Vox clamantis in deserto
William Morgan: Beautiful manufactured nostalgia
Summer by the Sea: Cottages from Watch Hill to Little Compton (Monacelli, $64.95) is an absolute stunner of a coffee-table book — eye candy at its best. In highlighting 16 shingled vacation houses stretched along the Rhode Island coast, architect Thomas A. Kligerman and photographer Read McKendree have captured the essence of summer along this shore. “The combination of history, geography, and architecture captures summer redolent of a sail in a wooden catboat, lying in the dunes on July Fourth, clambakes, rose hip jam, and rainy nights around a jigsaw puzzle spread across an old card table,’’ Mr. Kligerman writes.
These seaside cottages are not the wealthy mansions we associate with Newport, but rather comfortable, putatively unpretentious (we do expect families emerging right out of a Ralph Lauren tableau)–pine not mahogany. Kligerman is “drawn to a nearly unfettered American architecture, one that developed here in Rhode Island: the shingle style. Shingle is a key element in Kligerman’s own work–he even calls a huge house in Oyster Bay, on Long Island’s Gold Coast, “Shinglish.” (Picture just below.) One contemporary house is Kligerman’s own, Nushka Koo in Weekapaug, where he nails the spirit of the shingle style without resorting to his overblown, often grotesque recreations of the work of English architects such as Edwin Lutyens, C.F.A Voysey, and John Nash.
Oyster Bay Retreat, Long Island’s Gold Coast
Is there something more in this five-pound tome than Cottage porn? Fiddler’s Green, on Block Island, is the work of Peter Bohlin, one of the most serious designers of contemporary residences that combine modernism with tradition. Also, on Block Island is Jens Risom’s 1967 A-frame; the Danish designer was a founder of Knoll, the supplier of 20th-century modernist furniture. Many of the houses here appeal because they have been unchanged, but Boothden, the actor Edwin Booth’s 1883 home–the work of Calvert Vaux, the noted American architect who was co-designer of Central Park–got a makeover by David Andreozzi, an architect whose overblown shingled houses are too often more McMansion than the modest simplicity of its supposed inspiration.
The Cottage, Saunderstown
Muscovy Ridge, Watch Hill
The luscious, evocative photographs and the cozy writing (“The compact house wraps around the old tapered tower like a honey bear hugging a tree”) are seductive. And while it is refreshing that the houses are mostly smallish and unknown, Kligerman’s paean to these Rhode Island gems seems a little disingenuous given his career designing over-the-top bloated renditions of styles from the past. So, rue as we might the decline of serious architectural history, we can enjoy the book as an exercise in manufactured nostalgia.
William Morgan, a Providence-based architectural historian, has published numerous books on the buildings and culture of New England (and elsewhere), including The Cape Cod Cottage and American Country Churches.
An ‘archeological site’
From Bette Leahy’s show “In Search of Now,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, July 2-Aug. 2
The gallery says:
“In ‘Search of Now’’ is an exhibition of colorful, textured mixed-media works on wood panel by Bette Frank Leahy. Her work explores the tension between structure and chaos, while she draws inspiration from nature and its microscopic architecture. She approaches the surface as an archeological site, where erosion, time, and chance expose partial histories. Leahy arranges layers of hand printed marks onto her surfaces that, when peeled back or sanded, reveal fragments of shape and texture. The resulting works suggest preservation and decay.’’
Chris Powell: Many ads make Conn. look terrible, but it can be beautiful
“Bridge at Old Lyme’’ (1908), by Chile Hassam, American Impressionist.
MANCHHESTER, Conn.
Trends in television and radio advertising in Connecticut give a distressing impression of the state.
No one can watch TV or listen to radio for an hour without hearing from one tax delinquency resolution agency or another. Their clients claim to have evaded huge amounts of federal taxes only to have had them largely forgiven by the Internal Revenue Service after engaging a tax relief agency. Who knew that Connecticut had so many tax cheats?
Commercials for casinos, Internet gambling, and state lottery games are just as ubiquitous. One on TV shows a pretty young woman sitting on a couch at home, mesmerized by her mobile phone, before bouncing up, running outside, and jumping exuberantly and fully clothed into a swimming pool because she just won $25,000 at an Internet casino. Maybe the casino has devised that commercial in the hope of reversing what used to be meant by "taking a bath," which is what most casino patrons usually do. Public-service commercials warning about the gambling addiction increasingly suffered by young people have little effect.
Then there are the commercials for new prescription drugs, some targeting ailments most people have never heard of, including new drugs that are said to be safe even for people also taking "mental-health medication." The mentally ill apparently are now numerous enough to be profitable to advertise to. Some of these commercials spend less time citing the new drug’s benefits than they spend hurriedly warning about its dangerous potential side-effects. By the end of the side-effects viewers may have forgotten what the drug is meant for.
