Vox clamantis in deserto
Don Morrison: Go trademark yourself!
Registered trademark symbol.
Say what you want about Donald Trump -- I certainly do -- he is not shy about putting his name out there.
That moniker, of course, is emblazoned not only on the hotels, office buildings and golf courses he has built as a property developer, but also on what marketers call “line extensions” -- golf clubs, sneakers, steaks, vodka, wine and a Trump quilted vest “for her” ($375 at trump.store.com). More than any of his predecessors, out current president is a genius at what marketers call “branding.”
Nonetheless, eyebrows were raised recently when the Trump Organization announced it had trademarked his name for use on airports. The news came as Florida’s Republican-dominated House passed a bill, now before the Senate, to put that name on Palm Beach International Airport (PBI).
And why not? The guy has a big house called Mar-a-Lago just minutes from the terminal. In addition, he spends time at another one in Washington, D.C., where he also wants to Trump-stamp nearby Dulles International Airport (IAD), currently named after a 1950s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles.
Trump’s company also said it had trademarked his name for use on such airport feet of accessories as luggage, animal carriers and, oddly, “shoes to protect airline passengers during airport security screenings.” Trademarking would, apparently, let the President collect a fee every time his name is slapped on an airport, or when a Trump-branded item is sold, whether though his website or in a concourse giftshop.
The president’s legal strategy is clearly tied to his ego-boosting quest to put his name on everything from the Kennedy Center to childrens’ savings accounts. But it got me thinking: If he can do it, why can’t I? After all, college athletes in 2021 won the right to monetize their “name, image and likeness” (NIL) and have since made fortunes through endorsements and other deals. I’m no athlete, but I do write the occasional article. So why not try some potentially lucrative line extensions, such as song lyrics or greeting cards or fortune-cookie messages?
I contacted the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A nice lady there said I could indeed trademark my name and told me to visit the agency’s website, uspto.gov, for details. There I found a primer on how, for a $350 fee, I could obtain that potentially lucrative protected status.
The first step was to check the site’s searchable database to see who else was using my surname. Back came several hundred Morrisons offering everything from “cafeteria services” to “a brush for cleaning between toes.” I narrowed the search to those toiling in the creative arts and found a mere 108 of my namesakes. Prominent among them is Van Morrison, the Irish singer-songwriter who has been knocking out Top 40 hits since the 1960s (“Wild Night,” “Brown-eyed Girl”). He had trademarked his first, middle and last names for music-making and related activities.
So, I went to the website’s start-your-application page. There, I made a stunning discovery: I am already protected. Turns out, everything we write (or paint or compose) and make for public consumption (e.g., on a page or a canvas) is automatically protected by a form of trademark called a copyright. I had somehow eclipsed Trump -- at least in our mutual line of work, since I write all my own stuff and he usually doesn’t.
Now I radiate a new confidence. It’s unlikely someone would use my name or replicate my distinctive style and grace, of course, but if anyone even tried... well, I’d sue their socks off and retire rich as a toe-brush tycoon. Our wealth-respecting President would be pleased.
This new armor made me wonder about a related problem that affects us all. If the words I crank out are protected, how about the numbers and other attributes that I —and you -- produce as we move through the world? Internet platforms shamelessly sell our “data” (names, email addresses, spending habits) for use by third parties to target us for their pitches and wares. I’m no lawyer, but if we generate such data for all to see, aren’t we entitled to copyright protection? And shouldn’t we get a cut of the take?
I raised this point with another nice lady at the Patent and Trademark Office, who referred me to the website. It seems to be mute on the subject, though I haven’t lost hope. Instead, I dig through the site and other legal sources for guidance on how to press my case. No breakthroughs yet, but I march on.
I also thank Donald Trump for helping me realize that the law is the law, and that something so seemingly ludicrous as trademarking one’s name for use on airport-screening shoes should be taken seriously. Say what you want about our president, he occasionally gets something right.
Don Morrison is a columnist, author, lecturer and co-chairman of the advisory board at The Berkshire Eagle, in Pittsfield, Mass.
UNH’s new ocean-Mapping Center to open next year
UNH ocean-mapping center
Edited from a New England Council report:
“The University of New Hampshire has broken ground on a new 70,500-square-foot facility at UNH’s flagship campus, in Durham, that will house the Center of Excellence for Operational Ocean and Great Lakes Mapping. Funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the state-of-the-art research, office, and instructional space in Durham is expected to open in fall 2027.
“The facility builds on a longstanding partnership between UNH and NOAA, dating back to 1999, that has made the university a global leader in ocean floor and coastal mapping. Since its inception, the center has mapped more than one million square kilometers of ocean floor, discovered shipwrecks, and pioneered the use of autonomous vehicles for ocean data collection. The new building will include high-bay areas for staging equipment and small vessels, as well as dedicated space for industry partners to co-locate — with the number of companies co-locating at UNH growing by more than 400 percent since 2022.
“‘This new building will provide an advanced facility for our world-renowned Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping and expand UNH’s decades-long leadership in hydrographic excellence,’ said UNH President Elizabeth Chilton.”
And consider our own ‘Fantastical narratives’?
