Vox clamantis in deserto
In Conn.,(and elsewhere) the baffling world of medical debt
By Katy Golvala, CT Mirror, Jenna Carlesso, CT Mirror, and Noam N. Levey
When Christine Wood received a $12,000 bill from Bristol (Conn.) Hospital, she thought it must be a mistake. It was more than she and her husband made in a month combined.
“I’m freaking out,” said Wood, who lives in a 1,700-square-foot home in Terryville, a village just outside Bristol. “I don’t understand it.”
Wood, 52, had weight-loss surgery at Bristol Hospital in 2022, hoping it would help with her sleep apnea and the pain in her knees and back. Before scheduling the procedure, she checked with her insurer, she said, and was told the surgery would cost $5,000 out-of-pocket. She paid in advance.
More than six months later, Bristol sent Wood another bill that pushed the cost of her surgery to more than $17,000. Wood said she tried to dispute the charge. The hospital sued her.
“That’s ridiculous. I was told so many times by Aetna: ‘$5,000 out-of-pocket,’” Wood said. “I never would have had the surgery had I known it was going to cost almost 20 grand.”
Wood is among more than three dozen Connecticut patients the Connecticut Mirror and KFF Health News interviewed over the past year who were sued by their hospital or physician over unpaid bills.
The patients include teachers, small-business owners, a postal worker, a retired nursing-home aide, a nurse, and a hotel bellhop. Most had jobs and health insurance. Nearly all said they wanted to pay what they owed.
Patients taken to court described baffling bills, confusing health plan rules, and frustrating and fruitless telephone calls to hospital billing offices and health insurers’ customer-service lines. Even when they tried to resolve their outstanding bills, many said they couldn’t get answers.
Bristol Hospital is part of Bristol Health, one of Connecticut’s most financially strained health systems.
Their experiences encapsulate breakdowns in the health-care system that trap patients in debt. Health insurance didn’t cover care for reasons they couldn’t understand. Several patients did not qualify for financial assistance from providers, despite modest incomes. If they committed to pay, patients were hit with liens on their homes or interest payments and court fees that piled new debt onto their medical bills.
The industry’s key players blame one another for a broken system. Providers say insurers’ high-deductible plans saddle patients with massive bills even when they have coverage. Insurers say hospitals raise prices at rates that outpace inflation.
Meanwhile, patients are stuck with the fallout. In 2022, about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. reported carrying medical or dental debt.
“It’s bad enough that I have bad health and have to pay mountains of medical bills,” said Samantha Mantiera, whom Danbury Hospital sued in 2024 over $10,000 she said she was erroneously charged. “Then to constantly be dealing with incorrect bills and then a lawsuit on top of it took me over the top.”
Mantiera said she spent months trying to explain to the hospital and then a collection agency that her insurance statements indicated she owed just $260. She was sued anyway.
After Mantiera contested the lawsuit, Danbury Hospital withdrew it, court records show.
Mantiera said she and her husband now travel up to an hour from their Brookfield, Conn., home to avoid hospitals owned by Danbury’s parent company, now called Northwell Health.
Kathy Holt, who leads the state Office of the Healthcare Advocate, said that in the past several decades healthcare has only gotten harder for patients to navigate. The agency fields thousands of calls every year from residents looking for help with medical billing questions.
“I’ve talked to too many people who have just given up,” Holt said. “The system has been made so hard for them, and I feel like it’s deliberate.”
‘They Would Not Talk to Me’
Debt-collection lawsuits against patients have declined in Connecticut since 2019, a CT Mirror-KFF Health News analysis of state court records found. And court records show most Connecticut hospital systems have stopped suing patients, including the state’s two largest systems, Yale New Haven Health and Hartford HealthCare.
Most hospitals stopped suing patients during the COVID-19 pandemic as they reevaluated their collection practices, said Sarah Ginnetti, chief revenue-cycle officer at UConn Health. The system ceased lawsuits in 2022, records show.
“In some of those circumstances, it just felt misaligned with our mission as an organization,” Ginnetti said. “For the small handful of cases that we might gain some type of legal victory, we really didn’t feel as though that would be our best path forward.”
Yale New Haven Health and Hartford HealthCare would not discuss why they stopped suing patients, instead issuing statements about their financial-assistance programs.
Scores of medical providers — including physician groups, dentists, and hospitals — have kept on suing, data shows. The CT Mirror-KFF Health News analysis found more than 1,500 healthcare-related debt cases filed in Connecticut courts in 2024.
This included lawsuits by Bristol Health, an independent local health system that includes Bristol Hospital, and Nuvance Health, a chain of seven hospitals recently acquired by Northwell Health, a multibillion-dollar system based in New York.
Nuvance hospitals filed over 4,000 collection lawsuits from 2019 to 2024, records show. Over the five years, the health system accounted for more than a quarter of the roughly 16,300 medical debt collection lawsuits against patients identified in state court records.
Hospital officials and other medical providers say they try to work with patients who have trouble paying their bills. Nikki Schulz, chief revenue officer for Northwell’s Connecticut hospitals, said in a statement that years ago the system “eased” its collection practices, leading to a “precipitous decline” in medical debt referred to collections.