Maybe most boisterous are the commercials of the personal injury law firms, including a firm that claims a national reach and boasts that it can sue anybody for anything any time and recover huge damages. Viewers might start looking forward to a collision with a tractor-trailer.
Another law firm commercial depicts insurance company executives as grizzled old grifters as if Connecticut isn’t a center of the insurance business and as if insurance isn’t a great boon, crucial to nearly every aspect of life.
Some law firms stress in their commercials that they never charge a fee in personal injury cases unless their clients win, as if this is the firm's special humane practice and hasn’t actually long been standard procedure in the personal-injury law business.
These commercials imply that Connecticut is full of people who evaded taxes but got away with it because a fixer pulled some strings; that the state is also full of casino jackpot winners, since the losers at the casinos never appear in commercials; that Connecticut residents are contracting strange new afflictions all the time on top of their longstanding psychological troubles and that the pharmaceutical industry is ready to cure them if it doesn’t kill them first; and that whatever bad stuff happens, it will be the fault of someone else, preferably someone covered by an insurance company that will be terrified by a chest-thumping personal-injury lawyer.
At least now that summer is here people can get a completely different impression of the state just by turning off the TV and radio and going outside on a warm and sunny day. At this time of year Connecticut may be the most beautiful place in the world. But hurry -- election campaigns for governor, Congress, and the General Assembly have begun and soon will be flooding the airwaves with their own hyperbolic commercials.
When their campaigns rev up state legislators will be able to boast that their main wildlife policy is working well. For the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says bears are steadily expanding their range in the state.
"Reports of home entries, livestock attacks, beehive and other agricultural damage, damage to vehicles and structures, as well as physical altercations with pets and people are following a long-term upward trend," the department says.
Yes, soon every town will have at least several bears disrupting daily life, since legislators think that’s better than having a bear-hunting season.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Will we be the next big one?
“Orthoceras,’’ photo by Patrick Sikes, in the show “Six Extinctions,’’ at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn. through Sept. 6.
The museum says:
“Six Extinctions,’’ a tour de force traveling exhibition by Gondwana Studios, tells the dramatic story of the mass extinctions that have impacted life on Earth.’’
Karen Brown: Even in Blue States, such as Mass., hospitals have continued to drop gender-affirming cares for trans youths
Trans boy at parade
Sent by Kaiser Family Foundation Health News (except for image above).
One afternoon in late 2024, a sixth-grader nicknamed Bug came home from school with an announcement to make. Bug, who was assigned female at birth, told his parents he was a boy — and would be using he/him pronouns.
“OK, cool,” his mother, J, remembered saying. (J asked to be identified by only her first initial, and Bug by his nickname, because the family fears harassment.)
“‘What do you need to be supported?’” she recalled asking next. “He asked to get health care.”
This was the kind of moment J had been anticipating since the family had moved earlier that year from Texas to Massachusetts, for its more liberal and inclusive politics. She felt confident they could find the right medical experts. But she hadn’t realized that access to gender-affirming treatment could disappear even when their state’s laws and leaders supported it.
Individual hospitals all over the U.S., in red and blue states, have responded to President Donald Trump’s attacks on transgender healthcare by deciding to withdraw care on their own. At least 20 hospitals did so in the first months of the Trump administration as it threatened to pull back federal funding or initiate fraud or wrongful-claim investigations, and such services have continued to drop off since.
Bug and his younger sister were born in Austin, Texas, but J and her husband became worried after the state outlawed abortion; dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and limited medical and civil rights for queer and transgender people. The parents worried the support services they needed for the siblings, both of whom have autism, might be affected, too.
“I had a fear of being like the frog in the boiling water and not realizing what was happening until it was too late,” J said. “I needed to get the kids out of Texas.”
So when Bug came out as trans, J was relieved they’d landed in a state that not only has a “shield” law to protect providers who offer gender-affirming care but also is among 24 states requiring commercial insurance, which Bug’s family has, to cover it.
After Bug’s gender announcement, J’s queries led her to the largest hospital system in the region, Springfield, Massachusetts-based Baystate Health, where they began the months-long process of getting set up to start hormone therapy.
Bug, an artistic 14-year-old who loves horses, cats, and making short films with friends, was too old for puberty blockers, but he was excited about the prospect of starting on testosterone. That would cause his voice to deepen, facial hair to grow, and muscles to get bigger.
“Every part of it sounds fun,” he said.
But this past February, two weeks before Bug was scheduled to start testosterone, Baystate announced it would no longer provide gender-affirming medications to minors, offering only counseling. A letter to patients’ families did not explain why.