“Piri the Dreamer and Flying Coyote in the Garden (at Night)” (flashe on canvas), by Josias Figueirido, in his show “Horizons of Rest,’’ at the Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine in Bangor, through May 2.
The museum says:
He depicts “whimsical environments with colorful, stylized trees and flora that serve as backdrops for his eccentric, cartoon-like subjects: Piri the Dreamer and his companion Flying Coyote, as well as other hybrid creatures. The exhibition brings together an assortment of recently completed large-scale paintings along with a series of small canvases. Through the artist’s quirky settings and characters, we are invited to contemplate our own fantastical narratives and meaning. Figueirido’s work with animation and digital technology offers an additional experiential opportunity for visitors. Using augmented reality viewed through a cell phone, the artist’s vibrant and playful subjects come alive to inhabit the physical space. Depending on how the viewer navigates the gallery, hybrid beasts can be seen flying about, while fictional botanicals appear in three dimensions.’’
Fatal embrace?
“Museum of Natural History” (archival pigment in cotton vellum, silver leaf on reverse), by Peter Sandbach, at Glimpse Gallery, Concord, N.H.
Gerald FitzGerald: The last, best Trip
A “HoJo’s” restaurant, with its emblematic red roof and steeple.
We sat on counter stools for 23 hours at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Pennsylvania trying to hitchhike to New York City on a turnpike shut down by a blizzard. There were four of us. It was early February1966, and things were not looking good.
I'm unsure why my big brother, Chip, and his girlfriend, Ellen, had thumbed out to Cleveland from New York City for a turnaround weekend to begin with, since they each had regular jobs. Paul Burke and I had just flunked out of our Ohio college, John Carroll University. Perhaps they came to empathize or, probably, to help out. Now we were broke, stranded, and had most of 500 miles left to cover.
Like Paul, I had spent my last three bucks on dinner, but it came with bottomless coffee until the waitress on our fourth shift in ripped off the sign taped to the mirror, tore it in half and dropped it into the trash. For a few hours Chip and Ellen had tried to catch shuteye lying down in a small booth. Half the battle was holding onto our individual real estate in the crowded restaurant. No vehicles had moved for many hours other than to pull into the HoJo’s lot and park in the snow.
There had been no more of those for the longest time. I remember questioning a waitress on how she and the rest of the staff managed to get to work since the thruway was closed. She told me that there were cleared local roads behind the restaurant. I started thinking how I might use that fact possibly to change our intended route home but hadn't thought long before something else changed.
Even getting up off your stool to use the bathroom required care. Someone had to watch the seat to enforce its “taken” status. Just getting up to mosey across the restaurant to look out a window at the snowbound highway might be interpreted as surrender by any of numerous standees. But I thought that I had spied some sort of vehicle barreling through the white drifts of the eastbound lanes. That required inspection.
Sure enough! A truck flashing lights and pushing a plow was braving the blizzard. Not only that, but spaced carefully behind that plow were two black, shiny sedans making beautiful headway.
They all pulled into the HoJo’s. I don't think that the plow driver ever got out of his truck but two guys in rumpled raincoats stepped from one sedan and headed toward the restaurant's vestibule. I signaled a suggestion to Paul that we cover the entrance.
Of course, you're going to hit up a potential ride on their way out, not on their way in. You don't know whether people are staying or going. These two men stalked straight past us and the food cashier on toward the back of the building. Then they did the strangest thing: They checked out the ladies room. One went inside while the other stayed out in the hall. Ditto to the gents. After that they stalked right past us without a word back out into the snow. They looked so unfriendly that we said nothing at all. Surely, they were packing. We figured them for mobsters or bodyguards or both. Nothing that helped us.
When they reached the sedans the doors of one opened simultaneously and out stepped a strikingly attractive young couple, one from each side. The raincoats positioned themselves front and back, as if surrounding the young man and woman who were clearly high-end. Dressed in casual, crisp ski wear the young man was ramrod straight and his dark-haired, similarly attired, companion looked downright elegant. We let them pass smoothly. They headed to the rest rooms.
Chip and Ellen were closer to us now. I gestured for Ellen to come stand next to Paul. Then, stepping away with Chip to make the exit less crowded, I turned to Paul and said:
“When they head out you do the talking.”
“Me? Why?” Burke replied.
“Because you were raised in Greenwich.”
I must have dropped my eyes for a bit because I didn't see anyone in the group stop at the cash register to order food or drink. Still, the mobsters and their elegant couple sailed past smiling Ellen and polite Paul, who asked if they might have a little extra room in their two cars and plow truck. The silent, raven-haired Luci Baines Johnson, youngest daughter of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, stepped into the snowy parking lot licking an ice cream cone. The young man with her was John Patrick Nugent, whom she married later that year.
The celebrity travelers gave us nothing, of course, unless perhaps indirectly. Once they moved out it seemed like everybody started dribbling back to their vehicles. I've no idea whether the turnpike was officially opened around the time that the president's daughter and companions left or whether people just started realizing that if the celebrities could move on down the road so could regular folk.
