Vox clamantis in deserto
Despite this N.E. winter
In recent decades, the number of warm temperature records in March has outpaced cold temperature records over a growing portion of Earth's surface.
Sweet sign of season
“Sugaring Off,’’ painting by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka Grandma Moses)(1860-1961), at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum. With global warming, maple-syrup production has tended to come earlier in recent decades, but it might be a tad late this year as this very cold winter eases.
Chris Powell: Can Connecticut Democrats rise above identity politics?
Still “Unum”?
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Why are some people Democrats and others Republicans?
Personal identities have always had something to do with it. Some people inherit party affiliations from parents. Many Democrats come from the working and government classes. Many Republicans come from the propertied and professional classes.
Ethnicity often has had something to do with it as well.
Many Irish immigrants to Connecticut became Democrats because Republicans were in charge when the Irish arrived and were often hostile to newcomers. The next wave of immigrants, the Italians, found themselves in a rivalry with the Irish and so many became Republicans.
Upon their liberation after the Civil War, Blacks became Republicans because Democrats were aligned with the former Slave States. Blacks began migrating to the Democrats in the 1960s, when Republicans took them for granted and Democratic leaders became more aggressive about civil rights and racial equality.
Political culture is involved as well. The anti-Vietnam War movement originated as a largely youthful rebellion in the Democratic Party during a Democratic presidency, and within a few years the party had become not just anti-Vietnam War but also the party of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and perpetual protest. President Richard Nixon exploited the resulting fear of civil disorder and had the Republican Party pose as the representative of the "silent majority," the cultural establishment.
Political correctness is based to a great extent on identity politics, the assignment of the electorate to interest groups based not on public policy but on mere personal characteristics. Democrats see identity politics as a recruiting tool, though it may alienate as many people as it attracts.
Identity politics was the object of an appeal made this week by the vice chairwoman of Connecticut's Democratic State Central Committee, Vanita Bhalla, who urged people to join one of the state party’s "caucuses."
"Our caucuses," Bhalla wrote, "are where Democrats come together around shared experiences, organize, and make sure our party reflects the full diversity of Connecticut. They help shape policy conversations, strengthen relationships across communities, and bring new voices into our work at every level. Joining a caucus is a great way to meet like-minded people."
But the 10 Democratic caucuses Bhalla identified actually proclaim insularity and conformity, implying that members of each group think the same and want something for themselves as a special interest rather than something benefiting the public generally. The special interests the Democrats imagine cultivating with caucuses actually may be hard to figure out.
As policy matters, the LGBTQ+ Caucus may want state government to support the claim of transgender people to a right to participate in sports contrary to their biological sex, and to support sex-change surgery for minors. The Women’s Caucus, at least a caucus of Democratic women, may want state law to tolerate late-term abortion. The Black and Hispanic caucuses may want more state financial aid to the municipalities where most Blacks and Hispanics live.
But what do the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Caucus, the Disability Caucus, the Immigrant Voters Caucus, the Muslim Caucus, the Small Towns Caucus, and the Veterans Caucus want in public policy that differs from what most other people, or at least most other Democrats, want for everyone?
Do these caucuses ever go beyond the personal-identity interest and approach the national or state interest -- the public interest? Indeed, as these caucuses suggest, is it really possible to approach the public interest only after people are sorted into identity groups? If caucuses are necessary -- and local Democratic town committees insufficient as forums -- why not organize them according to policy issues instead?
Organizing people by identity groups risks stereotyping and caricaturing people -- the opposite of the "diversity" the caucuses are supposed to reflect. But then "diversity" isn't really the objective. Getting votes is, whatever the cost.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Oona Zenda: Watch the clock on Prior Medical Authorizations
Lunenburg Center in 1910.
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News,except for pictures above.
“Why do I need a prior authorization for something that I am already prior-authorized to take? If my doctor says that they want me on a medication, why does my insurance have another say in that?”
— Jaclyn Mayo, Lunenburg, Mass.
Jaclyn Mayo has multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that damages the nervous system and can mess with coordination and balance. To get steadier on her feet, Mayo had been trying to lose weight: A lighter body puts less stress on the joints and leads to greater flexibility.“It was really helping me,” she said. “I could go up and down stairs and not feel like I was going to fall.”