Baystate spokesperson Heather Duggan sent a statement that said the decision to end treatment for minors reflected the fact that Baystate could lose “hundreds of millions of dollars in government reimbursement” as a result of the Trump administration’s plans. “Nearly 70 percent of Baystate Health’s patients rely on Medicaid and Medicare for coverage,” it said.
All Bug knew was that the care he’d eagerly awaited was about to vanish.
“I felt frustrated that they would do that,” Bug said.
“I bet there’s tons and tons of kids who are like: ‘OK, I’m going for trans-affirming healthcare. Yay!’” he said. “And then, like, tons and tons of kids were disappointed and sad and frustrated.
J said it felt as if the floor had fallen out from under them. “Maybe this is naive, but I didn’t think that would happen in Massachusetts,” she said.
Baystate is among the providers still choosing not to offer puberty blockers and hormones as the issue wends its way through the courts. This spring, in a lawsuit that Massachusetts joined, a federal judge concluded that it was unlawful for the Department of Health and Human Services to threaten federal funding for providers that offered gender-affirming care to minors. In June, another federal judge cleared 16 states, including Massachusetts, to move forward with another lawsuit against the administration over its push to criminalize gender-affirming care.
The American Academy of Pediatrics declined an interview request but said in a past statement that young patients and their families should make decisions about gender-affirming care with their doctors, “delivered with compassion, and offered without political interference.”
One mother of a former Baystate patient said that before her child came out as a transgender girl, she had been severely depressed, battling suicidal thoughts. (The mother asked that only her first initial, L, be used, because the family also fears harassment.)
After Baystate doctors prescribed puberty blockers and estrogen, her daughter’s mood and grades rose markedly, L said. So when she received the letter announcing Baystate was ending the medical treatment, she was furious. L said she and other parents filed civil rights complaints with the Massachusetts attorney general.
The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“There’s a sense of, ‘How could you?’” L said. “And there’s also the awareness of the impact just pulling care could have on a youth — from a physical health perspective but also from a mental health perspective.”
L and J both found alternatives for their children. L asked the family’s primary care doctor to take over hormone prescriptions. Bug’s family was referred to Transhealth, a private specialty clinic in Northampton, Massachusetts, that said it has taken on about 50 of Baystate’s former patients.
“Transhealth has been staffing ourselves up for a while now in anticipation of the fact that this may be happening across the state,” CEO Jo Erwin said.
Erwin said Transhealth can weather the funding threats because the clinic gets large private donations and is not as dependent on Medicaid and Medicare as most hospitals. But Erwin said that doesn’t entirely reassure the broader LGBTQ+ community, including transgender adults.
“When you see something like that go down, people get scared that it’s ultimately going to happen to everyone,” Erwin said.
In May, Colorado’s Supreme Court ordered a children’s hospital in that state to resume medical treatments for transgender youths, while in Texas a court settlement compelled a children’s hospital there to do the opposite — start the nation’s first “detransition clinic.” The Trump administration has continued to pressure providers, including by seeking the medical records of transgender minors.
After Bug’s false start at Baystate, he was able to start taking testosterone at the new clinic in the spring.
His mother, J, said that the treatment is going smoothly and that Bug has learned how to give himself the injections. But J is nervous that the federal government will find other ways to stop his treatment again. She sometimes second-guesses the family’s move from Texas to Massachusetts, wondering whether they should have gone to Canada instead.
Karen Brown is a reporter for New England Public Media. This article is from a partnership that includes New England Public Media, NPR, and KFF Health News.
Llewellyn King: Air-conditioning costs might threaten catastrophe
Through-the-wall air-conditioning units, at the University Motor Inn, in Philadelphia.
WEST WARWICK,R.I.
The summer of our discontent is at hand. When I asked a professional weather forecaster what we might expect this season, he said, “Hades.”
That was as disturbing as everything else in this disturbing year.
America has a summer culture. You could say the whole of the Northern Hemisphere has one but there is a special reverence, a profound intimacy that Americans have with summer. It is a happy place for healing hurts, meeting old friends, making new ones, and the extraordinary joy of just basking, even romancing.
The British usually make jokes about summer. One goes, “I missed summer. I went to a movie and when I came out, it was over.”
Clearly, they aren’t making jokes like that this summer when temperatures have set historic records, and forced people to do extreme things to cool off. Untold deaths have resulted.
The French have always had their own reverence for summer and, as a nation, down tools in August and head to the beach, often in the South.
But they, like the British, are suffering in the current heat wave because there isn’t a lot of air conditioning — almost none in homes and a limited amount in public buildings. Only one in five British homes have air conditioning. In France there is more in the south, but not in the north around Paris. It was never needed.
I have been in London when it is hot, but not as hot as it has been so far this summer. Sitting in a theater in London in summer was excruciating, made the more so because Britain is humid.
Anyone who lives in America’s coastal regions, especially the South, knows the awful combo of heat and humidity.