The first free ride went to Chip and Ellen in the quickly warm cab of a big tractor-trailer. Much later Ellen told me that she had been nervous about the driver because he had a generous supply of uppers. While his passengers declined his offer, the driver regularly shoveled handsfull of pills into his mouth with, or without, coffee. Still, she calmed down after a while when she got to stretch out in the sleeper berth.
Paul and I, too, snagged a big rig about which I recall nothing at all except that it carried us into Jersey. I guess we got dropped off somewhere near Newark and were trying to get to Hoboken for the Hudson Tubes, the under-the-river subway to Manhattan. Talk about hope and trust, between us we had no money at all.
I would give a lot to have been bright enough even to ask the first name of the guy who gave us what Paul many years later described as our “last, best ride,” or even to remember the make and model of his car. He was maybe mid-30's and driving an old coupe, black or gray two-door, with a snow shovel lying across the the back seat. We each tossed a bag on top of the shovel.
The car had the kind of front seat where each side bent forward to allow passengers into the back. We joined the driver sitting three abreast up front. He told us that he had worked construction through some kind of shape-up but that “the Puerto Ricans” would work for lower wages and between that and the weather – but mostly the Puerto Ricans -- his construction hires dried up. He was pretty hot about it. The driver smoked Camel cigarettes (Paul's brand). The driver said that he was listening to the local radio that morning and learned that there was some kind of line-up in an hour or so to shovel snow for the City of Hoboken. That's where he was headed. This must've been early Monday morning, but I remember it was daylight.
Not only did that generous young man give Paul and me more smokes, when we pulled up at the Tubes station he gave us the remaining pack. Then he asked if we had the fares. It was pretty obvious that we did not. The driver dug deep and pulled from his pocket four quarters, giving each of us fifty cents to go with the cigarettes. I wanted to hug the guy.
As I recall, the Tubes cost about a quarter each, one way. Coffee and a doughnut inside the station at the window above a slice of counter cost another quarter. Fingers wrapped around cardboard cups, Paul and I were warm and happy – strangely subsumed by the comfort smokers feel who had gone a while without but whose addictive cravings are now satiated. It is a satisfaction you can actually touch, even in memory.
Chip and Ellen had offered us to stay with them on East Fourth Street in Greenwich Village while we looked for jobs. In about two months, they would marry after signing a new lease on an apartment on West 92nd Street with a cutaway kitchen overlooking what Chip called “the Grand Ballroom.” We – Paul and I and fellow flunk-out good friend Ralph Chiesi, could then take over “the 4th Street” for ourselves.
The Tubes station in Manhattan was on or near Christopher Street, in the West Village. That was nearly a straight shot walk to East Fourth through the top of Washington Square and past Gerdes Folk City. Closer to Christopher Street, Greenwich Avenue yawned like an open mouth leading up two blocks to unseen ladies who jammed against the high windows of the Women's House of Correction catcalling and jeering in the sunny warmth.
O yeah, things sure looked good again.
Gerald FitzGerald’s career has included being a newspaper editor, a writer, a prosecutor, a defense lawyer and a civic leader.He lives on the Massachusetts South Coast.
Editor’s note: The once very big and now defunct Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain was founded in 1925 in Quincy, Mass. The last “HoJo’s” closed in 2022.
Former U.S. diplomat: Don’t expect regime change in Iran
After the largest buildup of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, American and Israeli military forces launched a massive assault on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.
President Donald Trump has called the attacks “major combat operations” and has urged regime change in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the strikes.
To better understand what this means for the U.S. and Iran, Alfonso Serrano, a U.S. politics editor at The Conversation, interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.
MEDFORD, Mass.
Regime change is going to be difficult. We heard Trump call for the Iranian people to bring the government down. In the first place, that’s difficult. It’s hard for people with no arms in their hands to bring down a very tightly controlled regime that has a lot of arms.
The second point is that U.S. history in that area of the world is not good with this. You may recall that during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the U.S. basically encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then made its own decision not to attack Baghdad, to stop short. And that has not been forgotten in Iraq or surrounding countries. I would be surprised if we saw a popular uprising in Iran that really had a chance of bringing the regime down.
A group of men wave Iranian flags as they protest U.S. and Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 28, 2026. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
Do you see the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground to bring about regime change?
I will stick my neck out here and say that’s not going to happen. I mean, there may be some small special forces sent in. That’ll be kept quiet for a while. But as far as large numbers of U.S. troops, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Two reasons. First off, any president would feel that was extremely risky. Iran’s a big country with a big military. The risks you would be taking are large amounts of casualties, and you may not succeed in what you’re trying to do.
But Trump, in particular, despite the military strike against Iran and the one against Venezuela, is not a big fan of big military interventions and war. He’s a guy who will send in fighter planes and small special forces units, but not 10,000 or 20,000 troops.
And the reason for that is, throughout his career, he does well with a little bit of chaos. He doesn’t mind creating a little bit of chaos and figuring out a way to make a profit on the other side of that. War is too much chaos. It’s really hard to predict what the outcome is going to be, what all the ramifications are going to be. Throughout his first term and the first year of his second term, he has shown no inclination to send ground troops anywhere.
Speaking of President Trump, what are the risks he faces?