“We fundamentally retooled our approach to align with industry best practices,” Schulz said. Records show the health system sued about 200 patients in 2024, down from 2,200 in 2019.
Health-care executives also say they have a responsibility to try to collect.
“I don’t have a choice,” said Bristol Hospital CEO Kurt Barwis. “What we’re trying to do is sustain a mission of taking care of this community.”
A Decline in Hospital Lawsuits
Hospital debt-collection lawsuits have declined in Connecticut since 2019, though non-hospital providers continue to sue patients.
Bristol Health is one of Connecticut’s most financially strained systems, and executives are currently in talks with the administration of Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont about an acquisition by state-owned UConn Health. The proposed deal is, in part, an effort to keep the hospital afloat.
Barwis said the hospital has taken steps to help patients with unexpected bills, including enlisting financial counselors to reach out to patients before elective procedures to discuss cost and financial assistance.
But Wood, who was sued by Bristol, said no one from the hospital talked to her before her surgery. When she called the hospital after receiving the $12,000 bill, she said she was told there was nothing they could do because her insurance had denied the claim.
“They would not talk to me about it,” Wood said. “They wanted their money.”
Bristol spokesperson Albert Peguero also blamed Wood’s insurer and said the hospital worked with Wood as she went through numerous insurance appeals with Aetna.
Wood didn’t fare any better with Aetna. It turned out that her health plan covered only $15,000 worth of bariatric surgery, meaning she was responsible for any bills that exceeded that.
Aetna spokesperson Shelly Bandit said Wood had been notified of this provision, though Wood disputes this.
The back-and-forth with the hospital and the insurer enraged Wood. But after she was sued, she concluded she had no more options. She settled with Bristol, agreeing to pay the full balance on a payment plan of $150 a month, court records show. Under the agreement, it would take Wood almost seven years to pay off the debt.
Last year, Wood faced additional financial challenges after her mother died and her husband lost his job and was unemployed for six months.
Wood said she’s regained about a third of the 100 pounds she lost after her surgery because of the stress. Some months she pays Bristol less than $150. In January, the hospital placed a lien on her home.
“We don’t have savings. We don’t have the extra money. We’re living check by check,” Wood said. “We’re working-class people trying to make a living, trying to do the right thing. And we always get screwed.”
‘I Don’t Have Hours on End’
It’s difficult to know how many medical-debt lawsuits arise from disputed bills. But most U.S. adults with healthcare debt say they’ve received a bill in the past five years that they thought contained an error, according to a national survey.
The prevalence of disputed medical bills is one reason many advocates for patients say hospitals and other healthcare providers shouldn’t sue people they treat.
“Understanding insurance to begin with and then navigating denials or bills that are not plainly understood leaves patients stuck in an opaque system where they have the least leverage and power,” said Eva Stahl, a vice president of Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit that has worked with states to buy and retire debt — including for more than 150,000 Connecticut residents.
“Patients understandably are left with questions and confusion,” Stahl said.
Last year, a judge dismissed one of Danbury Hospital’s lawsuits against a patient over a $64,000 unpaid bill, citing the hospital’s “failure to prosecute with reasonable diligence,” according to court records.
Timothy Bigham, who owns a construction company and was sued in 2023 by Danbury Hospital, said he never understood why he was billed more than $64,000 after he was hospitalized following a 2019 heart attack.
Bigham, who lives in Danbury, Conn., said he was insured at the time. But soon after he got home, Bigham began getting regular calls from the hospital. He was told his insurer wasn’t paying the bill because he refused to “release medical records,” he recalled.
“I had insurance when I had the heart attack, but it’s my job to get the insurance company to pay?” Bigham said. “I’m self-employed. I work in construction. I don’t have hours on end to sit on the phone trying to talk to somebody at an insurance company.”
Bigham said he ultimately “stopped dealing with it” because he didn’t know what else to do.
Then, in 2023, Danbury Hospital sued him. A judge dismissed the case in 2025, citing the hospital’s “failure to prosecute with reasonable diligence,” according to court records. But by then, the alleged debt had devastated Bigham’s credit score, tanking it by over 100 points, he said.
Northwell’s Schulz declined to comment on any specific patient cases, citing privacy laws.
Connecticut passed a law in 2024 barring medical debt from consumer-credit reports.
A handful of states have tried to protect patients from lawsuits through measures including limiting when hospitals can pursue legal action. Illinois, for example, prohibits lawsuits against uninsured patients who prove they can’t afford their unpaid bills. Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia prohibit liens and foreclosures for medical debt.
‘It Was a Nightmare’
Dominique Jean Pierre was equally surprised by the $20,000 bill he got after he was hospitalized at Norwalk Hospital with a urinary-tract infection in July 2020.
Jean Pierre, 66, had worked for nearly two decades as a bellhop at a Hilton hotel in Stamford, Conn., owned and operated by Atrium Hospitality, a Georgia-based company. When he got sick, the hotel was temporarily closed because of covid lockdowns.
What Jean Pierre didn’t realize, he said, was that the hotel had also cut off employee health benefits. He said he was told by the hospital that he’d be responsible for the bill.
“It was a nightmare,” he said.