Deaths from heat in Europe are widespread and are still being reported.
Air conditioning has shaped America for the last seven decades. It has made living with year-round comfort possible in the South, the Southwest and the West.
If it weren’t for our ability — with enough electricity — to reverse the climate in places like Florida, Texas and Arizona, the migration from the north wouldn’t have happened. Once there was air conditioning, people felt they could live comfortably anywhere in the nation.
Even so, all isn’t well. Indeed, this may be the summer of catastrophe, and deaths from heat and uncontrolled fires. The prognosis isn’t good.
The impending social pushback was pointed up by my colleague Herman K. Trabish, writing in Utility Dive. He was attending the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in Las Vegas in early June, and wrote in a brief, “Protesters shouting affordability claims and chanting slogans interrupted a speech by NV Energy President and CEO Brandon Barkhuff.”
Trabish continued, “The confrontation shows the extent to which rising energy costs have stoked public anger, raising pressure on utilities and their regulators.”
The protests were directed at a demand charge approved by the utility commission that wouldn’t take effect until next year, but it opened up deep anxiety in southern Nevada about the cost of electricity in weather that is getting hotter and hotter.
Protest leader Leslie Vega told the media, after the protesters were escorted out of the meeting, “In Las Vegas, one of the fastest-warming cities in the country, you cannot live without electricity.”
Vega’s remarks might well reflect a truth for the whole of the South, Texas, and the Southwest. Cheap electricity has been a factor in the migration of tens of millions from the northern states to the South and West. It was never mentioned, it was just there.
Now the price of electricity is rising inexorably as temperatures appear to rise with equal, threatening vigor.
The natural response from those facing disaster in the heat zones will be to blame the electric utilities, and the ubiquitous data centers. There will be calls to nationalize the investor-owned ones, like NV Energy, and calls will go out to curb those utilities that are already publicly owned, which includes the rural electric cooperatives and those owned by towns and cities.
Additionally, residents in many states which have wildfire exposure will from time to time have their power cut off entirely for periods to reduce the danger of new fires being started by sparks from line shorting. That will cause new anger.
Most of the world accepts that aberrant weather, which is now common, is associated with global climate change, blamed in part on greenhouse-gas emissions.
That isn’t accepted by the Trump administration, which favors further use of greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. The president has said that global warming is a “hoax.”
Hot people have short tempers. They can be expected to have something to say as they suffer, and death tolls rise.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Mollusk magic
Painting by David Dunlop, in the group show “Landscapes: Intimate and Infinite,’’ at the Lily Pad East Gallery, Watch Hill, R.I.
The gallery says that David Dunlop “is a modern-day master whose luminous landscape paintings draw from both Renaissance techniques and contemporary science.”
The leading art of America is business?
From The Boston Guardian, article by Brendan Cassidy
(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
Over the last two decades Boston’s Seaport has transformed into a bustling neighborhood filled with commerce and commotion.
The neighborhood also has become a hub for arts spaces, exhibits and museums.
The latest museum coming to the Seaport is the Museum of American Finance (MAF), set to open in July.
The MAF was in Manhattan from 1989 until 2017. After a hiatus, its artifacts and exhibits will soon be back on display with no cost of admission.
Museum Deputy Director Kristin Aguilera said the museum focuses on educating people on certain aspects of finance, from the founding of the United States through the present day.
“We’re very focused on providing information and keeping people educated,” said Aguilera. “A driving factor was that we wanted it to be free.”
Aguilera said the Seaport neighborhood was an attractive location for bringing the museum back to life.
“We’re very excited about the area,” said Aguilera. “It’s really becoming a big tourist destination. We’re excited to be in a location that will attract a lot of families, tour groups and people involved with finance.”
The Seaport is also home to the Boston Children’s Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art’s Boston location, Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum and the Boston Fire Museum.
When the MAF opens to the public on Friday, July 3, there will be seven initial exhibits on display.
The seven exhibits are Personal Finance, Alexander Hamilton Experience, Investing in US Financial History, Hub of Innovation, The Future of Finance, A Financial Revolution and America in Circulation will all offer something different to attendees.
The Hub of Innovation exhibit will focus specifically on Boston. It will feature an interactive map and will allow guests to read documents and stories regarding finance around the city and state.
Aguilera said the museum should have something for everyone. For the younger audience, The Future of Finance could be a main appeal, focusing on topics like cryptocurrency.
“A lot of words people have heard recently but may not be so sure what they mean,” said Aguilera.
Other items on display will be checks signed by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting displays and original financial material from the Revolutionary War era.
Aguilera said the museum is excited to welcome in classes of students from middle and high schools around Boston. Education programs will be a priority and should help students learn more about certain aspects of finance.
The MAF will be open Wednesday through Sunday and is at 200 Seaport Blvd.
