Vox clamantis in deserto
Manjot Kaur Sidhu: Leave those fallen leaves alone
From The Conversation (except picture above)
ORONO, Maine
Every autumn, homeowners and gardeners tend to engage in a familiar ritual. As trees shed their leaves, people drag out rakes, leaf blowers and lawn bags to strip their yards bare before winter arrives.
It is a tidy habit rooted in aesthetics, but ecologically, clearing away fallen leaves strips the very foundation of local ecosystems. Far from dead debris requiring disposal, this fallen foliage forms a dynamic layer and a biological interface that drives nutrient cycling and is essential for soil health and the environment, including biodiversity.
As a researcher of plant growth in yards and gardens, I would recommend leaving leaves on the ground. There, they can provide essential winter habitat for native pollinators – even in places that don’t have freezing temperatures. And they act as a nutrient-dense, natural mulch for the soil.
Here is the science behind why the first step of fall yard care could simply be doing less – along with practical ways to keep your yard looking neat while nourishing the ecosystem underneath.
A winter sanctuary for native pollinators
To understand why leaf litter matters, it helps to look closely at what happens beneath the surface as temperatures drop. While honeybees pass the winter in sheltered hives, the vast majority of North America’s native pollinators do not.
Up to 70% of native bee species, including many insects’ cocoons and larvae, nest in the ground. Fertilized queen bumblebees burrow just a few inches into the soil or hide under dense leaf mulch to survive the freezing months ahead, to lay eggs in the following spring.
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If bees and other pollinators are to return in the spring, they need somewhere to shelter in the winter. Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Raking, bagging and blowing leaves away destroys this crucial winter nursery.
Many other insects depend on the shelter of fallen foliage:
Moths and butterflies: Species such as the luna moth (Actias luna) and the Isabella tiger moth, whose caterpillar form is the woolly bear, spin cocoons or roll themselves directly inside fallen leaves. Raking or shredding those leaves destroys the next generation.
Fireflies: Adult fireflies lay eggs in moist soil, and their larvae spend up to two years hunting for their food, soft-bodied invertebrates under damp leaf litter. Raking deprives them of moisture and habitat.
Predatory ground beetles: These beneficial predators spend the winter under leaves, emerging in spring to feed on common garden pests such as aphids, slugs and mites.
Nature’s engineered soil insulator and fertilizer
In addition to being a shelter, fallen leaves are an evolved biological mechanism for nutrient cycling. Trees actively pump vital elements, including calcium, magnesium, potassium and nitrogen from deep subsoils, into their foliage. When autumn comes and leaves drop, these stored nutrients are deposited back into the soil.
Leaving leaves in place triggers fundamental ecological benefits.
A thick blanket of intact leaves acts as a natural insulator for the ground. Air pockets trapped between overlapping leaves moderate the soil temperature and slow heat transfer, buffering against the freeze-thaw cycles that heave soil, fracture plant roots and expose beneficial soil microbes to lethal cold. The intact leaf blanket also conserves moisture and prevents soil from drying out over the winter.
As fungi, earthworms and micro-arthropods digest fallen leaves through late fall and spring, they break down organic matter into a rich material called humus. This slow-release organic fertilizer boosts soil structure, improves water retention in sandy soils, and prevents erosion and runoff in heavy rains.
Decaying leaves feed beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. Those fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant and tree roots, helping the roots collect water and nutrients from the soil to nourish the plants above. A natural layer of leaves also suppresses spring weed seeds organically without needing synthetic chemical herbicides. And the moist, insulated microclimate under leaf litter is also critical for terrestrial amphibians, including frogs and salamanders, to survive freezing temperatures.
Leaves can also harbor ticks, but if you move them to places people don’t frequent, even in the warmer months, you can reduce the number of ticks in places with activity. David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
How to ‘leave the leaves’
Adopting a softer approach to fall cleanup does not mean your yard has to look completely untamed or that you have to risk killing your lawn. Here is how to balance suburban expectations with sound ecological science:
Move, don’t remove: Move the leaves from lawns and sidewalks, rake them into garden beds, around ornamental plants or into vegetable plots, using manual rakes or electric leaf blowers. Aim for a layer 2 to 3 inches deep. Leaving leaves in grassy areas can help ticks hide there too, but if you move the leaves to garden beds or spots that are used less, the ticks will be less likely to nest in the grass. Establishing pollinator zones on the property can also help reduce tick populations.