As a happy bonus, the GLP-1 seemed to ease other MS symptoms for Mayo: She started sleeping through the night, and the frequent numbness in her hands went away.
After being on Zepbound for seven months, she fell into an insurance pitfall: prior authorization.
In August, her pharmacy wouldn’t refill her prescription, and it wasn’t clear why.
She called her pharmacist, then her doctor’s office, the pharmacist again, then her insurance company. After speaking with the insurance company’s pharmacy benefit manager — a third-party company that oversees prescription drug plans for insurers — Mayo figured out that the advance approval her insurer had granted for the drug, known as prior authorization, had expired.
Insurers require prior authorizations for certain treatments or tests, especially costly ones. When they do, your doctor has to make the preauthorization request to your insurance company, explaining why you need the treatment. Next, the insurer decides if it agrees that the care is medically necessary and if it will pay for it.
Mayo had been taking the weight-loss medicine for less than a year and didn’t understand why a new prior authorization was needed so soon. She said she never got a letter or email notifying her that the clock had run out on her first prior authorization. As someone with a chronic illness, Mayo said, she keeps close track of her medical paperwork. She feels like she did everything right, which, she said, made the situation especially infuriating.
Her doctor submitted the necessary paperwork then found out the new approval would take seven to 10 business days.
At this point, Mayo had been off her medication for two weeks. Her sleep was getting worse, and the tingling numbness in her hands returned. So she asked that her prior authorization be expedited, only to learn that her doctor, not Mayo, would need to make the request for an urgent review.
“That red tape was completely avoidable,” she said. “And all that they needed to do was communicate clearly to me. And then I could have continued my medication without delays. But they didn’t.”
Why Insurers Want Prior Authorization
Doctors are often frustrated by the prior authorization process, but insurers argue it helps keep costs down.
AHIP, the insurer trade group formerly known as America’s Health Insurance Plans, declined an interview request. But in an emailed statement, it said that prior authorizations are an important safeguard that helps ensure patients receive safe, evidence-based care and keeps coverage affordable.
In a 2024 letter, the American Medical Association, which represents physicians, said the way health plans use prior authorizations is “opaque and overly complex,” creating delays in care and greater administrative burden.
Patients are also frustrated. A recent poll found that 1 in 3 insured adults call prior authorizations a “major burden” to accessing health care.
Mayo hit preauthorization hurdles likely because her physician prescribed a GLP-1, an expensive class of medication. The more costly the treatment, the greater the scrutiny, said Miranda Yaver of the University of Pittsburgh, who studies health politics and administrative burdens within the insurance system.
Issues with prior authorizations are common. Policymakers could standardize how insurance companies evaluate prior authorization requests to prevent more Americans from experiencing medical disruptions, Yaver said.
“It’s a solvable problem, if we have the will and the political conditions are ripe. I don’t think that they are at this particular moment,” she said.
Here’s what to know about getting prior authorization requests approved in a timely manner.
1. Find Out When Your Prior Authorization Expires
Individual insurance companies, and even the individual plans within those companies, often have different policies for prior authorizations.
“As you can imagine, that becomes an absolute nightmare,” said physician David Aizuss, chairman of the AMA’s board of trustees.
While expensive treatments are more likely to be targeted for prior authorization review, Aizuss said it also happens for low-cost generic drugs.
To figure out how long your prior authorization lasts, reach out to customer service at your insurance company or pharmacy benefit manager, whichever handles your plan’s prior authorizations.
2. Don’t Procrastinate
Getting a prior authorization isn’t always quick, so build in time for things to go wrong.
It took Mayo nearly three weeks to sort out the prior authorization issue for her GLP-1 prescription. She made the initial refill request about a week before her medication was set to run out and ended up without the drug for over two weeks.
3. Ask Your Doctor To Request an Expedited Review
As you wait for your prior authorization to go through, your doctor might not know how much medication you have left, or that your health may be declining. You can have your doctor request an expedited review. Though, as Mayo found, insurance companies and PBMs won’t always volunteer that as an option.
When an expedited review is appropriate is up for interpretation, said Kaye Pestaina, director of the Program on Patient and Consumer Protections at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
“No one knows the specifics of what urgent means,” she said.