Jean Pierre said he begged his manager for help but was told there was nothing the company could do. Atrium Hospitality did not respond to requests for comment.
Two years after Jean Pierre’s hospitalization, Norwalk Hospital sued him for more than $20,000, court records show.
Jean Pierre said he tried twice to apply for financial assistance, but the hospital told him he and his wife made too much to qualify, even though his medical bills totaled almost a quarter of their annual income of about $87,000.
With nowhere to turn, Jean Pierre settled with Norwalk Hospital, now part of the Northwell system, in 2025, agreeing to pay the full bill in $100 monthly installments, records show. At that rate, he will be paying off the debt until 2042.
After the settlement, he said, the judge encouraged him to reach out to elected officials to try to get the debt canceled. Jean Pierre was exhausted.
“He says to me, ‘You have to go to your senators. Go to the governor.’ I said, ‘That’s too much. [I’m just going to] let it go.’”
Jean Pierre has left the Hilton and now works as a personal-care attendant, as does his wife. But he said it still nags him that businesses and health-care providers received millions of dollars in government aid during the pandemic, while he was left with $20,000 in medical debt.
“They gave money for the hotel. They gave money for the hospital. They gave money for a lot of stuff,” he said. “But we don’t see none.”
‘I’m Not Trying To Run Away’
Other patients said they felt trapped, even if they tried to do the right thing.
Deneen Brown, who runs a small day care operation out of her home in Norwalk, was sued by Norwalk Hospital in 2024 for $7,200 over bills she allegedly incurred “on or about 2019 and 2020,” according to the lawsuit.
Brown said she was stunned by the lawsuit, as she believed she’d had health insurance at the time. But as a small-business owner who took pride in maintaining good credit and staying on top of her finances, she said she committed to taking care of it.
“I’m not trying to run away from something that may be my responsibility,” Brown said. “If you say I owe it, I’m going to figure it out, and I’m going to pay it.”
In January 2025, she agreed to a nearly 13-year payment plan of $50 a month, court records show. Often she pays more, she said.
The following month, the hospital placed a lien on her home. Brown said she never realized the hospital would continue to penalize her, even after she agreed to a payment plan.
“Had I known that, I would have never settled,” she said.
This article was produced in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror, a statewide nonprofit newsroom that covers public policy and politics.
Beyond astrophysics
“The Space Between the Stars’ #3’’ (acrylic, marker, crayon, flashe and spray paint on canvas), by Steven Cabral, in his show “Stars Between Spaces,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, June 4-28.
The gallery says:
“Cabral's abstract practice is one of spatial and dreamlike contemplation manifested on a surface. He is always looking for a sense of ‘place or ‘space’ within the painting, even if that place is ambiguous. Organic forms meet geometric structures; stains and irregular marks collide with shapes. The geometry, while not always obvious, offers a kind of scaffolding—an underlying order that holds the more fluid gestures in tension. Each painting becomes a negotiation between freedom and structure, accident and intention.’’
And too late to bring back the cruelty of whaling
Broken dreams in New Bedford.
—Photo by William Morgan (Providence-based architectural historian, essayist and photographer)
Ingrid A. Nelson: Costume crises at elite and other colleges
On the Bowdoin College Quad.
From The Conversation, except for image above.
Ingrid A. Nelson is a sociology professor at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine. She receives funding from the Spencer Foundation.
In 2014, a group of students at Bowdoin College thought it would be fun to dress up as Pilgrims and Native Americans for a Thanksgiving-themed party. This is not the first or last event like this, nor is it unique to one college.
Attendees later told me that, at the time, they did not understand why others might find the theme offensive. After all, many had dressed as Native Americans as children. One student told me he chose a Native American costume for the party “because it was way cheaper and I didn’t have to wear a shirt.”
The college privately disciplined the students who dressed up as Native Americans but chose not to discipline all of the partygoers.
My research shows that this selectivity sent a message to other students: Bowdoin saw racism as a problem affecting individual students, not a broader issue.
I am a sociologist at Bowdoin and studied this and two other racially charged costume parties at the college in 2015 and 2016. I wrote a book about this topic in 2024. On each occasion, students, mostly white, dressed up using harmful racial stereotypes.
As national movements for racial justice gathered momentum a decade ago, students on campuses were also becoming more aware and outspoken about racial harms. At Bowdoin, too, students began to speak up after these parties.
And after each party, administrators sent emails to students and staff that condemned partygoers’ behavior. Yet, some students still didn’t understand why the parties could be seen as offensive. And other students just didn’t care.
Asked for comment from The Conversation, Doug Cook, Bowdoin’s director of communication, wrote in an email: “We work hard to build community at Bowdoin and respond to all forms of intolerance in thoughtful and serious ways.” He also noted that the parties took place more than a decade ago.
But an April 2026 report from the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education cited a 2015 Halloween costume controversy there, noting, “At Yale as elsewhere, such events became identified with "cancel culture”: The idea that one wrong word or departure from campus orthodoxy could yield outsize punishments and social sanctions.“
At Yale and elsewhere, old questions about costume parties are feeding new questions about trust in higher education.
Colleges generally try to create respectful campus communities in which students feel seen and safe. But they also try to encourage open, reasoned debate.
