications.
“The researchers are also developing a underwater adhesive for shark tagging, and small drones that can detect COVID-19 in the environment.
“‘I think that the directions we pick are the most surprising, which means that they open up something fundamental, something that you’ve never seen on the surface before, versus something that could have a high impact, like early detection of breast cancer,’ said Fiorenzo Omenetto, the director of the Silklab.
“‘I think it’s nice to connect the unconnectable, so there’s maybe the magic of trying to bring what was biological into the technical world.’
“Silklab has also helped develop startups that work in silk innovation, including Sofregen, which uses silk to repair damaged vocal cords, and Vaxess, which develops silk microneedles for vaccine delivery.’’