Federal regulations require that urgent requests made by people with employer-based plans be decided within 72 hours. And, on Jan. 1, a federal rule took effect that creates a similar requirement for all Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program plans. However, this rule doesn’t apply to medications.
4. Consider Other Treatment Options
When Mayo’s doctor first suggested that she try a GLP-1, approval for the specific medication was taking a long time. When it became clear the request would probably be denied, the doctor canceled that initial request and put in a prior authorization request for a different brand of GLP-1, Zepbound. It was approved.
Ask your doctor about treatment alternatives. Health plans have different formularies — lists of medicines that are routinely approved. It might be easier to switch medications than to fight to get your health plan to approve coverage.
But be aware that your insurance company might change your health plan’s drug formulary anytime and require you to get a new prior authorization.
5. Don’t Be Afraid To Appeal
Submit an appeal, even if you’re worried you’ll lose. Yaver said that, based on the research set to be published in her book, Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States, people who appeal a prior authorization or claims denial win about half the time.
First figure out where to send your appeal. Usually, it’s an insurance company, but if the treatment you need is medication, it may be a PBM.
Include detailed records in your appeal.
If you’re trying to get approval for a specific medication, Yaver said, send documentation showing that you tried other medications or treatments that didn’t work. This helps make your case and can speed up the process.
“I actually just went through a prior authorization for my migraine drug,” Yaver said. “It actually went through very quickly.”
Oona Zenda (ozenda@kff.org) reports for Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
Gay Pride in color
“Being Seen: Celebrating SouthCoast Pride,’’ at the Marion (Mass.) Art Center, through March 13.
The show is being presented in collaboration with DATMA, a New Bedford-based organization that presents "impactful contemporary art at the intersection of design, art, and technology." The gallery show inside the Marion Art Center "provides deeper significance to the public art component" of the project through what the art center calls "a community salon-style art installation of LGBTQ+ artists from a Call-For-Art organized by SouthCoast artist Kate Frazer Rego, accompanied by a history of the Pride Movement, with a focus on the legacy of local figures."
Gaming higher education
Screen fun at UMass Lowell
Edited from an article by The New England Council
“The University of Massachusetts ay Lowell has opened Rowdy’s Esports Arena, a 2,500-square-foot, $4.5 million gaming facility inside the University Crossing student center, marking a significant investment in the fast-growing esports industry. The arena features 50 PC stations — including 12 varsity-level systems equipped with the latest Nvidia graphics cards — along with console gaming stations, a lounge, a live-broadcast room, and a dedicated team room for video review.
“The three-year project was developed under the direction of Adam Dunbar, UMass Lowell’s director of student center and gaming operations, in partnership with JCJ Architecture, Vantage Builders, and IT sponsor CDW-G. With more than 500 students already part of a dedicated esports campus community, the university is in the early stages of developing a varsity esports program. The move comes as the esports industry is projected to reach $5 billion in 2026, with more than 300 varsity-level programs now sanctioned across North America.
“‘This is a place for students to engage and build community,’ said UMass Lowell Chancellor Julie Chen, who cut the ribbon at the arena’s dedication ceremony in late January, noting that student input was central to shaping the project.’’
Look out Below!
Killingly Pond
Excerpted and edited from an article by Dan D’Ambrosio, in ecoRI News
KILLINGLY, Conn. – Six years ago, Justen and Kellie Fisher bought a property in need of attention on Old Killingly Pond, which straddles the border of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and began rebuilding their dream house on the Connecticut side of the pond. About four months ago, the pond began to disappear on them.
“It’s dropped at least 12 feet,” Justen Fisher said. “It’s bad. It looks extremely different. You can probably assume the cause of concern for us. It’s literally our back yard.”
Although the Fishers didn’t know it at the time, their pond was disappearing because the dam that forms it began showing signs it could fail. That triggered an emergency action that opened the lower outlet of the dam to bring the water level down and relieve the pressure on the dam.
Rockwellian Review
“The Craftsman” 1963, (oil on canvas), by Norman Rockwell, in the show “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,’’ June 20-Oct. 25, at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vt.