Racially charged controversies, such as costume parties, tend to put those two goals at odds with each other, leaving college administrators to decide whose interests to prioritize. And being on the front lines of debates about free speech and racism puts higher education in a spotlight.
A recurring problem
While racially charged events happen on campuses in many ways, costume parties can be among the most visible. It is why, in part, I chose to study what happened at Bowdoin. But Bowdoin is hardly alone.
In 2015, the Halloween controversy mentioned in the report took place at Yale. The university’s Intercultural Affairs Committee emailed students a few days before Halloween, asking them to avoid "culturally unaware and insensitive costumes.”
Shortly after, Erika Christakis, associate head of one of Yale’s residential colleges, contradicted the email. She argued that the university should not tell students what costumes not to wear.
Many costume controversies came before, and others followed, including at Brigham Young University, the University of Central Arkansas and Franklin & Marshall College, to name only a few.
Fallout from Bowdoin’s parties
In October 2015, a year after the Thanksgiving party and at the same time as the Yale Halloween controversy, another racially charged student party took place on Bowdoin’s campus.
This one featured stereotypical gangster attire – baggy pants, jerseys, gold chains and a white student sporting cornrows.
In 2017 and 2018, as part of research for my book on the subject, I spoke with students who attended this and other parties.
Students who attended the 2014 Thanksgiving-themed party participated in an educational session with members of the Native American student group to learn more about why their costumes were hurtful.
Some students told me they “learned a lot” from that experience and realized that offending a certain group of people “is not something to just be pushed aside.”
But students I spoke with who did not participate in these educational sessions remained confused, resentful or oblivious to the harm caused.
After the 2015 gangster-themed party, the college asked the partygoers – all members of the school’s sailing team – to sit down and talk with the Black student group in afacilitated conversation.
The students who attended this party apologized publicly and worked to change their team’s culture through measures such as talking with new members about the hurtful party so they do not repeat the same mistakes.
The college administration praised these conversations in an email to the campus, writing, “In our view, the most powerful and effective response is an honest, open discussion between the students who dressed as they did, those who were stereotyped, and the larger student community.”
However, some other students posted in anonymous online apps such as Yik Yak that they felt all of these measures were taking away their fun and removing their right to say and do what they wanted.
As one self-described white guy wrote in a 2015 op-ed in the campus newspaper, “How can we have an open exchange of ideas when we’ve already decided that one side is right and the other is wrong?”
My research shows that the burden of educating the offending students fell almost entirely to students of color. These students organized meetings, participated in conversations, wrote educational columns and shared painful personal stories – all while keeping up with their own coursework.
A deepening divide
When yet another racially charged costume party took place at Bowdoin in the winter of 2016, this time a tequila-themed party that featured sombreros, the mood was different.
Many students felt like the partygoers should have learned something from the prior parties.
Mexican and Mexican American students said they felt exhausted discussing the party at length.
But others felt this new set of partygoers were being unjustly attacked. As one student said to me, “I remember feeling like I couldn’t speak because I was a white female on this campus who wore a sombrero and exercised white privilege.”
Many of the accused students I interviewed called their parents, and some consulted with lawyers to try to avoid disciplinary action by the college. Conservative and more mainstream media outlets picked up on the story.
While some Yik Yak posts featured outright racism, the student newspaper showcased a range of views. One student of color condemned the costumes, while another student of color took no issue.
One white student called for restorative justice through education and reconciliation, while another white student wanted to promote uncomfortable conversations. And still another pushed back against “disciplining ignorance.”
A series of racist costume parties at Bowdoin College offers insight into some of the trust issues plaguing higher education. iStock/Getty Images Plus
As one partygoer told me in 2018, “Everyone was afraid to step on each other’s toes, no one knew what was right and wrong, and everyone felt like a victim. … People on my side who attended the party or wore sombreros felt victimized by administration. Obviously, the Latinx community felt victimized by us.”
What’s right or wrong
What’s striking about these parties is not that they kept happening – they have been happening for generations, and not just at Bowdoin – but what has happened in the decade since they caught the public eye.
My research suggests that Bowdoin, and elite colleges like it, can treat racism like blight carried by a few bad individuals rather than a condition baked into the institutions themselves.
I believe this is important, because higher education cannot build trust among all students without acknowledging hard truths that may not even be obvious to leaders.
Elite colleges, according to research, remain elite because they serve elite interests. They tend to admit the children of alumni and donors at higher rates. They often reward the kinds of extracurricular activities, such as expensive club sports, that mainly wealthy families can afford. They market “diversity” but maintain social structures that keep white students comfortable and in control.
When racist incidents happen, colleges sometimes respond with educational programs that ask students of color to fix white ignorance for free. Meanwhile, wealthy students can opt out entirely, using their social and economic capital to shield themselves from consequences.
That’s not a system designed to address racism. That’s a system designed to manage public relations while preserving the status quo.
‘With one haunting figure’
“Chandler Farm” (in Connecticut), by James Sawyer (1813-1888).
These things I remember
Of New England June,
Like a vivid day-dream
In the azure noon,
While one haunting figure
Strays through every scene,
Like the soul of beauty
Through her lost demesne.