One risk is going on right now, which is that the Iranians may get lucky or smart and manage to attack a really good target and kill a lot of people, like something in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base.
The second risk is that the attacks don’t work, the basic political leadership of Iran survives, and the U.S. winds up with egg on its face.
The third risk is that it works to a certain extent. You take out the top people, but then who steps into their shoes? I mean, go back and look at Venezuela. Most people would have thought that who was going to wind up winning at the end of that was the head of the opposition. But it wound up being the vice president of the old regime, Delcy Rodríguez.
I can see a similar scenario in Iran. The regime has enough depth to survive the death of several of its leaders. The thing to watch will be who winds up in the top jobs, hardliners or realists. But the only institution in Iran strong enough to succeed them is the army, the Revolutionary Guards in particular. Would that be an improvement for the U.S.? It depends on what their attitude was. The same attitude that the vice president of Venezuela has been taking, which is, “Look, this is a fact of life. We better negotiate with the Americans and figure out some way forward we can both live with.”
But these guys are pretty hardcore revolutionaries. I mean, Iran has been under revolutionary leadership for 47 years. All these guys are true believers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work with them.
Smoke rises over Tehran on Feb. 28, 2026, after the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images
Any last thoughts?
I think that the timing is interesting. If you go back to last year, Trump, after being in office a little and watching the situation between Israel and Gaza, was given an opening, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Qatar.
A lot of conservative Mideast regimes, who didn’t have a huge problem with Israel, essentially said “That’s going too far.” And Trump was able to use that as an excuse. He was able to essentially say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far. You’re really taking risk with world peace. Everybody’s gonna sit at the table.”
I think the same thing’s happening here. I believe many countries would love to see regime change in Iran. But you can’t go into the country and say, “We don’t like the political leadership being elected. We’re going to get rid of them for you.” What often happens in that situation is people begin to rally around the flag. They begin to rally around the government when the bombs start falling.
But in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge human rights crackdown in Iran. We may never know the number of people the Iranian regime killed in the last few months, but 10,000 to 15,000 protesters seems a minimum.
That’s the excuse Trump can use. You can sell it to the Iranian people and say, “Look, they’re killing you in the streets. Forget about your problems with Israel and the U.S. and everything. They’re real, but you’re getting killed in the streets, and that’s why we’re intervening.” It’s a bit of a fig leaf.
Now, as I said earlier, the problem with this is if your next line is, “You know, we’re going to really soften this regime up with bombs; now it’s your time to go out in the streets and bring the regime down.” I may eat these words, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The regime is just too strong for it to be brought down by bare hands.
This article was updated on Feb 28, 2026, to include confirmation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.
Take a few minutes for YOU
Fritz Holznagel here, quizmaster for The Conversation. If
Fire as an Artist’s tool
“Root 1” (fire on Eastern Red Cedar), by Wayland, Mass.-based artist Pam Kainz, in her show “Present Tense,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, March 4-29.
She says:
“I use fire as a tool to mark and sculpt wood. My practice is grounded in observation, attending closely to what the material already holds and working in response to its inherent qualities. When my torch meets wood, a carefully controlled yet inherently unpredictable dialogue begins, one that requires full presence and attention.
“The surfaces of found cedar roots are torched to reveal, preserve and honor their natural forms. Their branching arm-like structures extend outward, echoing systems of growth and exchange, suggesting an ongoing search for nourishment and connection.
“My ‘Edge Burns’ series explores the material transformation as painted wood yields to fire. Working with single colors on wood panels, I use controlled burning to activate the painted surfaces. Each panel holds a charged tension, where stillness and change negotiate their boundaries.’’
First Parish Church in the affluent Boston suburb of Wayland.
—Photo by John Phelan
Despite this N.E. winter
In recent decades, the number of warm temperature records in March has outpaced cold temperature records over a growing portion of Earth's surface.
Sweet sign of season
“Sugaring Off,’’ painting by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka Grandma Moses)(1860-1961), at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum. With global warming, maple-syrup production has tended to come earlier in recent decades, but it might be a tad late this year as this very cold winter eases.
Chris Powell: Can Connecticut Democrats rise above identity politics?
Still “Unum”?
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Why are some people Democrats and others Republicans?
Personal identities have always had something to do with it. Some people inherit party affiliations from parents. Many Democrats come from the working and government classes. Many Republicans come from the propertied and professional classes.
Ethnicity often has had something to do with it as well.
Many Irish immigrants to Connecticut became Democrats because Republicans were in charge when the Irish arrived and were often hostile to newcomers. The next wave of immigrants, the Italians, found themselves in a rivalry with the Irish and so many became Republicans.
Upon their liberation after the Civil War, Blacks became Republicans because Democrats were aligned with the former Slave States. Blacks began migrating to the Democrats in the 1960s, when Republicans took them for granted and Democratic leaders became more aggressive about civil rights and racial equality.
Political culture is involved as well. The anti-Vietnam War movement originated as a largely youthful rebellion in the Democratic Party during a Democratic presidency, and within a few years the party had become not just anti-Vietnam War but also the party of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and perpetual protest. President Richard Nixon exploited the resulting fear of civil disorder and had the Republican Party pose as the representative of the "silent majority," the cultural establishment.