— Photo by Andy Duback
All that Jazz
From Carl Ristaino’s show “Inspirational Jam,’’ at Umbrella Arts Center, Concord, Mass., through March 29.,
The gallery says:
“In ‘Inspirational Jam,’ Carl Ristaino captures the kinetic energy and soulful spontaneity of jazz music and culture through bold acrylic paintings that pulse with rhythm and life. His canvases become stages where musicians lean into their instruments, vocalists throw their heads back in ecstatic song, and the audience communes over the pleasure of spontaneous creativity.’’
But on Mark Twain’s favorite city?
The Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford.
— Photo by Daderot
“I don’t want anything bad to happen in the United States but if North Korea ever drops a nuclear bomb in this country, I swear to God I hope it lands in Hartford.’’
Dave Chappelle (born 1973) comedian, in 2013, after being heckled in Hartford
Switching to regionally based energy looking better than ever
Balcony solar panels
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Anything that New Englanders can do to achieve more regional energy independence would be most appreciated! As I have written, one such way is to promote use of those small “plug-in’’ solar-energy devices in rapidly growing use elsewhere, notably on European balconies. The units range from 200 to 1,200 watts.
Unfortunately, such solar is not yet widely legalized or standardized in Rhode Island, though there’s been legislation this year to do so, which would involve adjusting to utility codes and local regulations. Rhode Island does have a streamlined permitting process for larger, mounted systems for roofs and yards. Small-scale solar is in a legal gray area in Massachusetts, too.
Stop sending so much of our energy dollars to Pennsylvania and points southwest for polluting and Earth-cooking fossil-fuel companies! Let’s cut our electricity costs and reduce the stress on the regional grid – especially in cold waves and heat waves. Oh yes, and revive nuclear energy. With ever more efficient solar and wind power, and rapidly improving battery storage, the urgency to move from dirty and expensive fuel is ever more obvious.
And those New Englanders who havw lost power in this week’s historic southern New England blizzard might consider how much better off they’d be if their dwellings had solar power today,
Let the big melt set them free
“Abundant” (oil on canvas), by Davis Lloyd Brown, in his show “Paintings and Drawings from the Primordial Soup Series,’’ in The Gallery at the First Church Boston Unitarian Universalist.
He says:
“I was channeling Picasso, and Klimt came out,” in his drawings and large-scale paintings using templates inspired by timeless images, symbols and patterns.
Nir Eisikovits/Jacob Burley: What’s the purpose of Universities in the world of AI?
Open AI logo.
The old-fashioned place to write exam answers.
BOSTON
From The Conversation, except for images above.
Nir Eisikovits is a professor of philosophy, and director of the Applied Ethics Center of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where Jacob Burley is a research fellow.
Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it?
These concerns are understandable. But focusing so much on cheating misses the larger transformation already underway, one that extends far beyond student misconduct and even the classroom.
Universities are adopting AI across many areas of institutional life. Some uses are largely invisible, such as systems that help allocate resources, flag “at-risk” students, optimize course scheduling or automate routine administrative decisions. Other uses are more noticeable. Students use AI tools to summarize and study, instructors use them to build assignments and syllabuses and researchers use them to write code, scan literature and compress hours of tedious work into minutes.
People may use AI to cheat or skip out on work assignments. But the many uses of AI in higher education, and the changes they portend, beg a much deeper question: As machines become more capable of doing the labor of research and learning, what happens to higher education? What purpose does the university serve?
Over the past eight years, we’ve been studying the moral implications of pervasive engagement with AI as part of a joint research project between the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In a recent white paper, we argue that as AI systems become more autonomous, the ethical stakes of AI use in higher ed rise, as do its potential consequences.
As these technologies become better at producing knowledge work – designing classes, writing papers, suggesting experiments and summarizing difficult texts – they don’t just make universities more productive. They risk hollowing out the ecosystem of learning and mentorship upon which these institutions are built, and on which they depend.
Nonautonomous AI
Consider three kinds of AI systems and their respective impacts on university life:
AI-powered software is already being used throughout higher education in admissions review, purchasing, academic advising and institutional risk assessment. These are considered “nonautonomous” systems because they automate tasks, but a person is “in the loop” and using these systems as tools.
These technologies can pose a risk to students’ privacy and data security. They also can be biased. And they often lack sufficient transparency to determine the sources of these problems. Who has access to student data? How are “risk scores” generated? How do we prevent systems from reproducing inequities or treating certain students as problems to be managed?
