Dana-Farber to hire 700 nurses
The quadrangle of Harvard Medical School and adjacent Longwood Medical and Academic Area buildings.
Edited from a New England Council report
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, has announced its hiring plan for its new Longwood Medical and Academic Area hospital. The institute says that it will require nearly 2,500 new employees, including 700 additional nurses.
Dana-Farber will soon merge with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The current partnership with Brigham and Women’s Hospital is set to expire in 2028. The expanding staff will be a part of the new $1.7 billion cancer hospital, opening in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area.
Dana-Farber’s current facilities only have 30 inpatient beds, which will be significantly expanded upon its transition to Longwood.
These proposed additions are being used to staff its proposed 300-bed hospital, said Jeanine Rundquist, executive director of the Center for Clinical and Professional Development at Dana-Farber. “If you want to be on the cutting-edge of cancer care, this is the place to be, certainly in our region, if not nationally,” Rundquist said.
Trying to survive in the Russian Empire
“Mama Will Protect You,’’ in Albert Chasan’s (1930-2024) ongoing show, “Painting His Parents Lives,’’ at the Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, Mass.
The venue says:
“With an uncanny eye for a past he never experienced, Albert Chasan’s works bring to life the stories his parents shared about their childhoods in the Russian Empire. Also on view: Yiddish: A Global Culture.’’
Stephanie Otts: How N.E. fishing industry has changed since ‘The Perfect Storm’ film
From The Conversation (except for image above)
Stephanie Otts is director of the National Sea Grant Law Center, at the University of Mississippi.
She receives funding from the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program through the U.S. Department of Commerce. Previous support for her fisheries management legal research was provided by The Nature Conservancy.
Twenty-five years ago, The Perfect Storm roared into movie theaters. The disaster flick, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, was a riveting, fictionalized account of commercial swordfishing in New England and a crew who went down in a storm.
The anniversary of the film’s release, on June 30, 2000, provides an opportunity to reflect on the real-life changes to New England’s commercial fishing industry.
Fishing was once more open to all
In the true story behind the movie, six men lost their lives in late October 1991 when the commercial swordfishing vessel Andrea Gail disappeared in a fierce storm in the North Atlantic as it was headed home to Gloucester, Massachusetts.
At the time, and until very recently, almost all commercial fisheries were open access, meaning there were no restrictions on who could fish.
There were permit requirements and regulations about where, when and how you could fish, but anyone with the means to purchase a boat and associated permits, gear, bait and fuel could enter the fishery. Eight regional councils established under a 1976 federal law to manage fisheries around the U.S. determined how many fish could be harvested prior to the start of each fishing season.
Fishing has been an integral part of coastal New England culture since its towns were established. In this 1899 photo, a New England community weighs and packs mackerel. Charles Stevenson/Freshwater and Marine Image Bank
Fishing started when the season opened and continued until the catch limit was reached. In some fisheries, this resulted in a “race to the fish” or a “derby,” where vessels competed aggressively to harvest the available catch in short amounts of time. The limit could be reached in a single day, as happened in the Pacific halibut fishery in the late 1980s.
By the 1990s, however, open access systems were coming under increased criticism from economists as concerns about overfishing rose.
The fish catch peaked in New England in 1987 and would remain far above what the fish population could sustain for two more decades. Years of overfishing led to the collapse of fish stocks, including North Atlantic cod in 1992 and Pacific sardine in 2015.
As populations declined, managers responded by cutting catch limits to allow more fish to survive and reproduce. Fishing seasons were shortened, as it took less time for the fleets to harvest the allowed catch. It became increasingly hard for fishermen to catch enough fish to earn a living.
Saving fisheries changed the industry
In the early 2000s, as these economic and environmental challenges grew, fisheries managers started limiting access. Instead of allowing anyone to fish, only vessels or individuals meeting certain eligibility requirements would have the right to fish.
The most common method of limiting access in the U.S. is through limited entry permits, initially awarded to individuals or vessels based on previous participation or success in the fishery. Another approach is to assign individual harvest quotas or “catch shares” to permit holders, limiting how much each boat can bring in.
In 2007, Congress amended the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to promote the use of limited access programs in U.S. fisheries.