Political correctness is based to a great extent on identity politics, the assignment of the electorate to interest groups based not on public policy but on mere personal characteristics. Democrats see identity politics as a recruiting tool, though it may alienate as many people as it attracts.
Identity politics was the object of an appeal made this week by the vice chairwoman of Connecticut's Democratic State Central Committee, Vanita Bhalla, who urged people to join one of the state party’s "caucuses."
"Our caucuses," Bhalla wrote, "are where Democrats come together around shared experiences, organize, and make sure our party reflects the full diversity of Connecticut. They help shape policy conversations, strengthen relationships across communities, and bring new voices into our work at every level. Joining a caucus is a great way to meet like-minded people."
But the 10 Democratic caucuses Bhalla identified actually proclaim insularity and conformity, implying that members of each group think the same and want something for themselves as a special interest rather than something benefiting the public generally. The special interests the Democrats imagine cultivating with caucuses actually may be hard to figure out.
As policy matters, the LGBTQ+ Caucus may want state government to support the claim of transgender people to a right to participate in sports contrary to their biological sex, and to support sex-change surgery for minors. The Women’s Caucus, at least a caucus of Democratic women, may want state law to tolerate late-term abortion. The Black and Hispanic caucuses may want more state financial aid to the municipalities where most Blacks and Hispanics live.
But what do the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Caucus, the Disability Caucus, the Immigrant Voters Caucus, the Muslim Caucus, the Small Towns Caucus, and the Veterans Caucus want in public policy that differs from what most other people, or at least most other Democrats, want for everyone?
Do these caucuses ever go beyond the personal-identity interest and approach the national or state interest -- the public interest? Indeed, as these caucuses suggest, is it really possible to approach the public interest only after people are sorted into identity groups? If caucuses are necessary -- and local Democratic town committees insufficient as forums -- why not organize them according to policy issues instead?
Organizing people by identity groups risks stereotyping and caricaturing people -- the opposite of the "diversity" the caucuses are supposed to reflect. But then "diversity" isn't really the objective. Getting votes is, whatever the cost.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Oona Zenda: Watch the clock on Prior Medical Authorizations
Lunenburg Center in 1910.
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News,except for pictures above.
“Why do I need a prior authorization for something that I am already prior-authorized to take? If my doctor says that they want me on a medication, why does my insurance have another say in that?”
— Jaclyn Mayo, Lunenburg, Mass.
Jaclyn Mayo has multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that damages the nervous system and can mess with coordination and balance. To get steadier on her feet, Mayo had been trying to lose weight: A lighter body puts less stress on the joints and leads to greater flexibility.“It was really helping me,” she said. “I could go up and down stairs and not feel like I was going to fall.”
As a happy bonus, the GLP-1 seemed to ease other MS symptoms for Mayo: She started sleeping through the night, and the frequent numbness in her hands went away.
After being on Zepbound for seven months, she fell into an insurance pitfall: prior authorization.
In August, her pharmacy wouldn’t refill her prescription, and it wasn’t clear why.
She called her pharmacist, then her doctor’s office, the pharmacist again, then her insurance company. After speaking with the insurance company’s pharmacy benefit manager — a third-party company that oversees prescription drug plans for insurers — Mayo figured out that the advance approval her insurer had granted for the drug, known as prior authorization, had expired.
Insurers require prior authorizations for certain treatments or tests, especially costly ones. When they do, your doctor has to make the preauthorization request to your insurance company, explaining why you need the treatment. Next, the insurer decides if it agrees that the care is medically necessary and if it will pay for it.
Mayo had been taking the weight-loss medicine for less than a year and didn’t understand why a new prior authorization was needed so soon. She said she never got a letter or email notifying her that the clock had run out on her first prior authorization. As someone with a chronic illness, Mayo said, she keeps close track of her medical paperwork. She feels like she did everything right, which, she said, made the situation especially infuriating.
Her doctor submitted the necessary paperwork then found out the new approval would take seven to 10 business days.
At this point, Mayo had been off her medication for two weeks. Her sleep was getting worse, and the tingling numbness in her hands returned. So she asked that her prior authorization be expedited, only to learn that her doctor, not Mayo, would need to make the request for an urgent review.
“That red tape was completely avoidable,” she said. “And all that they needed to do was communicate clearly to me. And then I could have continued my medication without delays. But they didn’t.”
Why Insurers Want Prior Authorization
Doctors are often frustrated by the prior authorization process, but insurers argue it helps keep costs down.
AHIP, the insurer trade group formerly known as America’s Health Insurance Plans, declined an interview request. But in an emailed statement, it said that prior authorizations are an important safeguard that helps ensure patients receive safe, evidence-based care and keeps coverage affordable.
In a 2024 letter, the American Medical Association, which represents physicians, said the way health plans use prior authorizations is “opaque and overly complex,” creating delays in care and greater administrative burden.
Patients are also frustrated. A recent poll found that 1 in 3 insured adults call prior authorizations a “major burden” to accessing health care.