Gardens full of roses
And peonies a-blow
In the dewy morning,
Row on stately row,
Spreading their gay patterns,
Crimson, pied and cream,
Like some gorgeous fresco
Or an Eastern dream.
Nets of waving sunlight
Falling through the trees;
Fields of gold-white daisies
Rippling in the breeze;
Lazy lifting groundswells,
Breaking green as jade
On the lilac beaches,
Where the shore-birds wade.
Orchards full of blossom,
Where the bob-white calls
And the honeysuckle
Climbs the old gray walls;
Groves of silver birches,
Beds of roadside fern,
In the stone-fenced pasture
At the river's turn.
Out of every picture
Still she comes to me
With the morning freshness
Of the summer sea, —
A glory in her bearing,
A sea-light in her eyes,
As if she could not forget
The spell of Paradise.
Thrushes in the deep woods,
With their golden themes,
Fluting like the choirs
At the birth of dreams.
Fireflies in the meadows
At the gate of Night,
With their fairy lanterns
Twinkling soft and bright.
Ah, not in the roses,
Nor the azure noon,
Nor the thrushes' music,
Lies the soul of June.
It is something finer,
More unfading far,
Than the primrose evening
And the silver star;
Something of the rapture
My beloved had,
When she made the morning
Radiant and glad,—
Something of her gracious
Ecstasy of mien,
That still haunts the twilight,
Loving though unseen.
When the ghostly moonlight
Walks my garden ground,
Like a leisurely patrol
On his nightly round,
These things I remember
Of the long ago,
While the slumbrous roses
Neither care nor know.
“New England June,’’ by Bliss Carman (1861-1929), Canadian-American poet
Higher-ed institutions united for conserving N.E. landscape
Map of members of Academics for Land Protection in New England (ALPINE). This is a network committed to increasing the pace of land protection in the region to address the region’s environmental challenges. It seeks to support nature and people. ALPINE aims to expand the role that academic institutions can play in conserving the New England landscape by sharing experiences and other resources among faculty and staff, students, administrators, and alumni.
But hard to get in the fog
“Maine Sunburns Feel Better’’ (mixed media on canvas), by Rick Hamilton, at Portland (Maine) Art Gallery.
Chris Powell: Panel on school financing in Conn. is rigged
MANCHESTER, Conn.
A 23-member committee appointed by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders will convene next week to start devising what the governor wants to be "a top-to-bottom overhaul of how the state funds its public schools."
Methods of school financing are always questionable as to fairness and effectiveness. But just as you shouldn't ask the barber if you need a haircut, you shouldn't ask educators how schools should be financed, for they always will want to get more money by any means, especially means that make the money harder to track, results harder to measure, and accountability harder to achieve.
Unfortunately the governor and legislative leaders have arranged for educators to dominate the committee, though reforming school finance is not a matter of educational practice at all but one of tax fairness and effectiveness.
The inclinations of 17 of the committee's 23 members can be fairly presumed.
Twelve, including the state education commissioner, are employed by school systems or other education agencies. Then there are the president of the state's largest teacher union, a state legislator who is a labor union official, and a legislator who used to be one. Another committee member leads a group that advocates more school spending. The committee's chairman, the governor's deputy chief of staff, used to be the Education Department's legal director.
Only six of the 23 committee members are from outside the education establishment and might feel free to provide analysis independent of the education establishment's desire to raise and spend more money -- not that they will.
That is, the committee is ridiculously rigged.
At least in announcing the committee appointments, the governor briefly referred to the greatest failure of public education in the state: "We need to take another look at how we're maximizing student outcomes."
Another look?
When was the last time that state government measured student performance against school spending and held anyone to account for results?
What exactly are the mechanisms of accountability in public education in Connecticut? When has anyone in authority been challenged about student performance?
Chronic absenteeism is a big problem in many school systems, but when have parents \ been held to account for it?
In fact, public education in Connecticut is built on prohibiting accountability.
That's what binding arbitration of teacher union contracts is about: hobbling public administration, making the union interest equal or superior to the public interest. Binding arbitration prevents elected school boards from running school systems on behalf of democracy even if they want to, which they seldom do.
That's what tenure for teachers is about, making it nearly impossible for schools to fire teachers for anything short of murder.
That's what the exemption of teacher evaluations from the state's open-records law is about.
That's what the minimum school budget requirement is about, making it nearly impossible for school boards to control spending even if student enrollment falls substantially.
That's what state government's refusal to require proficiency tests for student advancement from grade to grade is about. Social promotion is the ultimate prohibition of accountability in education.
Who in the education establishment wants accountability enough to undo those things? No one.
The main problem of public education in Connecticut is that it's not really public at all.
State government can tinker forever with school funding systems in pursuit of fairness. Financing schools entirely from state government, as with a statewide property tax, is an obvious option. But no tinkering with funding formulas will improve school performance, and tax fairness can be increased only by diminishing local control. Good luck with that.
One blow for fairness might be struck easily. State government could assume all costs of "special education," which would relieve poor municipalities of a hugely disproportionate tax burden, a social cost that should be borne widely. The governor recently mused aloud about this.