Ships in the fleet out of New Bedford, Mass. Henry Zbyszynski/Flickr, CC BY
Today, limited access is common, and there are positive signs that the management change is helping achieve the law’s environmental goal of preventing overfishing. Since 2000, the populations of 50 major fishing stocks have been rebuilt, meaning they have recovered to a level that can once again support fishing.
I’ve been following the changes as a lawyer focused on ocean and coastal issues, and I see much work still to be done.
Forty fish stocks are currently being managed under rebuilding plans that limit catch to allow the stock to grow, including Atlantic cod, which has struggled to recover due to a complex combination of factors, including climatic changes.
The lingering effect on communities today
While many fish stocks have recovered, the effort came at an economic cost to many individual fishermen. The limited-access Northeast groundfish fishery, which includes Atlantic cod, haddock and flounder, shed nearly 800 crew positions between 2007 and 2015.
The loss of jobs and revenue from fishing impacts individual family income and relationships, strains other businesses in fishing communities, and affects those communities’ overall identity and resilience, as illustrated by a recent economic snapshot of the Alaska seafood industry.
When original limited-access permit holders leave the business – for economic, personal or other reasons – their permits are either terminated or sold to other eligible permit holders, leading to fewer active vessels in the fleet. As a result, the number of vessels fishing for groundfish has declined from 719 in 2007 to 194 in 2023, meaning fewer jobs.
A fisherman unloads a portion of his catch for the day of 300 pounds of groundfish, including flounder, in January 2006 in Gloucester, Mass. AP Photo/Lisa Poole
Because of their scarcity, limited-access permits can cost upward of US$500,000, which is often beyond the financial means of a small businesses or a young person seeking to enter the industry. The high prices may also lead retiring fishermen to sell their permits, as opposed to passing them along with the vessels to the next generation.
These economic forces have significantly altered the fishing industry, leading to more corporate and investor ownership, rather than the family-owned operations that were more common in the Andrea Gail’s time.
Similar to the experience of small family farms, fishing captains and crews are being pushed into corporate arrangements that reduce their autonomy and revenues.
Consolidation can threaten the future of entire fleets, as New Bedford, Massachusetts, saw when Blue Harvest Fisheries, backed by a private equity firm, bought up vessels and other assets and then declared bankruptcy a few years later, leaving a smaller fleet and some local business and fishermen unpaid for their work. A company with local connections bought eight vessels from Blue Harvest along with 48 state and federal permits the company held.
New challenges and unchanging risks
While there are signs of recovery for New England’s fisheries, challenges continue.
Warming water temperatures have shifted the distribution of some species, affecting where and when fish are harvested. For example, lobsters have moved north toward Canada. When vessels need to travel farther to find fish, that increases fuel and supply costs and time away from home.
Fisheries managers will need to continue to adapt to keep New England’s fisheries healthy and productive.
One thing that, unfortunately, hasn’t changed is the dangerous nature of the occupation. Between 2000 and 2019, 414 fishermen died in 245 disasters.
Llewellyn King: Low-lying wind turbines could be revolutionary
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Jimmy Dean, the country musician, actor and entrepreneur, famously said: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
A new wind turbine from a California startup, Wind Harvest, takes Dean’s maxim to heart and applies it to windpower generation. It goes after untapped, abundant wind.
Wind Harvest is bringing to market a possibly revolutionary but well-tested vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) that operates on ungathered wind resources near the ground, thriving in turbulence and shifting wind directions.
The founders and investors – many of them recruited through a crowd-funding mechanism — believe that wind near the ground is a great underused resource that can go a long way to helping utilities in the United States and around the world with rising electricity demand.
The Wind Harvest turbines would not be used to replace nor compete with the horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT), which are the dominant propeller-type turbines seen everywhere. These operate at heights from 200 feet to 500 feet above ground.
Instead, these vertical turbines are at the most 90 feet above the ground and, ideally, can operate beneath large turbines, complementing the tall, horizontal turbines and potentially doubling the output from a wind farm.
The wind disturbance from conventional tall, horizontal turbines is additional wind fuel for vertical turbines sited below.
Studies and modeling from CalTech and other universities predict that the vortices of wind shed by the verticals will draw faster-moving wind from higher altitude into the rotors of the horizontals.