‘Creation and dissolution’
“Interface” (oil), by Elsie Kagan, in her show “the drop falls,’’ at 3S Artspace, Portsmouth, N.H., through Sept. 27.
The gallery says:
“Elsie Kagan's lush, gestural oil paintings begin with her hand but evolve through collaboration with AI. Her layered landscapes are never real places — they explore climate anxiety, cultural upheaval, and the tension between material mark-making and algorithmic processing. Water is a recurring metaphor in her work, reflecting life, reflection, and the cycles of creation and dissolution.’’
‘My little kingdom’
Famous amusement ride at Revere Beach in 1961.
“I held a memory of the old Revere beach in my mind’s eye, the Dodgems, the Wile Mouse, the Cyclone, the smell of fried dough and pepper steak, the families who used to come down here by the tens of thousands on a warm Saturday morning like this and spread out their blankets and chairs. It was my little kingdom, this three-mile stretch of sand.’’
— Roland Merullo (born 1953), American writer
James T. Brett: New England faces risk as USMCA trade pact review looms
On a bridge on the Maine and New Brunswick border crossing.
— Photo by Marty Aligata
BOSTON
In New England, our manufacturers, technology firms, financial and insurance institutions, and countless small businesses depend on trade relations and the rules that govern the free flow of goods and services in order to ensure prosperity. For our region, economic ties need to be strengthened in order to ensure continued growth across our six states. It is why it is imperative that our nation remains committed to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Prior to the USMCA being negotiated, there were few who would dispute that an update to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was needed to bring our trade relations with Canada and Mexico into the 21st Century. The USMCA has done so: The updates brought on by the treaty have provided stability to the trade relationship we have with our neighbors, which in turn supports broad-based growth among all three nations.
The importance of our region’s trade partnerships with Canada, in particular, cannot be denied. The U.S. Department of Commerce has identified Canada as a No. 1 or No. 2 export market for New England businesses, and our overall level of trade with Canada has increased since the implementation of the USMCA. Indeed, our region exported nearly $8.8 billion in goods to Canada in 2025. Data from Canada shows that in 2025, service exports from our six-state area to our northern neighbor totaled approximately $6.25 billion. Further, it is not an overstatement that, overall, hundreds of thousands of jobs in New England rely in some part on trade and investment with our USMCA partners.
From the outset of the first Trump Administration, trade leaders in the Senate, House of Representatives, and in the administration worked in good faith to make improvements as they were putting together the USMCA to ensure bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. The final product did not contain all of what business interests wanted in a trade agreement, however it reached a consensus that has allowed our economy to continue to flourish.
The USMCA has also ensured that businesses in our region have the advantage of rules-based investment and trade. The continued reliance on this level of predictability can only serve to maintain and even grow business opportunities for New England for years to come. There are also numerous benefits to be had by engaging in trade with our neighbors especially as we look to solidify supply chains among our six states at a time of unpredictability around the globe.
For New England, the choice is clear: We need the USMCA to help solidify our regional commerce and provide companies of every size the confidence to invest, hire and sell across North America. While policymakers consider the future of trade, they should listen to the businesses that depend on it every day. And as we face a July 1 deadline for the Joint Review of USMCA, strengthen it, enforce it, modernize it — but do not forgo it. Lasting benefits will continue under the auspices of the USMCA and New England’s economy will remain stronger for it.
James T. Brett is president and chief executive of The New England Council.
Where are the screams of yesteryear?
“Rooted” (photograph), by Ruth Skinner, in the group show “Curiouser and Curiouser,’’ at the Hopkinton (Mass.) Center for the Arts, through June 26.
Painful powerful pollinators
From the show “Birds, Bees, Flowers, and Trees: Images of Nature Past and Present,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., through Sept. 20.
Apiarist John L. Byard, at the Massachusetts Agriculture College’s bee-research center in 1915.
Philip K. Howard: Reclaiming ownership of America
What does America stand for? Pausing to reflect on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America’s self-conception seems to be in disarray. Americans no longer believe that the future will be brighter. Trust is near all-time lows, not only low trust of governing institutions but low trust of the moral character of other Americans.
I have a hypothesis: America is out of our control. Like a giant wind tunnel, the “system” propels us forward with little opportunity for human direction. Law is everywhere, even in ordinary daily interactions. Instead of discussing what’s right, or practical, Americans worry about legal ramifications. Billboards by lawyers promise riches in retribution for any tragedy or disappointment. Instead of upholding law as a shield for freedom, our leaders wield law as a weapon for self-interest. Of course Americans feel fear and distrust. The land of opportunity is a legal minefield.