Mayo hit preauthorization hurdles likely because her physician prescribed a GLP-1, an expensive class of medication. The more costly the treatment, the greater the scrutiny, said Miranda Yaver of the University of Pittsburgh, who studies health politics and administrative burdens within the insurance system.
Issues with prior authorizations are common. Policymakers could standardize how insurance companies evaluate prior authorization requests to prevent more Americans from experiencing medical disruptions, Yaver said.
“It’s a solvable problem, if we have the will and the political conditions are ripe. I don’t think that they are at this particular moment,” she said.
Here’s what to know about getting prior authorization requests approved in a timely manner.
1. Find Out When Your Prior Authorization Expires
Individual insurance companies, and even the individual plans within those companies, often have different policies for prior authorizations.
“As you can imagine, that becomes an absolute nightmare,” said physician David Aizuss, chairman of the AMA’s board of trustees.
While expensive treatments are more likely to be targeted for prior authorization review, Aizuss said it also happens for low-cost generic drugs.
To figure out how long your prior authorization lasts, reach out to customer service at your insurance company or pharmacy benefit manager, whichever handles your plan’s prior authorizations.
2. Don’t Procrastinate
Getting a prior authorization isn’t always quick, so build in time for things to go wrong.
It took Mayo nearly three weeks to sort out the prior authorization issue for her GLP-1 prescription. She made the initial refill request about a week before her medication was set to run out and ended up without the drug for over two weeks.
3. Ask Your Doctor To Request an Expedited Review
As you wait for your prior authorization to go through, your doctor might not know how much medication you have left, or that your health may be declining. You can have your doctor request an expedited review. Though, as Mayo found, insurance companies and PBMs won’t always volunteer that as an option.
When an expedited review is appropriate is up for interpretation, said Kaye Pestaina, director of the Program on Patient and Consumer Protections at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
“No one knows the specifics of what urgent means,” she said.
Federal regulations require that urgent requests made by people with employer-based plans be decided within 72 hours. And, on Jan. 1, a federal rule took effect that creates a similar requirement for all Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program plans. However, this rule doesn’t apply to medications.
4. Consider Other Treatment Options
When Mayo’s doctor first suggested that she try a GLP-1, approval for the specific medication was taking a long time. When it became clear the request would probably be denied, the doctor canceled that initial request and put in a prior authorization request for a different brand of GLP-1, Zepbound. It was approved.
Ask your doctor about treatment alternatives. Health plans have different formularies — lists of medicines that are routinely approved. It might be easier to switch medications than to fight to get your health plan to approve coverage.
But be aware that your insurance company might change your health plan’s drug formulary anytime and require you to get a new prior authorization.
5. Don’t Be Afraid To Appeal
Submit an appeal, even if you’re worried you’ll lose. Yaver said that, based on the research set to be published in her book, Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States, people who appeal a prior authorization or claims denial win about half the time.
First figure out where to send your appeal. Usually, it’s an insurance company, but if the treatment you need is medication, it may be a PBM.
Include detailed records in your appeal.
If you’re trying to get approval for a specific medication, Yaver said, send documentation showing that you tried other medications or treatments that didn’t work. This helps make your case and can speed up the process.
“I actually just went through a prior authorization for my migraine drug,” Yaver said. “It actually went through very quickly.”
Oona Zenda (ozenda@kff.org) reports for Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
Gay Pride in color
“Being Seen: Celebrating SouthCoast Pride,’’ at the Marion (Mass.) Art Center, through March 13.
The show is being presented in collaboration with DATMA, a New Bedford-based organization that presents "impactful contemporary art at the intersection of design, art, and technology." The gallery show inside the Marion Art Center "provides deeper significance to the public art component" of the project through what the art center calls "a community salon-style art installation of LGBTQ+ artists from a Call-For-Art organized by SouthCoast artist Kate Frazer Rego, accompanied by a history of the Pride Movement, with a focus on the legacy of local figures."
Gaming higher education
Screen fun at UMass Lowell
Edited from an article by The New England Council
“The University of Massachusetts ay Lowell has opened Rowdy’s Esports Arena, a 2,500-square-foot, $4.5 million gaming facility inside the University Crossing student center, marking a significant investment in the fast-growing esports industry. The arena features 50 PC stations — including 12 varsity-level systems equipped with the latest Nvidia graphics cards — along with console gaming stations, a lounge, a live-broadcast room, and a dedicated team room for video review.
“The three-year project was developed under the direction of Adam Dunbar, UMass Lowell’s director of student center and gaming operations, in partnership with JCJ Architecture, Vantage Builders, and IT sponsor CDW-G. With more than 500 students already part of a dedicated esports campus community, the university is in the early stages of developing a varsity esports program. The move comes as the esports industry is projected to reach $5 billion in 2026, with more than 300 varsity-level programs now sanctioned across North America.
“‘This is a place for students to engage and build community,’ said UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen, who cut the ribbon at the arena’s dedication ceremony in late January, noting that student input was central to shaping the project.’’
Look out Below!
Killingly Pond
Excerpted and edited from an article by Dan D’Ambrosio, in ecoRI News
KILLINGLY, Conn. – Six years ago, Justen and Kellie Fisher bought a property in need of attention on Old Killingly Pond, which straddles the border of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and began rebuilding their dream house on the Connecticut side of the pond. About four months ago, the pond began to disappear on them.