For optimum performance, their machines should be located in pairs just about 3 feet apart and that causes the airflow between the two turbines to accelerate, enhancing electricity production.
Kevin Wolf, CEO and co-founder of Wind Harvest, told me that they used code from the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratory to engineer and evaluate their designs. They believe they have eliminated known weaknesses in vertical turbines and have a durable and easy-to-make design, which they call Wind Harvester 4.0.
This confidence is reflected in the first commercial installation of the Wind Harvest turbines on St. Croix, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. Some 100 turbines are being proposed for construction on a peninsula made from dredge spoils. This 5-megawatt project would produce 15,000 megawatt hours of power annually.
All the off-take from this pilot project will go to a local oil refinery for its operations, reducing its propane generation.
Wolf said the Wind Harvester will be modified to withstand Category 5 hurricanes; can be built entirely in the United States of steel and aluminum; and are engineered to last 70-plus years with some refurbishing along the way. Future turbines will avoid dependence on rare earths by using ferrite magnets in the generators.
Recently, there have been various breakthroughs in small wind turbines designed for urban use. But Wind Harvest is squarely aimed at the utility market, at scale. The company has been working solidly to complete the commercialization process and spread VAWTs around the world.
“You don’t have to install them on wind farms, but their highest use should be doubling or more the power yield from those farms with a great wind resource under their tall turbines,” Wolf said.
Horizontal wind turbines, so named because the drive shaft is aligned horizontally to the ground, compared to vertical turbines where the drive shaft and generator are vertically aligned and much closer to the ground, facilitating installation, maintenance and access.
Wolf believes that his engineering team has eliminated the normal concerns associated with VAWTs, like resonance and the problem of the forces of 15 million revolutions per year on the blade-arm connections. The company has been granted two hinge patents and four others. Three more are pending.
Wind turbines have a long history. The famous eggbeater-shaped VAWT was patented by a French engineer, Georges Jean Marie Darrieus, in 1926, but had significant limitations on efficiency and cost-effectiveness. It has always been more of a dream machine than an operational one.
Wind turbines became serious as a concept in the United States as a result of the energy crisis that broke in the fall of 1973. At that time, Sandia began studying windmills and leaned toward vertical designs. But when the National Renewable Energy Laboratory assumed responsibility for renewables, turbine design and engineering moved there; horizontal was the design of choice at the lab.
In pursuing the horizontal turbine, DOE fit in with a world trend that made offshore wind generation possible but not a technology that could use the turbulent wind near the ground.
Now, Wind Harvest believes, the time has come to take advantage of that untouched resource.
Wolf said this can be done without committing to new wind farms. These additions, he said, would have a long-projected life and some other advantages: Birds and bats seem to be more adept at avoiding the three-dimensional, vertical turbines closer to the surface. Agricultural uses can continue between rows of closely spaced VAWTs that can align fields, he added.
Some vertical turbines will use simple, highly durable lattice towers, especially in hurricane-prone areas. But Wolf believes the future will be in wooden, monopole towers that reduce the amount of embodied carbon in their projects.
One way or another, the battle for more electricity to accommodate rising demand is joined close to the ground.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
On X: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King, based in Rhode Island, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant.
With horse as backup
“Main Street, c. 1940” (oil on canvas), by Nicholas Comito (1906-1995), at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, Vt.
Fun, if slow
The Newport and Narragansett Bay Railroad yard in Melville, R.I., in April 2023.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It was very pleasant to see that the 13-mile long Newport & Narragansett Bay Railroad is providing passenger service on its scenic route on Aquidneck Island. That’s especially given that we’re approaching high tourist season. Of course, people will use this slow-moving service for fun, and not for any practical reason.
The train might slightly cut down on car traffic on the crowded island. What would cut it much more would be a railroad bridge connecting Tiverton, on the mainland, and Portsmouth, such as the one that was closed in 1988 and removed in 2006–07.
How great it would be if we could take the train to Newport from Providence and Boston!
Chris Powell: Murphy smears the Conn. ‘war industry’
Electric Boat’s submarine-construction facility in Groton, Conn.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
To hear Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy tell it, President Trump dispatched Air Force bombers and Navy submarines to destroy Iran's nuclear bomb-making facilities because the “war industry" is so influential in Washington.