What’s needed, I think, is to reclaim ownership for how we do things. Pull law back into a framework of outer boundaries, not as an arbiter of daily decisions. Law is not supposed to be central planning. Let principals run schools. Let officials make tradeoff judgments needed to modernize infrastructure. Let people in a free society decide for themselves what’s right and wrong, and judge and be judged accordingly. That’s what freedom is supposed to offer.
For a project on making government manageable, I’ve recently revisited some early organizational theorists. One of these, Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), is known for her insights on giving employees “authority all down the line,” so workers are free to collaborate and to adapt to “the law of the situation.”
Follett was also a prescient critic of modern democracy, which she felt was disempowering people from being able to collaborate and take ownership for local affairs. Follett saw politics as a process of manipulating “a crowd,” with little opportunity for human growth and fulfillment. Follett was a sharp critic of the conception of freedom as individual rights: “You may as well break a branch off the tree and expect it to live.”
People find meaning and growth, Follett argued, in working in groups. That’s how people learn, and develop mutual commitment and pride. Follett’s analysis aligns with the pluralistic traditions of America—where people of similar interests and backgrounds form communities with high social capital. Follett echoes Tocqueville’s description of why Americans take ownership for community activities—it’s in their “self-interest, rightly understood.”
As part of a series in The Free Press on great Americans not featured in history books, I’ve written this brief bio of Follett. I think Follett has something to say to us. The mistake we made was to delegate decisions to systems. No centralized system can make things work fairly or sensibly. No system of atomized rights can achieve fairness. Law can’t govern; law is a framework for people to govern. Law can’t decide what’s sensible and fair in daily dealings. Law can’t make us trust each other. Only people, working with other people, can develop trust and bonds needed for, you name it, good schools, energetic public agencies, moral standards, and hope for the future.
Philip K. Howard is founder and chairman of Common Good, and an author, lawyer, New York civic leader and photographer.His books include The Death of Common Sense. Common Good is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates simplifying government regulations and cutting red tape to promote personal responsibility and accountability.
Don Morrison: Learning how to father
“Paternal Advice,’’ by Josephus Laurentius Dyckmans
PITTSFIELD, Mass.
Sonora Smart Dodd was 16 years old when, in 1898, her mother died in childbirth. The baby survived, and Sonora helped her beleaguered father raise the boy and his four older brothers on a farm outside Spokane, Wash.
One Sunday morning, after sitting through a church sermon praising the new Mother’s Day celebrations popping up around the country, she decided that fathers deserved equal recognition.
Sonora began lobbying local church leaders, and on June 19, 1910 — her father’s 68th birthday — Spokane marked America’s first Father’s Day. The idea caught on, and in 1972 President Richard Nixon established the third Sunday in June as a national holiday in honor of dads.
This Sunday, once again, Americans will come together to salute their family patriarch with gifts of neckties and power tools as he grills various meat products to cinders. The day also gives us an opportunity to reflect on what fatherhood has become in this age of fractured families, shifting gender roles and proliferating views of masculinity.
Everybody has a father — present, absent or long gone — so nearly all of us can claim some familiarity with the job, regardless of how it was handled. My own dad was a man of his time. To him, a father’s main role was as family breadwinner. He focused on running his retail store while our mom raised the little ones. Eventually, the business faltered, and she began working alongside him, entrusting us kids to a shifting pageant of paid help.
That wasn’t rare in our dying little town. So I almost didn’t notice when, a few decades later, mothers began joining the U.S. workforce in record numbers as their spouses took on more child-rearing and housekeeping responsibilities.
My own wife went back to work shortly after our first son was born. She found a terrific babysitter, who remained with us for years, and I got to learn a few domestic skills.
In truth, I was never good at diaper-changing, skinned-knee disinfecting, bedtime storytelling and other elements of effective parenting, but I did find such chores surprisingly satisfying. Only later did I realize why.
Neuroscientists have found that the brains of new fathers are altered by the birth of their first child. Neuronal patterns change and dormant hormones stir. Testosterone-fueled assertiveness is crowded out by oxytocin-infused feelings of tenderness and generosity. Touching or merely being near their kids brings unaccustomed pleasure. Not for nothing did God and evolution make the little nippers so adorable.
Thus, I was not surprised when the role of paterfamilias began shifting a few decades ago from my dad’s mostly hands-off approach to a deeper male involvement in the details of child-raising.
Not every father is OK with that change. Traditionalists see the blending of parental roles as troublingly “woke,” or inefficient, or bad for children. Some husbands are uncomfortable with the idea of wives working outside the home, and some moms simply aren’t interested in doing so.
That’s fine. The world of kid-raising has room for multiple approaches, and children can thrive under a variety of family arrangements — provided these offer love, safety and stability. For a father, psychologists say, being a presence in his kids’ lives is crucial, even if he and their mom eventually split.
One of the nice things about Father’s Day is that it honors all who have taken up that responsibility. The celebration doesn’t favor some theories over others, new fathers over veterans, live-in dads over separated ones. What counts is that the guy stays in the picture.