Skip the leaf shredder: Mowing over leaves with a mulching mower is better than sending them to landfills, but high-velocity mower blades still kill overwintering insect eggs, chrysalises and larvae. Leave leaves intact wherever possible in plant beds.
Wait for spring to clean up: Do not cut back hollow-stemmed perennials or clear leaf beds during early, warm spring days. Wait until temperatures consistently stay above 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) so overwintering bees and butterflies have time to safely emerge.
When you bag leaves for disposal and then buy commercial wood mulch or synthetic fertilizers in the spring, you are effectively paying a price for what your trees provided for free. By rethinking the cultural expectation of pristine autumn lawns, it’s possible to transform silent landscapes into vibrant habitat sanctuaries, simply by stepping back and allowing natural processes to take over.
Manjot Kaur Sidhu is an assistant extension professor of horticulture and ornamental horticulture specialist at the University of Maine.
Manjot Kaur Sidhu 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.
‘The man with the Muck rake’
President Theodore Roosevelt’s address at the laying of the cornerstone of the House of Representatives office building on April 14, 1906.
[1] Over a century ago Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great additional buildings for the business of the Government. This growth in the need for the housing of the Government is but a proof and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of action of the National Government has grown. We now administer the affairs of a nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth and the growth in complex interests. The material problems that face us to-day are not such as they were in Washington’s time, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered external form we war with the same tendencies toward evil that were evident in Washington’s time, and are helped by the same tendencies for good. It is about some of these that I wish to say a word to-day.
[2] In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.
[3] In Pilgrim’s Progress the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.
[4] There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.
[5] Now, it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just said, easy to affect to misunderstand it, and, if it is slurred over in repetition, not difficult really to misunderstand it. Some persons are sincerely incapable of understanding that to denounce mud slinging does not mean the endorsement of whitewashing; and both the interested individuals who need whitewashing, and those others who practice mud slinging, like to encourage such confusion of ideas. One of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate assault upon men in business or men in public life, is that they invite a reaction which is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who really ought to be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible, to be put in the penitentiary. If Aristides is praised overmuch as just, people get tired of hearing it; and overcensure of the unjust finally and from similar reasons results in their favor.
[6] Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reaction, instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the excess, is very apt to take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price. As an instance in point, I may mention that one serious difficulty encountered in getting the right type of men to dig the Panama Canal is the certainty that they will be exposed, both without, and, I am sorry to say, sometimes within, Congress, to utterly reckless assaults on their character and capacity.
[7] At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is, not for immunity to but for the most unsparing exposure of the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that I ask that the war be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution. The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone. If the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral color-blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are all gray. In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offense; it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrongdoing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men.
[8] To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping generalizations as to include decent men in the general condemnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general attitude either of cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad. Either attitude is fraught with untold damage to the country as a whole. The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well-nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition.
[9] There is any amount of good in the world, and there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done than now. The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. It is a foolish and timid, no less than a wicked thing, to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good. Hysterical sensationalism is the very poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. The men who with stern sobriety and truth assail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders and allies of all engaged in the work for social and political betterment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say, if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they thereby betray the good cause, and play into the hands of the very men against whom they are nominally at war.
[10] In his “Ecclesiastical Polity” that fine old Elizabethan divine, Bishop Hooker, wrote:
[11] “He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favorable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regimen is subject, but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider.”
[12] This truth should be kept constantly in mind by every free people desiring to preserve the sanity and poise indispensable to the permanent success of self-government. Yet, on the other hand, it is vital not to permit this spirit to sanity and self-command to degenerate into mere mental stagnation. Bad though a state of hysterical excitement is, and evil though the results are which come from the violent oscillations such excitement invariably produces, yet a sodden acquiescence in evil is even worse. At this moment we are passing through a period of great unrest–social, political, and industrial unrest. It is of the utmost importance for our future that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, of mere dissatisfaction with the inevitable inequality of conditions, but the unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the individual and the nation. So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life.