Indeed, it could have been done this year. But it's an election year, so the governor and legislators instead put extra money into another round of raises for teachers, euphemizing it again as "aid to local education."
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Fairey the ‘inciter’
“O.G. Rips” (silkscreen and mixed-media collage on paper), by Shepard Fairey, in his show “Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent,’’ at the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Conn., June 6-Sept. 3.
The museum explains that Mr. Fairey is “among the best known of American contemporary street artists, ranging from his early images influenced by punk rock and skate culture to more recent works focusing on social justice, environmentalism and political engagement.
“Propagandist, arch manipulator, inciter, provocateur—these are all words used to describe Shepard Fairey, whom many hail as an originator of the modern urban art scene. In 1989, as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Fairey ran a sticker art campaign called “Andre the Giant Has a Posse’’. The project evolved into his trademark Obey Giant series, artistic manifesto, and a global phenomenon.’’
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Will this be an easier Back Bay parade season?
Gay pride parade in the Back Bay.
Parades in the Back Bay often express loyalty to Boston teams.
(Slightly edited for NED) article by Jules Roscoe for The Boston Guardian
(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
Back Bay parade season used to be a resident nightmare. In summers with busy road closing events, residents and businesses have often struggled to get around, as the city provided little to no communication about how events would impact roads and parking.
But as parade season starts up this summer, neighborhood leaders say that has changed.
Since Boston’s new interim chief of streets, Nick Gove, took over operations six months ago, they say, the city has been much more communicative about how events in the neighborhood will affect the people who live and work there. The Boston Transportation Department (BTD) now posts comprehensive city-wide traffic advisories every Friday on its Web site, usually well in advance of events.
“We find it helpful that there’s a consistent process around it,” said Meg Mainzer- Cohen, the president of the Back Bay Association, which represents businesses in the neighborhood. “None of that was happening until January, when there was a new Chief of Streets. Before that, it was more episodic. It was less consistent. We would get [a notice], but it would be the day before the event. There was a real challenge with it. But it has very much improved.”
The Back Bay has already seen some events, such as the Memorial Day weekend Run to Remember in honor of first responders. Others, like the Girls on the Run Road Race and the Boston Pride for the People Parade, will be happening in the coming days.
For the pride parade on June 6, Mainzer-Cohen said that a notice was first posted to the city Web site on May 15. That let the BBA first notify its member organizations by May 18, allowing for a full three weeks of planning.
“This is the timeless absolute Back Bay story,” Mainzer-Cohen said. “The tension of street closings versus parades, versus the needs of parades, and how they benefit for fundraising, or the Boston Marathon, or the Pride Parade. These events add joy and vitality to our streets. But they do have an impact, so that’s why the notifications help. I always say, people don’t really mind so long as they know. So we think there’s overall a net positive.”
The BTD and the mayor’s press office did not respond to two requests for comment.
The Back Bay is a hugely popular location for events, with such amenities as the Commonwealth Mall and Copley Square, as well as its general historic Boston character.
“Because we are close to the Boston Common, and often the Boston Common is the start or the end of these activities, there’s a chance that we will be there a little bit more in the circuit of these activities,” said Serge Savard, the chair of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, which represents residents in the area. “But usually we manage to find ways to get them to have a minimal impact on the life of our residents.”
For example, Savard said he recently worked with organizers of a FIFA event on Newbury Street to move the start time for loud activities from 7 to 9am, so that residents would be able to sleep.
“Our residents in general are very supportive of these type of activities in the neighborhood,” Savard said. “Most of these [events] are for good causes, things that most of our residents really are taking pride in. And we’re happy to see, also, that we can have tourists and visitors that come to Boston and can enjoy the wonderful assets that we have, and to give our businesses here a chance to have good business, which is good for the neighborhood as a whole.’’
Llewellyn King: In the collision between billionaires and news coverage, the public loses
“Big Fish Eat Little Fish,” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1556)
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Trillions, as in trillions of dollars, are being bandied about in the way millions were, then billions. But take a look at 1 trillion expressed numerically: 1,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo. Awesome, isn’t it? Twelve zeros.
The national debt stands at $39 trillion and the interest on that will top $1 trillion this year.
Very soon the first trillionaire will thunder past the post, presumably Elon Musk.
I have nothing against Musk. And I have nothing against successful people being rewarded for their talent.
Musk has done enormous things. An immigrant from South Africa, he made his first fortune with PayPal. Since then, he has been important in solar-energy revolution, electric cars, and in leading development of a heavy-lift rocket that has made space exploration cheaper than when NASA alone was at the controls. His Boring Company still holds promise.
It is assumed, as so often, that because a person is good at one thing, that same person must be good at everything else. Whoa! Musk’s limits as a manager and a visionary were exposed when he barged about “streamlining” the government for President Trump.
It was a case of a bridge-too-far for Musk — a disaster for America that eroded privacy, critically wounded many departments and saved no money.
Whereas much of what Musk has achieved has been beneficial, his purchase of Twitter, rebranded to X, was evidence of the harm that is a part of gigantic wealth. He wanted to control not just the medium, but also the news.