That’s why the third Sunday of June is one of my favorite holidays. It’s an equal-opportunity, non-judgmental celebration. If you’ve fathered, you qualify.
When my first son was born, I consulted books and articles about how to raise him. Yet the recommendations seemed simplistic, sometimes confusing. So I winged it, made stuff up as I went along, even borrowed some moves from my dad — like trying to make each kid feel special. I no doubt committed a few mistakes, such as assuming their world was similar to the one in which I grew up. Still, both of my sons turned out better than fine.
I recently recalled the moment when, in the maternity ward, I gazed into the eyes of my firstborn. He seemed remarkably self-asssured. I realized that much of who he would become was already present, and that my ask was less to shape him than to support him. The best I could ever do was keep him safe and make him feel valued.
That’s not such an easy task for a stressed-out dad in a high-pressure job, and my joys were tempered with doubt and anxiety. But the years flew by, and the kids have retained their self-assurance. They are now raising their own cubs.
I resist giving advice. Though staying engaged is important, fatherhood is ultimately a journey each man must navigate for himself. He may falter, but he plods on.
As Sonora Smart Dodd understood more than a century ago, being a dad is one of the most demanding, most rewarding jobs in the world. Sure was for me and, I hope, fellow dads everywhere. Happy Father’s Day to us all.
Don Morrison is a veteran international editor, writer and lecturer. He’s also co-chairman of The Berkshire Eagle editorial advisory board.
Don’t tread on it
‘‘Still Life With Eel’’ (oil on canvas), by Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), in the show “Looking for America,’’ at the Ogunquit (Maine) Museum of American Art, through July 19.
The Ogunquit River exits the Rachel Carson Preserve on the left and flows into the Gulf of Maine.
Chris Powell: Conn. anti-ICE law is a fraud; so is ‘believe all women’
Fuzzy federal photo of masked ICE agents seizing an alleged illegal alien in Connecticut.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
The most recent politically correct charade of Connecticut's nullifiers -- including Gov. Ned Lamont, Atty. Gen. William Tong, and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly -- has been quickly exposed. It's the new state law, enacted with the governor's signature a month ago, purporting to prohibit federal immigration agents from wearing masks while on duty in the state. It's a fraud.
News organizations have reported video recordings of masked immigration agents being challenged about the law by bystanders in Hartford and Danbury, with the agents telling the bystanders, in effect, to drop dead. One agent replies: "Who's going to arrest me?" Another says: "We're federal. We're over state. Go back to social studies."
The Trump administration is suing in federal court for an injunction against the new law and in the meantime the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is openly defying it.
Despite supporting the legislation, Governor Lamont has not ordered the state police to try enforcing it. Chest-thumpers among the nullifiers, like state Attorney General Tong, are nowhere to be seen amid the defiance. If the nullifiers really thought that the law was legitimate, they'd be demonstrating a little physical courage on its behalf or at least be erecting barricades to keep immigration agents out of Connecticut.
So was the law just a scheme to please the far-lefties who control Connecticut's Democratic Party and keep them riled up in an election year? That's one of many fair political questions about illegal immigration that won't be answered because it won't be asked.
Of course, this doesn't mean that federal agents shouldn't be unmasked and identified by name and badge number whenever they make arrests, just as state and municipal police officers are. That is basic accountability and public safety. You're entitled to resist arrest if you don't know who is arresting you. But this is for Congress and the president to legislate. Democrats in Connecticut won't comply voluntarily with the Constitution's supremacy clause until their party regains power in Washington.
* * *
Two years ago many Democrats purported to be unable to understand how some sane, decent, and politically moderate people could support Donald Trump for president over the incumbent, Joe Biden, and then, when Biden's senility exploded on national television and he was compelled to withdraw, how they would not support his cackling airhead of a vice president, Kamala Harris. After all, many of those sane, decent, and politically moderate people have acknowledged Trump's repulsiveness.
Maybe the U.S. Senate campaign in Maine will help those Democrats understand.
For the party in Maine has just nominated a faux populist, Graham Platner, who had himself tattooed with a Nazi SS death's head, who purported not to know what it stood for, who has called himself a communist, and who has abused a number of women. So what used to be the party of "believe all women" has just discovered an exception. Women now may be disbelieved or disrespected if believing or respecting them might cost the party control of the Senate.
This is fair enough if one thinks, as was thought by some of those sane, decent, and moderate people who reluctantly voted for Trump two years ago, that certain policy issues -- such as illegal immigration, late-term abortion, and the erasure of gender differences in restrooms, sports, and prisons -- outweigh a candidate's character defects. Two years ago many of those sane, decent, and moderate people thought that stopping illegal immigration, late-term abortion, and erasure of gender differences in law and policy were more important than preventing Trump's return to the White House. They thought awful Trump was right on the biggest issues.