[13] If, on the other hand, it turns into a mere crusade of appetite against appetite, of a contest between the brutal greed of the “have-nots” and the brutal greed of the “haves,” then it has no significance for good, but only for evil. If it seeks to establish a line of cleavage, not along the line which divides good men from bad, but along that other line, running at right angles thereto, which divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, then it will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body politic.
[14] We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in murder. One attitude is as bad as the other, and no worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime.
[15] It is a prime necessity that if the present unrest is to result in permanent good the emotion shall be translated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity, and self-restraint. There is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, continuous growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion.
[16] It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well-won and fortunes ill-won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law-honesty. Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them. As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual–a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed by the National and not the State government. Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.
[17] Again, the National Government must in some form exercise supervision over corporations engaged in interstate business–and all large corporations are engaged in interstate business–whether by license or otherwise, so as to permit us to deal with the far-reaching evils of overcapitalization. This year we are making a beginning in the direction of serious effort to settle some of these economic problems by the railway-rate legislation. Such legislation, if so framed, as I am sure it will be, as to secure definite and tangible results, will amount to something of itself; and it will amount to a great deal more in so far as it is taken as a first step in the direction of a policy of superintendence and control over corporate wealth engaged in interstate commerce, this superintendence and control not to be exercised in a spirit of malevolence toward the men who have created the wealth, but with the firm purpose both to do justice to them and to see that they in their turn do justice to the public at large.
[18] The first requisite in the public servants who are to deal in this shape with corporations, whether as legislators or as executives, is honesty. This honesty can be no respecter of persons. There can be no such thing as unilateral honesty. The danger is not really from corrupt corporations; it springs from the corruption itself, whether exercised for or against corporations.
[19] The eighth commandment reads, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not read, “Thou shalt not steal from the rich man.” It does not read, “Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.” It reads simply and plainly, “Thou shalt not steal.” No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against the misdeed of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the corporation itself from wrongful aggression. If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich corporations, it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the interest of a corporation.
[20] But, in addition to honesty, we need sanity. No honesty will make public man useful if that man is timid or foolish, if he is a hot-headed zealot or an impracticable visionary. As we strive for reform we find that it is not at all merely the case of a long uphill pull. On the contrary, there is almost as much of breeching work as of collar work; to depend only on traces means that there will soon be a runaway and an upset. The men of wealth who to-day are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper Government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.
[21] On the other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild agitators against the entire existing order, the men who act crookedly, whether because of sinister design or from mere puzzle-headedness, the men who preach destruction without proposing any substitute for what they intend to destroy, or who propose a substitute which would be far worse than the existing evils–all these men are the most dangerous opponents of real reform. If they get their way they will lead the people into a deeper pit than any into which they could fall under the present system. If they fail to get their way they will still do incalculable harm by provoking the kind of reaction which, in its revolt against the senseless evil of their teaching, would enthrone more securely than ever the very evils which their misguided followers believe they are attacking.
[22] More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage-worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil, upon these depend the welfare of the entire country; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all our statesmanship.
[23] Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Spiritually and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living and right thinking. We appreciate that the things of the body are important; but we appreciate also that the things of the soul are immeasurably more important. The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen.
‘How light plays into the scene’
“Night Light” (watercolor), by Bill Lane, in the group show “Nocturnes: Where Darkness Begins to Speak,’’ at Spring Bull Gallery, Newport, R.I., through Oct. 25.
Mr. Lane says:
“Everyday scenes intrigue me the most; be it a barren landscape, boats in the harbor or city life on a busy day. I observe how the light plays into the scene and reflects off the subjects. I work to capture that light while enhancing my point-of-interest in the painting.’’
We should all take turns wearing one
“Dunce Cap’’ (mixed media), by Nat Martin, in his show “A Clutter of Roses,’’ Dec. 3-Dec. 27, at Kingston Gallery, Boston.