Musk — although it isn’t good that he has taken steps to control the message with X — isn't the problem facing the media and the public’s right to know. When there is so much money floating around, news-media freedom is in trouble.
The immediate threat comes not from Musk, but from two other men of gargantuan wealth: Larry Ellison, co-founder of the tech firm Oracle Corp., whose personal net worth is estimated at $245 billion, and his son, David.
Together they are set to control the media to an extent not imagined and never seen. The media titans of yesteryear — Pulitzer, Hearst, Luce, Thompson, Sulzberger, Graham and Murdoch — are knee-high to the fearsome power that the Ellisons have, and which will more than double if (and it is more when than if) the merger of their Paramount Skydance Corp. with Warner Bros. Discovery is approved by regulators.
At present, the Ellisons control the CBS Television Network, CBS Sports, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Paramount Network, and BET. They control CBS News, and Paramount+ which has 79 million streaming subscribers.
But if the merger goes through, they will control CNN, HBO Max, and Warner Bros. Studios — a treasure trove of entertainment.
In short, they will control a huge swath of American broadcast news, information dissemination, and movie and television culture.
Their declared purpose is to incorporate more technology and more AI across their astounding current and probably future empire. That is bad for journalism and worse for movies. The invasion of the bots.
I know how media control works. I have seen it firsthand: It isn’t what is said, but what is implied or what employees feel those who own the outlet want. A casual remark can become policy; a hint of preference can become a hard rule.
If an Ellison family member were — of course, this is hypothetical — to say they hated rhubarb, you could bet the Food Network wouldn’t do a show episode on rhubarb pie making. If it were known that one of the owners of Paramount were boosters of nuclear power, movies such as The China Syndrome and Silkwood would never have been made.
In journalism, the story that isn’t covered is as important as the one that is covered. If a disease caused by a common product — asbestos is a good example — isn’t covered because the staff has heard that the media owners love that product or is invested in it, then you can bet it won’t be covered.
Consolidated corporate ownership is antithetical to free speech, creativity, and open government. No news is bad news.
News isn’t suited to the corporate world; it isn’t a fit with those whose interest is adding zeros to bottom lines. It is the pursuit by an irregular army of often eccentric individuals, who turn over stones to find out what is beneath.
Likewise, individual ownership furthers the news objective, which for me was summed up by something Dan Raviv said when he was a correspondent for CBS Radio (recently shuttered by the Ellisons), “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.” Write that in the corporate prospectus.
News organizations need to be owned by news people, such as Ted Turner, Bill Paley and, yes, even Rupert Murdoch.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
The responsible thing to do
“I’m raising my daughter to be an anarchist’’ (detail) driftwood, steel screen, oil pastel), by Leslie Wilcox, in her show “Firebrands,’’ at Boston Sculptors Gallery, through June 7.
She explains:
“The translucency of the screen emphasizes the absence of the figure with a clearly ‘implied presence’ and creates a fresh approach to weightlessness. Humor is also an integral part of this work as it expands the human form by means of exaggerated scale and subjective context. My goal with this work is to redefine the body's organic shape while maintaining an awareness of its form and volume.’’
David Boutt: Of droughts and downpours in New England and beyond
Percentage area in U.S. Drought Monitor categories since 2000.
From The Conversation, except for image above.
David Boutt is a professor of hydrogeology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He receives funding from the U.S. Geology Survey.
About two-thirds of the U.S. is in some stage of drought in late spring 2026, yet at the same time the country has been seeing more intense downpours. It might seem contradictory, but both are symptoms of rising global temperatures.
The reason has to do with the water cycle.
Water influences every aspect of our lives through a delicate cycle that transforms liquid water into vapor and back again.
As the Earth warms, more of that precipitation is arriving in intense storms that deliver more water than the landscape can handle. When storms drop a few inches of rain over a few days, the water sinks into the soil, nourishing plants and replenishing groundwater. But during heavy downpours, the rain can’t sink in fast enough, and much of the water runs off instead, often fueling flooding.
Water also evaporates faster in warmer temperatures. So, despite an increase in total annual precipitation nationally, the landscape is drying out more rapidly as temperatures rise, resulting in more severe and frequent droughts.
My colleagues and I are documenting these broad shifts and what they mean for the future of the terrestrial hydrological cycle – the water cycle on land – and the people and ecosystems that depend on it. The effects are occurring across climates around the world.
Hydrological cycle out of sync
Fundamentally, the terrestrial hydrological cycle is controlled by two things: precipitation that adds moisture to the ground and evapotranspiration, meaning water that evaporates either from the land back into the atmosphere or from plants releasing it through their leaves.
Over the long term, the total amount of precipitation that falls, minus the total evapotranspiration sending moisture back into the atmosphere, determines how much water moves through the hydrologic system. That affects stream flow, soil moisture and the amount of water sinking into the ground and recharging aquifers.
During heavy precipitation in the U.S. Northeast, water is rapidly routed through the shallow subsurface rather than reaching deeper soil and groundwater storage. Julianna C Huba, et al., 2026
When this balance shifts or becomes out of sync with its natural state, it affects how water moves through the landscape. And that directly influences where water is available and how much is there.