“It’s dropped at least 12 feet,” Justen Fisher said. “It’s bad. It looks extremely different. You can probably assume the cause of concern for us. It’s literally our back yard.”
Although the Fishers didn’t know it at the time, their pond was disappearing because the dam that forms it began showing signs it could fail. That triggered an emergency action that opened the lower outlet of the dam to bring the water level down and relieve the pressure on the dam.
Rockwellian Review
“The Craftsman” 1963, (oil on canvas), by Norman Rockwell, in the show “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,’’ June 20-Oct. 25, at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vt.
— Photo by Andy Duback
All that Jazz
From Carl Ristaino’s show “Inspirational Jam,’’ at Umbrella Arts Center, Concord, Mass., through March 29.,
The gallery says:
“In ‘Inspirational Jam,’ Carl Ristaino captures the kinetic energy and soulful spontaneity of jazz music and culture through bold acrylic paintings that pulse with rhythm and life. His canvases become stages where musicians lean into their instruments, vocalists throw their heads back in ecstatic song, and the audience communes over the pleasure of spontaneous creativity.’’
But on Mark Twain’s favorite city?
The Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford.
— Photo by Daderot
“I don’t want anything bad to happen in the United States but if North Korea ever drops a nuclear bomb in this country, I swear to God I hope it lands in Hartford.’’
Dave Chappelle (born 1973) comedian, in 2013, after being heckled in Hartford
Switching to regionally based energy looking better than ever
Balcony solar panels
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Anything that New Englanders can do to achieve more regional energy independence would be most appreciated! As I have written, one such way is to promote use of those small “plug-in’’ solar-energy devices in rapidly growing use elsewhere, notably on European balconies. The units range from 200 to 1,200 watts.
Unfortunately, such solar is not yet widely legalized or standardized in Rhode Island, though there’s been legislation this year to do so, which would involve adjusting to utility codes and local regulations. Rhode Island does have a streamlined permitting process for larger, mounted systems for roofs and yards. Small-scale solar is in a legal gray area in Massachusetts, too.
Stop sending so much of our energy dollars to Pennsylvania and points southwest for polluting and Earth-cooking fossil-fuel companies! Let’s cut our electricity costs and reduce the stress on the regional grid – especially in cold waves and heat waves. Oh yes, and revive nuclear energy. With ever more efficient solar and wind power, and rapidly improving battery storage, the urgency to move from dirty and expensive fuel is ever more obvious.
And those New Englanders who havw lost power in this week’s historic southern New England blizzard might consider how much better off they’d be if their dwellings had solar power today,
Let the big melt set them free
“Abundant” (oil on canvas), by Davis Lloyd Brown, in his show “Paintings and Drawings from the Primordial Soup Series,’’ in The Gallery at the First Church Boston Unitarian Universalist.
He says:
“I was channeling Picasso, and Klimt came out,” in his drawings and large-scale paintings using templates inspired by timeless images, symbols and patterns.
Nir Eisikovits/Jacob Burley: What’s the purpose of Universities in the world of AI?
Open AI logo.
The old-fashioned place to write exam answers.
BOSTON
From The Conversation, except for images above.
Nir Eisikovits is a professor of philosophy, and director of the Applied Ethics Center of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where Jacob Burley is a research fellow.
Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it?
These concerns are understandable. But focusing so much on cheating misses the larger transformation already underway, one that extends far beyond student misconduct and even the classroom.
Universities are adopting AI across many areas of institutional life. Some uses are largely invisible, such as systems that help allocate resources, flag “at-risk” students, optimize course scheduling or automate routine administrative decisions. Other uses are more noticeable. Students use AI tools to summarize and study, instructors use them to build assignments and syllabuses and researchers use them to write code, scan literature and compress hours of tedious work into minutes.
People may use AI to cheat or skip out on work assignments. But the many uses of AI in higher education, and the changes they portend, beg a much deeper question: As machines become more capable of doing the labor of research and learning, what happens to higher education? What purpose does the university serve?
Over the past eight years, we’ve been studying the moral implications of pervasive engagement with AI as part of a joint research project between the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In a recent white paper, we argue that as AI systems become more autonomous, the ethical stakes of AI use in higher ed rise, as do its potential consequences.
As these technologies become better at producing knowledge work – designing classes, writing papers, suggesting experiments and summarizing difficult texts – they don’t just make universities more productive. They risk hollowing out the ecosystem of learning and mentorship upon which these institutions are built, and on which they depend.
Nonautonomous AI
Consider three kinds of AI systems and their respective impacts on university life:
AI-powered software is already being used throughout higher education in admissions review, purchasing, academic advising and institutional risk assessment. These are considered “nonautonomous” systems because they automate tasks, but a person is “in the loop” and using these systems as tools.
These technologies can pose a risk to students’ privacy and data security. They also can be biased. And they often lack sufficient transparency to determine the sources of these problems. Who has access to student data? How are “risk scores” generated? How do we prevent systems from reproducing inequities or treating certain students as problems to be managed?