The gallery says:
“Beginning as a photographer, Martin has always been interested in the possibility of blending art and everyday life. He works by collecting materials throughout the day, working at odd times in a home studio, and with his kids as subjects and collaborators, reacting to and using the stuff around him. Children’s art, toys, kitchen objects, boardgames, to-do lists, cakes, clocks, leftovers, vacuum-sealed bags and plastic drink cups were all starting points for recent pieces. Says Martin: ‘I also like the effect of putting together visually disparate objects for a cluttered, domestic effect. I want everything to look different in style and material, which keeps me in a playful and experimental mode.”’
Roberts richly deserved the disruption in Maine
Red marks the town of St. George, in Midcoast, Maine. Hupper Island is off the village of Port Clyde in St. George.
Adapted from an item in Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Some angry people in Maine, some summer people and some year-rounders, disrupted U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts’s annual summer vacation this year on private Hupper Island, mostly a summer place, on the Pine Tree State’s gorgeous coast, where he has a house. The child-of-privilege and genial right winger had to put up with protestors by land and water holding up signs denouncing him and the court that he leads for assorted controversial rulings. I don’t necessarily agree with all the sign wavers, but one ruling by the court – which Roberts wrote -- was so dangerous for America that Roberts richly deserved the protests.
I’m referring to the ruling, in a legally unprecedented (and you could say treasonous) 6-3 decision by the GOP-run high court that former presidents effectively have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for what they do as president – what a go-ahead for Trump, a vicious and psychotic convicted criminal, to engage in more crimes. No wonder many Mainers want Roberts to stop vacationing near them. Maybe Roberts should look for a place on the South Carolina coast – it’s not as spectacular as Maine but is politically friendly to the likes of Roberts, not to mention warmer.
Conflict of interest? Nah….Jane Sullivan Roberts, wife of the chief justice, has made more than $10 million working as a legal recruiter for law firms doing business before the Supreme Court. At least that’s more seemly than the brazenly corrupt Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas taking vast gifts from billionaire far-right Republican campaign donors.
Feeling less safe this year in Downtown Boston
Downtown Boston
Lightly edited article by Brendan Cassidy in The Boston Guardian.
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
The Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association (DBNA) shared results of its annual survey that asks residents and workers about public safety and quality of life in the neighborhood.
391 people submitted responses to the survey, and 55.5 percent said they feel less safe today than in 2025.
In response to the same question in last year’s survey, just 33.7 percent of respondents said they felt less safe in 2025 than in 2024.
After a positive trend between 2024 and 2025 results, sentiment took a negative turn across the board.
6.4 percent of residents and workers who answered the survey said they feel safer now than a year ago downtown. In the 2025 survey, 17.1 percent said they feel more safe than in 2024.
90.3 percent of respondents said public safety is a highly urgent issue in the Boston Common. 89.8 percent said public safety is a highly urgent issue in the Downtown neighborhood. These figures are up 9 and 10 percentage points from a year ago, respectively.
“Last year, following significant cross-sector efforts, we saw a significant improvement in how people perceived public safety Downtown,” said DBNA Co-Founder Rishi Shukla. “This year, that trend has clearly reversed with close to 50 percent of 2025’s gains erased.”
Shukla said responses to the survey are used to help the DBNA with its public safety work and conversations with public officials, law enforcement and local businesses.
“This survey isn't intended to replace crime statistics,” said Shukla. “It bridges the gap between crime statistics and perception of safety. It tells us about how the people who live, work, study and do business Downtown are experiencing the neighborhood.”
90.3%
of respondents said public safety is a highly urgent issue in the Boston Common.
Statistics and findings from the survey were recently presented to residents at a meeting of the DBNA.
Shukla said the focus going forward will be to analyze what is driving perceptions that residents and workers displayed in the survey.
A ‘Peaceable Kingdom,’ with soldiers lurking
“Holy Bridges 1,’’ by Horace Pippin (1888-1946), in a show by Art Bridges, at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum, through next spring.