These shifts in precipitation are occurring alongside longer growing seasons that allow the land to accumulate more heat. As temperatures rise, drier air also pulls more water from the landscape, increasing the risk of drought.
The changing timing of precipitation can result in counterintuitive feedbacks, as recent studies in the Northeast have shown.
In one study, scientists at Harvard Forest found that more intense storms are delivering greater amounts of water at rates exceeding the soil’s capacity to retain it. For example, in 2023 they found that high-intensity events in their research area made up about 42% of the year’s total precipitation.
When more precipitation is concentrated, with long gaps between storms, the surface soils have time to drain and dry out. This has contributed to drier atmospheric conditions as less water is available to evaporate from the land.
This effect from bursts of heavy rain with dry periods in between shows up in data. My research group at UMass found in a separate study that while wet years in the Northeast are becoming more frequent, dry years are also becoming more frequent.
Data collected by scientists with Harvard Forest, near Petersham, Mass., from 1964 to 2023 shows how precipitation has been increasing, with a large percentage of it coming from downpours. Samuel Jurado and Jackie Matthes, 2025, CC BY-NC-SA
During the wettest years over the past decade, we found an accumulation of approximately 2 inches of water in the shallow ground, contributing to higher water tables, more frequent flooding and damage to infrastructure during heavy rainstorms.
Conversely, during dry periods the landscape dries out rapidly, resulting in drought advisories, fires, water restrictions and crop failures in what is normally one of the wetter regions of the U.S.
Finding solutions
Many states are now incorporating climate science into decisions about infrastructure and land use to better understand the risks ahead. Massachusetts, for example, created a climate data clearinghouse to make research and data widely available. It also invested in computer models to examine potential future scenarios of water storage on the landscape so communities and farmers can prepare.
Communities can boost their resilience to extreme storms with urban designs and construction that take flood risk into account, include careful drainage as more areas are paved and add features such as rain gardens, riverside parks and bioswales that move and hold more water where needed.
To manage dry years, communities can implement conservation measures, such as limiting outdoor watering, subsidizing low-flow toilets and showers, and using water pricing to encourage more careful use. They can also teach residents how to use less water and generally be more mindful of water use.
On a larger scale, a new study using computer models indicates that more aggressive efforts to reduce the drivers of climate change – particularly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels – can reverse the trend of extreme precipitation, eventually returning to rates seen in the 20th century.
Until that happens, however, the world will have to adapt to a changing hydrological cycle.
‘Between calm and unease’
Work by Michael McGrath in his show “Soft Signals,’’ at the Morrison Gallery, Kent, Conn., through July 12
The gallery says that Mr. McGrath’s work “explores the tension between calm and unease in everyday life, drawing on natural phenomena, personal memory, and close observation of his surroundings. It lingers in moments when the familiar begins to shift, when something subtle feels off and harder to name. Recent work reflects on living simply while sensing underlying instability, where images hold both quiet wonder and a steady, low tension.’’
‘The highest treason’
“The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.”
— Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), American author, in A Man Without a Country. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, when he was captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and then held as a prisoner-of-war in Dresden, Germany. There he survived the devastating firebombing by the British and American air forces in 1945 by hiding in an underground meat locker. His experience led to his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.
He lived for many years on Cape Cod.
Heading south against slavery
The “Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment,’’ a bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, opposite 24 Beacon St., Boston (at the edge of the Boston Common). It depicts Col. Robert Gould Shaw leading members of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry marching down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863, to depart the city to fight in the South. The memorial was unveiled on May 31, 1897 and is the first civic monument to pay homage to the heroism of African-American soldiers. “Happy” (?) Memorial Day.
Take that or a drought
“Flood St. Francisville, La.,’’ by Lois Dodd, in the show “American Conversations,’’ at the Ogunquit (Maine) Museum of American Art, in the show “American Conversations,’’ through Nov. 15.
The museum says:
“A defining feature of the exhibition is its evolving nature. Throughout its run, pairings will shift regularly—whether by substituting one work to reframe the other or by introducing entirely new conversational pairs. This approach mirrors the fluidity of conversations shaping American art and life, emphasizing that the meaning of ‘America’ is neither static nor singular.’’
‘Utilitarian cathedrals’
Mixed media on canvas by Vermont artist Dona Mara Friedman.
She says:
"Old, abandoned barns speak to me of a highly productive time in our American history. Built by hand, with wood cut from the surrounding area, they often contain individual architectural features that are prized by designers. I see them as cathedrals for utilitarian purposes – sitting in agricultural settings, they are American icons that keep my relationship with history alive.
A spiritual connection to the land began early in life, leading me to study herbalism. A desire to be closer to the earth, drove an eventual move to a rural setting over 20 years ago. My artistic vision perceives these familiar country objects and scenes around me as extraordinary, which relates to a childhood fantasy of life on a farm as preferable to growing up in suburbia. The open land, old barns, plowed fields, hay bales with mountains beyond become shapes, colors, textures, that are expressed with a contemporary sensibility. My use of mixed media, oil, acrylic, collage and wax allows for a complex textural surface with individual coloration that completes my perspective of rural settings.’’
This painting can be seen and purchased at Ellenbogen Gallery,in Manchester, Vt.
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