On the leftist-leaning MSNBC cable television network the other day, the senator agreed with his interviewer's suggestion that there was a big gap between the opinion of Democratic members of Congress and the opinion of ordinary Democrats about the attack on Iran, with Democrats in Congress far less opposed to it than ordinary party members.
“There is a war industry in this town," Murphy said of Washington. “There’s a lot of people who make money off war. The military -- I love them, they're capable -- but they are always overly optimistic about what they can do. ... The war industry spends a lot of money here in Washington telling us that the guns and the tanks and the planes can solve all our problems."
“All our problems"? That was hyperbole worthy of President Trump.
Of course there is a "military-industrial complex," as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned as he left office in January 1961. But it just wants its products to be manufactured and purchased by the government and cares little about whether they are actually used.
Contrary to Murphy's suggestion, Trump didn't consult military contractors about attacking Iran. The president may have had mixed motives, including bad ones -- such as the desire to be seen as a tough guy and war leader decades after evading the military draft -- but pleasing the “war industry" wasn't one of them.
While Eisenhower's remark long has been construed as scorn for military contractors, he actually acknowledged their necessity. He had been a general of the Army when the United States found itself badly unprepared for the world war into which it was dragged in December 1941.
On reflection Eisenhower said: “Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action. ... We can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. … This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. ... Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. ... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
The “war industry" that Senator Murphy accuses of complicity in Trump's attack on Iran includes jet-engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford and Middletown, for which 1st District U.S. Rep. John B. Larson is always cheerleading. It includes nuclear-submarine maker Electric Boat in Groton, for which 2nd District U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney spends much time supplicating. And it includes Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, whose fortunes are guarded by 3rd District U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro.
In turn, Pratt is a subsidiary of Raytheon, EB a subsidiary of General Dynamics, and Sikorsky a subsidiary of Lockheed-Martin, all giants of military contracting.
Yet Larson, Courtney and DeLauro, all Democrats like Murphy, quickly expressed opposition to Trump's attack on Iran. While they also voted against impeaching the president for the attack, their voting to impeach Trump for disregarding the War Powers Act when they had condoned similar violations by Democratic presidents might have seemed hypocritical.
Serious journalists might ask Murphy if his Democratic colleagues in Connecticut, so supportive of the military contractors in their districts, are tools of the ‘war industry" he thinks induced the president to attack Iran.
Eisenhower was right. As totalitarian nations pursue ever-more devastating weapons, the United States needs to keep ahead of them, even if this country doesn't need as many nuclear warheads as it has. Whether and how to use those weapons will always be a matter of judgment for elected officials.
By scapegoating military contractors to gain more approval on the far left, Murphy showed his lack of judgment and exceeded Trump's own posturing and demagoguery.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Crowd-sourcing Boston history
Boston’s State Street and the old State House in 1801.
Slightly edited text from The Boston Guardian
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian. He didn’t write this article.)
Local historian Jim Vrabel has a vision for a crowd sourced history of Boston that tells the whole story of the city.
His new website, WhenAndWhereInBoston.org, is a sweeping, searchable and explorable database of Boston history that Vrabel calls “an all Boston Wiki,” designed to gather, preserve and present the events, places and people who have shaped the city.
And no detail is too insignificant to be left out.
“Too often we just think that the history of Boston started and stopped with the Revolutionary War. Well, it didn’t,” Vrabel said in an interview. “So I decided to put all the material I had gathered into this website and invite other people to do so as well.”
The result is an open access platform that allows users to search, explore and contribute historical facts, each one vetted by a panel of local historians before being presented on the website as a straightforward paragraph accompanying a pin on a map and attributed to a source.
Vrabel previously worked as an historical author, a newspaper journalist and for 25 years in the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services under the administrations of Mayors Raymond Flynn and Thomas Menino.
He said that the idea for the website grew from a realization that books alone no longer meet the needs of modern history seekers.
In modernity, much of the public’s casual consumption of history is now filtered through artificial intelligence assisted search engines, creating a version of history that is only as complete as our virtual documentation of it.
Contributions to WhenAndWhereInBoston already include overlooked histories like that of a United Service Organizations (USO) post, facilities that provided support and extracurriculars to U.S. servicemen, built on Boston Common in the 1940s that excluded Black service-members.