The museum says this painting “was inspired by the prophecy of a ‘Peaceable Kingdom,’ in the biblical book of Isaiah, which describes a paradise where all creatures will live in harmony. Growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Pippin had early exposure to illustrations from the Bible and hymnals, but unlike the Bible’s description, this painting exhibits moments of secular strife. While the foreground depicts predators and prey laying together in accordance to scripture, the background reveals threatening soldiers prowling the forest next to a graveyard. ‘Holy Mountain, I’ shares the inscribed date of June 6, 1944 with D-Day, reinforcing ideas of war and peace. This dynamic had personal significance. Pippin served in World War I, and the figure at center is likely a self-portrait. ‘If a man knows nothing but hard times he will paint them,’ the artist said. ‘For he must be true to himself, but even that man may have a dream, an ideal—and Holy Mountain is my answer to such dreaming.”’
Let’s look at the science in the tree vs. solar farm question
Brief text excerpt from an ecoRI News article by Brown University Prof. Stephen Porder. It may surprise you.
“The seemingly endless debate in Rhode Island about clearing trees to put up solar panels reared its head again in a recent column in ecoRI News by Frank Carini, who wrote that ‘Bulldozing trees to build utility-scale renewable energy facilities — 4 megawatts, in this case — essentially eliminates any of the project’s climate benefits.’ The article goes on to discuss very real concerns associated with clearing trees: loss of habitat, fragmentation of continuous forest, and water quality impacts.
‘‘I’ve studied forests all over the world for the past 20 years, and I share these concerns. I completely agree with Mr. Carini that ‘Rhode Island needs to get serious about protecting the environment.’ But let’s get the math right before we start the harder discussion about the tradeoffs that we have to make to address the climate crisis.’’
‘Yearning for this place’
From “Dog Years’’ show by Maine artist Dean McCrillis at Cove Street Arts, Portland, Maine, Nov. 29-Jan. 17.
The artist says show is of “recent paintings that explore personal and profound connections to formative spaces. This body of work is a recognition of the ephemeral, and of a fundamental sense of interconnectedness to a place, its people, flora, and fauna.
“The woods and waters of Western Maine serve as a backdrop for this group of pictures, as it holds the deepest love and connection of any area I have known. However, with the passing of time, and an ever-growing distance between my present station in life and the tributaries of my youth, I feel a sense of yearning for this place that shaped me.’’
At secret meeting, Trump regime, Big Tech push for apps to partly replace physicians, other health-care professionals
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News, except for images above
A cadre of elite techies, financiers, and high-level Trump administration officials have spent a year quietly charting an extraordinary and rapid campaign to persuade Americans to use apps and other artificial intelligence-powered tools to manage their health care and medical records.
As that campaign has unfolded, administration officials have granted tech companies an unusual opportunity to nudge the nation toward a loosely regulated future for AI health apps in which the government reimburses them for services as it does medical professionals.
In February, federal health officials invited those businesses — including tech giants Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, and Google — to a listening session on conversational AI products for patients, such as chatbots. Representatives from at least 35 industry organizations attended the meeting held by the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for regulating health apps as medical devices. Companies were prompted in advance to explain their AI products and how they access patients’ sensitive medical information.
But the meeting did not appear on the FDA’s public calendar or regulatory notices, nor was the public invited. Rather, the invitation for a select group to help shape federal policy governing AI in healthcare was extended in a chat room on the messaging service Slack.
“This is a great opportunity to support HHS’ goals and share your state-of-the-art understanding of safe Conversational AI development and monitoring to help FDA shape future guidance,” CMS senior policy adviser Morgan Taylor wrote in the Slack workspace.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has not formally announced the chat room through federal regulatory channels, though CMS officials have talked about it at industry conferences. Legal experts said the chat room resembles a federal advisory panel, which would be required to operate in public view.
KFF Health News reviewed thousands of Slack messages, meeting transcripts, and video recordings that reveal how the Trump administration has granted the industry a direct line to top government officials — including former head of the Department of Government Efficiency Amy Gleason.
The conversation took place behind the scenes as federal health officials publicly worked to integrate AI and other technology into nearly every aspect of healthcare, a plan they’ve branded the “Health Technology Ecosystem.”
“We wanted to give industry a chance to play in the sandbox of government-supported health care,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said in September at the public launch of an initiative that allows health apps to bill Medicare for AI services such as wearable device tracking. The other week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered an enthusiastic endorsement of AI in healthcare, claiming it is “much better informed than any doctor in the country.”