These questions are serious, but they are not conceptually new, at least within the field of computer science. Universities typically have compliance offices, institutional review boards and governance mechanisms that are designed to help address or mitigate these risks, even if they sometimes fall short of these objectives.
Hybrid AI
Hybrid systems encompass a range of tools, including AI-assisted tutoring chatbots, personalized feedback tools and automated writing support. They often rely on generative AI technologies, especially large language models. While human users set the overall goals, the intermediate steps the system takes to meet them are often not specified.
Hybrid systems are increasingly shaping day-to-day academic work. Students use them as writing companions, tutors, brainstorming partners and on-demand explainers. Faculty use them to generate rubrics, draft lectures and design syllabuses. Researchers use them to summarize papers, comment on drafts, design experiments and generate code.
This is where the “cheating” conversation belongs. With students and faculty alike increasingly leaning on technology for help, it is reasonable to wonder what kinds of learning might get lost along the way. But hybrid systems also raise more complex ethical questions.
If students rely on generative AI to produce work for their classes, and feedback is also generated by AI, how does that affect the relationship between student and professor? Eric Lee for The Washington Post via Getty Images
One has to do with transparency. AI chatbots offer natural-language interfaces that make it hard to tell when you’re interacting with a human and when you’re interacting with an automated agent. That can be alienating and distracting for those who interact with them. A student reviewing material for a test should be able to tell if they are talking with their teaching assistant or with a robot. A student reading feedback on a term paper needs to know whether it was written by their instructor. Anything less than complete transparency in such cases will be alienating to everyone involved and will shift the focus of academic interactions from learning to the means or the technology of learning. University of Pittsburgh researchers have shown that these dynamics bring forth feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and distrust for students. These are problematic outcomes.
A second ethical question relates to accountability and intellectual credit. If an instructor uses AI to draft an assignment and a student uses AI to draft a response, who is doing the evaluating, and what exactly is being evaluated? If feedback is partly machine-generated, who is responsible when it misleads, discourages or embeds hidden assumptions? And when AI contributes substantially to research synthesis or writing, universities will need clearer norms around authorship and responsibility – not only for students, but also for faculty.
Finally, there is the critical question of cognitive offloading. AI can reduce drudgery, and that’s not inherently bad. But it can also shift users away from the parts of learning that build competence, such as generating ideas, struggling through confusion, revising a clumsy draft and learning to spot one’s own mistakes.
Autonomous agents
The most consequential changes may come with systems that look less like assistants and more like agents. While truly autonomous technologies remain aspirational, the dream of a researcher “in a box” – an agentic AI system that can perform studies on its own – is becoming increasingly realistic.
Growing sophistication and autonomy of technology systems means that scientific research can increasingly be automated, potentially leaving people with fewer opportunities to gain skills practicing research methods. NurPhoto/Getty Images
Agentic tools are anticipated to “free up time” for work that focuses on more human capacities like empathy and problem-solving. In teaching, this may mean that faculty may still teach in the headline sense, but more of the day-to-day labor of instruction can be handed off to systems optimized for efficiency and scale. Similarly, in research, the trajectory points toward systems that can increasingly automate the research cycle. In some domains, that already looks like robotic laboratories that run continuously, automate large portions of experimentation and even select new tests based on prior results.
At first glance, this may sound like a welcome boost to productivity. But universities are not information factories; they are systems of practice. They rely on a pipeline of graduate students and early-career academics who learn to teach and research by participating in that same work. If autonomous agents absorb more of the “routine” responsibilities that historically served as on-ramps into academic life, the university may keep producing courses and publications while quietly thinning the opportunity structures that sustain expertise over time.
The same dynamic applies to undergraduates, albeit in a different register. When AI systems can supply explanations, drafts, solutions and study plans on demand, the temptation is to offload the most challenging parts of learning. To the industry that is pushing AI into universities, it may seem as if this type of work is “inefficient” and that students will be better off letting a machine handle it. But it is the very nature of that struggle that builds durable understanding. Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the greatest risk posed by automation in higher education is not simply the replacement of particular tasks by machines, but the erosion of the broader ecosystem of practice that has long sustained teaching, research and learning.
An uncomfortable inflection point
So what purpose do universities serve in a world in which knowledge work is increasingly automated?
One possible answer treats the university primarily as an engine for producing credentials and knowledge. There, the core question is output: Are students graduating with degrees? Are papers and discoveries being generated? If autonomous systems can deliver those outputs more efficiently, then the institution has every reason to adopt them.
But another answer treats the university as something more than an output machine, acknowledging that the value of higher education lies partly in the ecosystem itself. This model assigns intrinsic value to the pipeline of opportunities through which novices become experts, the mentorship structures through which judgment and responsibility are cultivated, and the educational design that encourages productive struggle rather than optimizing it away. Here, what matters is not only whether knowledge and degrees are produced, but how they are produced and what kinds of people, capacities and communities are formed in the process. In this version, the university is meant to serve as no less than an ecosystem that reliably forms human expertise and judgment.
In a world where knowledge work itself is increasingly automated, we think that universities must ask what higher education owes its students, its early-career scholars and the society it serves. The answers will determine not only how AI is adopted, but also what the modern university becomes.