“Just before we launched, one of the people on the editorial committee, [Lynn Johnson], wrote an op-ed on a USO post that was built on Boston Common in the ‘40s that wasn’t very kind toward Black people,” Vrabel said. “I’d never heard of it and I’m sure most Bostonians never heard of it, and it was [history] in danger of being lost.”
Though the website currently reflects much of Vrabel’s professional historical encyclopedia, drawn from his previous works, including books When in Boston: A Timeline & Almanac and A People’s History of the New Boston, he hopes the project is only just beginning.
The site, which is run as a nonprofit, was built thanks to an anonymous donor. While Vrabel and his team are exploring long-term funding options, including potentially partnering with a nonprofit institution or local university, he is committed to keeping the platform free of advertising and focused solely on the facts.
The West End Museum hosted a kickoff event for the site and Vrabel hopes to build deeper partnerships with local institutions as the site grows. “They want to add West End history to it, just like very neighborhood wants to see themselves represented,” he said.
Recent federal funding cuts tied to the Trump administration's efforts to “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” have cut short the West End Museum’s efforts to research a lesser-known history of LGBTQ activism in the West End.
Vrabel’s vision for his website is simple, to create a place where Boston’s full story can be told. “History should be written by everybody, winners or losers,” he said. “If it happened, it’s history. So, this is the place to go to find it out, and to put it in.”
Alone together — table transitions
The way we live now— recent scene in a Providence eatery.
—Photo by William Morgan
“The Calling of St. Matthew,’’ by Caravaggio (1571-1610)
But at least not screaming
“Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones)’’, 1906-1908 (oil on canvas), by Edvard Munch, at Harvard Art Museums/Busch Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Mass.
Honor, idealism, country over fear of death
Lithograph portrait of Sullivan Ballou
Letter by Union Army Major Sullivan Ballou (1829-1861), a Rhode Island lawyer and politician, to his wife, Sarah, shortly before being mortally wounded in the First Battle of Bull Run, which took place July 21, 1861
Headquarters, Camp Clark
Washington, D.C., July 14, 1861
My Very Dear Wife:
Indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps to-morrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines, that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.
Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine, O God be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle-field for any country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon the triumph of government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.
But, my dear wife, when I know, that with my own joys, I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with care and sorrows, when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it, as their only sustenance, to my dear little children, is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country.
I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death, and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country and thee.
I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in this hazarding the happiness of those I loved, and I could not find one. A pure love of my country, and of the principles I have often advocated before the people, and “the name of honor, that I love more than I fear death," have called upon me, and I have obeyed.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break; and yet, my love of country comes over me like a strong wind, and bears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battlefield. The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable manhood around us.
I know I have but few claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me, perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battle-field, it will whisper your name.
Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears, every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot, I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.
But, O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by.
Sarah, do not mourn me dear; think I am gone, and wait for me, for we shall meet again.
As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care, and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers, I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.
- Sullivan
But the city always rights itself
“Chrysler Dreaming,’’ by Nancy Whitcomb, from the monotype edition of New England Wax’s “Home/Away.’’
Zapping the crops
“Tower Over Farm’’ (watercolor), by William Talmadge Hall, in his “Obstruction to a Landscape” series.
‘Work as its own activism’
Work by Somali-American artist Uman, in her show “After all the things,’’ at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum of Art, Greenwich, Conn., Oct. 19,2025 to May 10, 2026.
She says:
“My work offers an escape. Whether it’s the night sky, the sun, or a cow in a field, I want it to feel good for the audience. And the first audience is me. I’ve always felt like if I was to make great art, it would have to come from deep within me and be very honest. My work is its own activism, just painting my life, existing, living. I don’t need to say too much.’’
Nancy Forster-Holt: Tailor small-business policies to owners’ age
Quintessential small business: Gray’s General Store, in Adamsville, R.I., opened in 1788 and closed in 2012. It’s now a collectibles and antique store.
Can it do more for business owners as they try to move to retirement?
Except for images above, this is from The Conversation
Nancy Forster-Holt is an associate professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Rhode Island.
She 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 their academic appointment.
KINGSTON, R.I.
Americans love small businesses. We dedicate a week each year to applauding them, and spend Small Business Saturday shopping locally. Yet hiding in plain sight is an enormous challenge facing small business owners as they age: retiring with dignity and foresight. The current economic climate is making this even more difficult.