Meanwhile, HHS staff even promised that a recently launched Medicare App Library would serve as a lucrative pipeline for those businesses to get new users. The library’s webpage currently promotes only two dozen commercial apps to millions of American seniors and those with disabilities.
As Trump officials sell it, Americans will get easier access to their medical records so apps can swiftly provide health or wellness advice. In practice, however, so will the tech companies.
Doctors, meanwhile, are increasingly worried about how patients use and share their medical records with the nascent technology.
“Some of these tools just aren’t ready for primetime,” said John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association. “We don’t have enough data about them. We don’t understand how they work, how they’re using the information. There’s no liability if these tools get things wrong.”
CMS officials declined to answer several questions about the Slack workspace, including about its legality.
“CMS is focused on giving Medicare beneficiaries greater access to their health information and useful digital tools while promoting an open, interoperable healthcare system,” Gleason, now chief product officer for the newly created Office of Health Technology and Products at CMS, wrote in an emailed statement. “The Health Technology Ecosystem is an open, voluntary technical collaboration. CMS will continue working with patients, providers, payers, technology organizations, and other stakeholders to make health information more accessible and useful to the Americans it serves.”
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.
Dense with towns
Map of New England municipalities with municipal, unorganized territories, and national borders.
— Map by JShen
A couple of weeks of color before the monochrome
“Fall Birches” (oil) by Melanie Barash Levitt, at Jackson Art Studio and Gallery, Jackson, N.H.
Chris Powell: Not only teachers think they’re underpaid
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Has any candidate in Connecticut ever repudiated his own campaign television commercial as quickly as Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat seeking election to a third term, did the other day?
The governor's commercial calling the state's schools the best in the country included a pledge to arrange pay raises for teachers. Some people wondered if that meant the governor would support enacting a statewide minimum starting salary for teachers of $60,000. But questioned by Connecticut's Hearst newspapers, the governor said he was not advocating that and offered no explanation of what, if anything, his assertion in the commercial meant.
In any case, the commercial provided an opportunity for the president of the state's largest teachers union, the Connecticut Education Association, to make another pitch for raises. The union's president, Kate Dias, noted that while the estimated average salary for teachers in the state is, at $91,000, the sixth highest among the states, the states with the highest teacher salaries also have the highest cost of living.
Even for a single person in Connecticut, Dias said, that $91,000 is barely a living wage, especially since the cost of housing in the state is so high. For a teacher trying to support a family, she said, that salary is "woefully short."
But this isn't much of an argument. For teachers are not the only Connecticut residents under financial strain. Indeed, most people are feeling pinched lately amid inflation, and the latest report from the state's United Way organization said that about 40 percent of Connecticut residents are financially unstable and unable to afford essentials.
These people just don't have a politically influential union to represent them. They have to rely on their state legislators, who listen more carefully to special interests like teacher unions.
Besides, teachers receive valuable compensation that doesn't get counted in their salaries: medical insurance and pension benefits that are much better than what private-sector workers have, as well as job security under the teacher-tenure law.
Some teachers still may deserve a raise. But most teachers, covered by union contracts, \ will get raises even when many private-sector workers won't, and if teachers deserve raises larger than what their union contracts get them, it will be mainly because their students increasingly are unparented and poorly behaved.
So rather than be given special treatment, teachers should be welcomed to the growing club of financially strained Connecticut residents and should pursue policy solutions that benefit people generally -- more housing construction, which will require curtailing municipal zoning, and ending inflation, which will require reducing government spending.
Since solutions are probably impossible politically amid state government's subservience to special interests, change is unlikely.
Lamont's campaign commercials tout the many goodies the Democratic state administration has bestowed on Connecticut, while the commercials of his Republican challenger, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, promise big cuts in taxes. So it's fair to conclude that, as usual, the Democrats will spend more, the Republicans less.
But Fazio isn't leveling with people much more than the governor is.