Now, with Platner's candidacy, many Democrats think that continuing to facilitate illegal immigration, late-term abortion, and erasure of gender differences in law and policy is more important than keeping a proto-Nazi, Communist, and abuser of women out of the Senate -- as long as he will vote with Democrats to organize the chamber and help thwart Trump.
Fair enough as well. Clarity often results when the jackboot is put on the other foot.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Llewellyn King: The new ‘news’ media: A pea of news in a mattress of Words
— Photo by Pmau
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Journalism is choking on the low-hanging fruit.
Every day hundreds of newsletters and podcasts flood inboxes. These are almost entirely concerned with political goings-on in Washington.
But this isn’t to say that journalism is alive and well. In fact, this is a symptom of journalism’s straitened times.
Mostly, there is just a pea of news in a mattress of words.
The web has made the delivery of journalism cheap and easy, but it hasn’t helped with the high cost of covering the news, of sending reporters to see what is happening in the courts, the state houses, and overseas; or in science and technology, which so affect modern life.
It also hasn’t enabled news organizations to spend months on an investigation that may or may not pay off.
Instead, every minuscule development in politics is treated as a big, breaking event, and is analyzed exhaustively.
Analysis is substituting for reporting. The actual snippet of reporting is often attributed to a newspaper like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, or one of the news services, say, Reuters.
Analyzing nothing much doesn’t change it to something.
Much of what is rushed out as news wouldn’t get past an old-fashioned editor like Jim Michaels of Forbes, who I am told, in that magazine’s print heyday would chide reporters, saying, “You’re telling me things I already know.”
The ease of distribution and recording has also caused blogs with attendant webinars to sprout across the news ecosystem. Much of it is in the form of analysis, more and more analysis of less and less.
The big new entry in my inbox is magazines which were once monthly or weekly, but have joined the frenzy with daily newsletters. These include The Economist, The New Yorker, The Spectator, The Atlantic and even Vanity Fair.
I subscribed because they were weekly or monthly. I didn’t want a daily gusher.
There is also a plethora of digital-only publications — the best in my inbox is ProPublica, which manages original reporting.
The big ones which are, almost, substitute newspapers but are heavy on political coverage include Politico (which is broader) and Semafor. A new entry, NOTUS, is staffed by former Washington Post reporters. So far, it is heavily political.
I remember when people bought the Post for the Style section and its other goodies, not just its hometown industry of politics.
A further indication of the news drought, despite the torrents of words, is how many of the new dailies are quoting what was said on television. Time was when no print outlet would deign to do that. It was expected for television to pick up from the newspapers, not the other way round.
There was a reason behind the old pecking order: Broadcasting needs to have people say things in front of a camera or a microphone. By contrast, print’s best stories come from sources who are keen not to be identified, let alone go on television or radio.
In today’s vengeful times, unidentified sources are essential, to be used sparingly, but nonetheless essential. The reader has to depend on the high standing of the platform and the integrity of the byline to judge the truthfulness.
There is no doubt that the tumultuous politics that began when Donald Trump entered the arena have been good for cable news stations, which have morphed into political channels, shamelessly partisan. The politics have also been good for newsletters and blogs.
But will that be true after the Trump era? The strictly conservative New York Sun reports traffic to MAGA websites is down dramatically.
To escape the virtual political overload, I reach for the three heavyweights among newspapers: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and, though diminished, The Washington Post.
What the bulk of the press, from weeklies to big city papers to the new digital entrants, need is a sound source of income so that they have the money to do the job, to weed out local scandal, corruption and abuse, and to develop entertaining writers.
You get what you pay for and in the news business, since it lost its advertising revenue to the likes of Google, you are getting political froth: opinions about the news — most days the same opinion with shadings of difference from many publishers.
Yesterday, I counted 19 of these offerings in my inbox. I gave up on the breathlessness and read a book.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com , and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Delving into distance
Joint show entitled “Unsettled,’’ by Emily Hass and John Winship, at\the Corey Daniels Gallery, Wells, Maine, through July 18.
The gallery explains:
“Hass uses found objects as an anchor for her shapeshifting geometric forms. They live on old paper, tide-washed wood, tin cans, and sailcloth. Hass’ deep interest in displacement is a throughline in this grouping of new and familiar work, including selections from her ‘Exiles’ and ‘Water Shapes’ series.
“The subjects of Winship’s paintings are derived from found snapshots. He renders enigmatic figures in thick atmospheres of acrylic paint, leaving a borrowed sense of nostalgia and a slight uneasiness.
“Leaning into the unsettled nature of our current world and the infinite transience of time, Hass and Winship bring us an opportunity for closer examination of both psychological and physical distance.’’