As a professor who studies aging and business, I’ve long viewed small business owners’ retirement challenges as a looming crisis. The issue is now front and center for millions of entrepreneurs approaching retirement. Small enterprises make up more than half of all privately held U.S. companies, and for many of their owners, the business is their retirement plan.
But while owners often hope to finance their golden years by selling their companies, only 20 percent of small businesses are ready for sale even in good times, according to the Exit Planning Institute. And right now, conditions are far from ideal. An economic stew of inflation, supply chain instability and high borrowing costs means that interest from potential buyers is cooling.
For many business owners, retirement isn’t a distant concern. In the U.S., Baby Boomers – who are currently 61 to 79 years old – own about 2.3 million businesses.
Altogether, they generate about US$5 billion in revenue and employ almost 25 million people. These entrepreneurs have spent decades building businesses that often are deeply rooted in their communities. They don’t have time to ride out economic chaos, and their optimism is at a 50-year low.
New policies, new challenges
You can’t blame them for being gloomy. Recent policy shifts have only made life harder for business owners nearing retirement. Trade instability, whipsawing tariff announcements and disrupted supply chains have eroded already thin margins. Some businesses – generally larger ones with more negotiating power – are absorbing extra costs rather than passing them on to shoppers. Others have no choice but to raise prices, to customers’ dismay. Inflation has further squeezed profits.
At the same time, with a few notable exceptions, buyers and capital have grown scarce. Acquirers and liquidity have dried up across many sectors. The secondary market – a barometer of broader investor appetite – now sees more sellers than buyers. These are textbook symptoms of a “flight to safety,” a market shift that drags out sale timelines and depresses valuations – all while Main Street business owners age out. These entrepreneurs typically have one shot at retirement – if any.
Adding to these woes, many small businesses are part of what economists call regional “clusters,” providing services to nearby universities, hospitals and local governments. When those anchor institutions face budget cuts – as is happening now – small business vendors are often the first to feel the impact.
Research shows that many aging owners actually double down in weak economic times, sinking increasing amounts of time and money in a psychological pattern known as “escalating commitment.” The result is a troubling phenomenon scholars refer to as “benign entrapment.” Aging entrepreneurs can remain attached to their businesses not because they want to, but because they see no viable exit.
This growing crisis isn’t about bad personal planning — it’s a systemic failure.
Rewriting the playbook on small- business policy
A key mistake that policymakers make is to lump all small business owners together into one group. That causes them to overlook important differences. After all, a 68-year-old carpenter trying to retire doesn’t have much in common with a 28-year-old tech founder pitching a startup. Policymakers may cheer for high-growth “unicorns,” but they often overlook the “cows and horses” that keep local economies running.
Even among older business owners, circumstances vary based on local conditions. Two retiring carpenters in different towns may face vastly different prospects based on the strength of their local economies. No business, and no business owner, exists in a vacuum.
Relatedly, when small businesses fail to transition, it can have consequences for the local economy. Without a buyer, many enterprises will simply shut down. And while closures can be long-planned and thoughtful, when a business closes suddenly, it’s not just the owner who loses. Employees are left scrambling for work. Suppliers lose contracts. Communities lose essential services.
Four ways to help aging entrepreneurs
That’s why I think policymakers should reimagine how they support small businesses, especially owners nearing the end of their careers.
First, small business policy should be tailored to age. A retirement-ready business shouldn’t be judged solely by its growth potential. Rather, policies should recognize stability and community value as markers of success. The U.S. Small Business Administration and regional agencies can provide resources specifically for retirement planning that starts early in a business’s life, to include how to increase the value of the business and a plan to attract acquirers in later stages.
Second, exit infrastructure should be built into local entrepreneurial ecosystems. Entrepreneurial ecosystems are built to support business entry – think incubators and accelerators – but not for exit. In other words, just like there are accelerators for launching businesses, there should be programs to support winding them down.
These could include confidential peer forums, retirement-readiness clinics, succession matchmaking platforms and flexible financing options for acquisition.
Third, chaos isn’t good for anybody. Fluctuations in capital gains taxes, estate tax thresholds and tariffs make planning difficult and reduce business value in the eyes of potential buyers. Stability encourages confidence on both sides of a transaction.