Big cuts in taxes eventually will require big cuts in spending, and Fazio isn't strong on specifics there. In an interview with the Connecticut Examiner the other day he talked about "unfunded state mandates" on municipalities and cited the requirement for them to put legal notices in newspapers -- a small expense -- but didn't mention the elephants in the budget room, binding arbitration of municipal employee union contracts and the minimum budget requirement for school systems. Those laws actually prohibit public control over most municipal spending even as they can't be discussed because it would upset the biggest local special interests, municipal government employee unions.
Polls suggest that Fazio is yet to catch on with voters, and President Trump's unpopularity may bring down all Republicans in Connecticut next month. So when you're likely to lose anyway, you might as well try candor and telling the truth. Shocking people like that will get lots of attention and make it easier for the next guy who might try candor and the truth.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years\ (CPowell@cox.net).
Making Prints in response to troubled America’s 250th
“Intercessor 1: Minnesota ICE” (white line woodcut), by Annie Bissett, in the show “Perspectives: America at 250,’’ at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, Conn., through Nov. 8.
The show has 120 original prints made by members of The Boston Printmakers who were asked to address six themes tied to America’s 250th birthday.
Brown gets $37 million grant for research on aging
Brown University shield
Edited from a New England Council report
Brown University and Brown University Health, in Providence, recently received a $37 million gift from the Starr Foundation to advance and expand clinical trials, treatments, and research on aging. The funding goes towards research at Brown’s Center on the Biology of Aging, with clinical trials and treatments across Brown University Health, Rhode Island’s largest health-care system.
The five-year gift will establish two endowed faculty positions in geroscience at Brown University, focused on studying the genetic, molecular and cellular mechanisms of aging with the goal of increasing the number of years people live in good health. The Starr Foundation’s Healthspan Innovation Alliance bridges the gap between Brown University with Brown University Health; the health system currently conducts about 500 clinical trials in Rhode Island, with about two-thirds focused on aging and aging-associated disorders.
“By uniting world-class science at Brown with clinical care across the Brown University Health system, we can translate cutting-edge research into life-changing treatments for devastating conditions like cancer and dementia,” said Brown University President Christina H. Paxson.
‘The ups and downs’
From Midge Battelle’s show “Love Letter to a Dream, at the Provincetown Art Museum and Museum, through Oct. 25.
The gallery says:
“Midge’s works are meditations on the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs, the sadness and wonders of life. The Grid, The Blue, The Silver, the Pale and sometimes the Saints. Her work is Healing, as is the spending of time with her. The photographs, the Cyanotypes, the prints and the paintings all work together to express Midge’s view of the world.’’
Llewellyn King: The sad decline in creative swearing
Term such as queer can be reappropriated by the people they are directed against, as in this demonstration in Washington.
—Photo by Ted Eytan
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Mark Twain wrote an essay on the decay in the art of lying. His conclusion was that you had better have a damn good memory.
Oscar Wilde wrote an essay — in the form of a philosophical dialogue — on the same subject, but he was trying to prove that art didn’t need to be based on the real world.
I have the temerity to offer this: the decay in the art of swearing.
As a boy, I read in Richard Dana’s book Two Years Before the Mast that the captain could swear for minutes without repeating himself. Ever since, I have been fascinated by swearing and those who maintain it as — dare I say it — an art form.
At the heart of the decline is the lack of respect for the f-word. In its day, it was the capstone, shocking and bound to offend. Ergo, it had to be used sparingly and calculatedly.
Now it is everywhere, in movies, in BBC television shows, and has been heard in the Congress and from the lips of the president of the United States. Shame.
If this keeps up, the f-word will be no more upsetting than bloody, which was a true shocker when George Bernard Shaw used it his 1913 play Pygmalion, but is now no more shocking than any other adjective.
Bugger is another word that has become inoffensive. Once a shocker with kiloton-explosive quality, it has been defused.
Here are some great swearers I have known and who kept alive the creative art of profanity.
Stockard Channing has an exquisite command of the language and with, as you would expect from one of our great actresses, impeccable timing.
Decades ago, she and I were both guests at The Ashram, an exclusive health resort in California. I have fond memories of the two of us trying to jog down the beach in Malibu while she let loose with a powerful and profane description of some of Hollywood’s executives. Invigorating.
Ben Bradlee, the legendary executive editor of The Washington Post, knew how to use the f-word as a tool of editorial management. He dropped it straight and true like the blade of a guillotine on any stupid idea or meandering argument.
I saw this happen with deadly effect when, in an editorial conference (a daily event in newspapers), the coterie of assistant managing editors was getting overly excited about the struggle of a Post reporter in the Middle East. Bradlee listened, then declared, “F-word, this sounds like a story about how we didn’t get the story.” Quite so.
James Schlesinger, the great public servant who in turn was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, director of the CIA, secretary of defense and secretary of energy, liked to shock in formal situations. He used to use his command of profanity to bring pompous discussions down to earth.
Once I was visiting with him at the CIA, and we were shooting the breeze as we did often, when his aide came in and said, “Sir, the admiral has been waiting a long time to see you.”
Schlesinger signaled to me to stay put. “It’s good for [strong expletive] admirals to wait.”
That was in the early days of his tenure at the agency, and clearly he wanted word to get around that he was the absolute authority at Langley – and he was anywhere he held office. Awesome.
The master of what I think of as narrative swearing was my friend Guy Hawtin, a distinguished journalist with the Financial Times and the New York Post, who abandoned the wicked ways of journalism for the Episcopal priesthood.
Hawtin, who resembled the actor Peter Ustinov, could put English words together any time, anywhere, but his memorable tirade of swearing and invective happened to be in the hallowed ground of New York’s Algonquin Hotel. The perfect set.
Our lunch wasn’t intended as a reprise of the famous Algonquin Round Table of the 1930s, though we were seated at a round table. Our mutual friends David Fishlock, the FT’s science editor, and John McCaughey, a former FT subeditor, were also there.
The FT editor had dismissed Hawtin, leaving considerable bad blood. When Fishlock suggested that the editor was doing a good job, Hawtin launched into a brilliantly sustained angry monologue — the finest display of serial swearing this connoisseur had ever heard before or since.
Sitting by himself in a corner was the real, older, Peter Ustinov. He raised a hand with his thumb and index finger making a circle. Approval.
Our politicians aren’t adding to the art. They should have their mouths’ washed out with soap — my mother’s remedy for potty-mouth.
Llewellyn King, based in Rhode Island, is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com.
Brief flaming days
“October” (oil), by Willard Metcalf, (1858-1925). He was dubbed the visual equivalent of “poet laureate of the New England hills.’’
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
To-morrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow,
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away;
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
— “October,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The future of the storied Maine Coast
Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future captures the memorable voices of Mainers in a rapidly changing world. These include oyster farmers and other aquaculturalists, fishermen, marine biologists and other scientists, and community leaders who are navigating dramatic changes along and off Maine’s iconic coast. Presenting deep geological, climatological, and human history, in-depth interviews, and other research, the book shows the challenges and opportunities as rising seas caused by global warming, along with sometimes controversial shoreline development, are reshaping ways of life along The Pine Tree State’s storied coast. The vivid changes include shifting fisheries, new industries and markets and the technology that pushes them.
The problems, opportunities, and adaptations in Maine carry lessons for coastal communities around the world. These are global issues described locally through the stories of Mainers on the frontlines. A powerful and timely portrait, Rising Tides is both a warning and an inspiration. It displays the dangers posed by change while also serving as a testament to the ingenuity and determination required not only in Maine but on coasts everywhere.
Shaking hands over the body
The ultimate Boston Irish politician — James Michael Curley (1874-1958), who as “The Hub’s’’ legendary mayor spent a lot of time quietly campaigning at wakes. Read the novel The Last Hurrah, which is based on him.
“This tailgate is a Time – which is what Massachusetts politicians throw whenever they must once again run for office….A Time is usually a fund-raising dinner, but it can be a fund-raising lunch, a fund-raising trip to the ballpark, or yes, a fund-raising wake, where, very likely, Jumbo Jr. will be shaking hands over the departed Jumbo Sr. preparatory to a run for the Governor’s Council.’’
-- Charles P. Pierce (born 1953) is a Boston area-based American sportswriter, political blogger, liberal pundit, author, and game show panelist.