And finally, policymakers should include ripple-effect analysis in budget decisions. When universities, hospitals or governments cut spending, small business vendors often absorb much of the shock. Policymakers should account for these downstream impacts when shaping local and federal budgets.
If we want to truly support small businesses and their owners, it’s important to honor the lifetime arc of entrepreneurship – not just the launch and growth, but the retirement, too.
Chris Powell: Illegal-immigration backers in Conn. don’t get critical questions
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Immigration-law enforcement agents must be compelled, by congressional action or court order, to identify themselves conspicuously during arrests, to display their badges, and to make prompt public reports identifying the people they have detained, why they have been detained, and where they are being held. A free country cannot allow secret arrests. The necessity of such accountability in government goes back centuries to the Magna Carta.
Democrats in Congress should press this issue instead of simply decrying all immigration-law enforcement. Most of the country will agree, and Republicans in Congress who disagree will risk being exposed as totalitarians.
Police in Connecticut already are obliged by law to follow similar procedure, though they sometimes neglect to report arrests promptly and news organizations fail to notice.
But the greater failure of Connecticut journalism lately involves its reporting of complaints against immigration law enforcement. Reporters can't be blamed when they can't reach or get responses from immigration law enforcers, but they can be blamed when they quote officials, activists, and others in the immigration controversy without posing critical questions.
The recent arrest by immigration agents of a woman as she was driving her children to school in New Haven provoked outrage. Some of it verged on hysteria, like the statement issued by Mayor Justin Elicker.
"To arrest a mother in front of her two young children while taking them to school is simply unconscionable," the mayor said.
So what is the appropriate time to arrest and detain someone with children who is suspected of being in the country illegally? Will such a suspect necessarily cooperate in scheduling her arrest and detention, or might she flee instead? Do New Haven's own police always give notice to the targets of their arrest warrants?
Mayor Elicker wasn't asked.
He continued: "We condemn this deplorable act of family separation and call upon the Trump administration to stop its inhumane approach and cruel tactics."
But don't arrests in New Haven and elsewhere routinely separate people from their children, or are children brought to jail with their parents?
The mayor wasn't asked.
"New Haven," the mayor said, "is a welcoming city for all, and our immigrant neighbors are a part of our New Haven family."
Does New Haven really welcome legal and illegal immigrants, the well-intentioned and the ill-intentioned, and the self-supporting and the dependent alike? Does New Haven distinguish among them, or is that properly the work of immigration authorities? Or should no one do that work and should the nation's borders be opened again?
Mayor Elicker concluded: "New Haven will continue to stand up for our residents and our values, and we will continue fight back with every resource available to us against the Trump administration's reckless immigration policies."
What exactly does "every resource available" mean? Even as the mayor was so upset about that immigration arrest, New Haven's school system was facing a deficit of $16.5 million and was preparing to lay off scores of employees, and the chronic absenteeism rate of its high school students stood at 50 percent.
Since New Haven can hardly take care of itself, how can it afford to be a "sanctuary city," accepting, housing, concealing, and trying to educate unlimited numbers of illegal immigrants? And since state government covers so much of New Haven's expenses, how can Connecticut afford to let the city assume unlimited liabilities like these?
Nor were compelling questions posed the other week amid outrage in Meriden about the immigration agents’ arrest and detention of a city high school student and his father a few days before the boy's graduation.
The two were reported to have been arrested at a scheduled meeting with immigration authorities, so presumably they knew there was something wrong about their presence in the country.
Protesters in Meriden chanted that they want immigration authorities to get out of Connecticut. But wouldn't that leave the borders open again? Is that what the protesters want?
Though they were surrounded by journalists, the protesters were never asked.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many year (CPowell@cox.net).
Don’t obey in silence
At an anti-Trump demonstration at Boston Common on Feb. 5, 2025
“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.”
― Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), author, social critic and Harvard professor
Plenty of trouble
Untitled (ink and pencil on paper), in Layla Ali’s “Typology series,’’ in her show “Is Anything the Matter: Drawings by Layla Ali,’’ at the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The museum says that “the drawings explore Ali’s interest in the amalgam of race, power, gender, human frailty, murky politics, and other complex topics that are often treated as separate.’’