These questions are serious, but they are not conceptually new, at least within the field of computer science. Universities typically have compliance offices, institutional review boards and governance mechanisms that are designed to help address or mitigate these risks, even if they sometimes fall short of these objectives.
Hybrid AI
Hybrid systems encompass a range of tools, including AI-assisted tutoring chatbots, personalized feedback tools and automated writing support. They often rely on generative AI technologies, especially large language models. While human users set the overall goals, the intermediate steps the system takes to meet them are often not specified.
Hybrid systems are increasingly shaping day-to-day academic work. Students use them as writing companions, tutors, brainstorming partners and on-demand explainers. Faculty use them to generate rubrics, draft lectures and design syllabuses. Researchers use them to summarize papers, comment on drafts, design experiments and generate code.
This is where the “cheating” conversation belongs. With students and faculty alike increasingly leaning on technology for help, it is reasonable to wonder what kinds of learning might get lost along the way. But hybrid systems also raise more complex ethical questions.
If students rely on generative AI to produce work for their classes, and feedback is also generated by AI, how does that affect the relationship between student and professor? Eric Lee for The Washington Post via Getty Images
One has to do with transparency. AI chatbots offer natural-language interfaces that make it hard to tell when you’re interacting with a human and when you’re interacting with an automated agent. That can be alienating and distracting for those who interact with them. A student reviewing material for a test should be able to tell if they are talking with their teaching assistant or with a robot. A student reading feedback on a term paper needs to know whether it was written by their instructor. Anything less than complete transparency in such cases will be alienating to everyone involved and will shift the focus of academic interactions from learning to the means or the technology of learning. University of Pittsburgh researchers have shown that these dynamics bring forth feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and distrust for students. These are problematic outcomes.
A second ethical question relates to accountability and intellectual credit. If an instructor uses AI to draft an assignment and a student uses AI to draft a response, who is doing the evaluating, and what exactly is being evaluated? If feedback is partly machine-generated, who is responsible when it misleads, discourages or embeds hidden assumptions? And when AI contributes substantially to research synthesis or writing, universities will need clearer norms around authorship and responsibility – not only for students, but also for faculty.
Finally, there is the critical question of cognitive offloading. AI can reduce drudgery, and that’s not inherently bad. But it can also shift users away from the parts of learning that build competence, such as generating ideas, struggling through confusion, revising a clumsy draft and learning to spot one’s own mistakes.
Autonomous agents
The most consequential changes may come with systems that look less like assistants and more like agents. While truly autonomous technologies remain aspirational, the dream of a researcher “in a box” – an agentic AI system that can perform studies on its own – is becoming increasingly realistic.
Growing sophistication and autonomy of technology systems means that scientific research can increasingly be automated, potentially leaving people with fewer opportunities to gain skills practicing research methods. NurPhoto/Getty Images
Agentic tools are anticipated to “free up time” for work that focuses on more human capacities like empathy and problem-solving. In teaching, this may mean that faculty may still teach in the headline sense, but more of the day-to-day labor of instruction can be handed off to systems optimized for efficiency and scale. Similarly, in research, the trajectory points toward systems that can increasingly automate the research cycle. In some domains, that already looks like robotic laboratories that run continuously, automate large portions of experimentation and even select new tests based on prior results.
At first glance, this may sound like a welcome boost to productivity. But universities are not information factories; they are systems of practice. They rely on a pipeline of graduate students and early-career academics who learn to teach and research by participating in that same work. If autonomous agents absorb more of the “routine” responsibilities that historically served as on-ramps into academic life, the university may keep producing courses and publications while quietly thinning the opportunity structures that sustain expertise over time.
The same dynamic applies to undergraduates, albeit in a different register. When AI systems can supply explanations, drafts, solutions and study plans on demand, the temptation is to offload the most challenging parts of learning. To the industry that is pushing AI into universities, it may seem as if this type of work is “inefficient” and that students will be better off letting a machine handle it. But it is the very nature of that struggle that builds durable understanding. Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the greatest risk posed by automation in higher education is not simply the replacement of particular tasks by machines, but the erosion of the broader ecosystem of practice that has long sustained teaching, research and learning.
An uncomfortable inflection point
So what purpose do universities serve in a world in which knowledge work is increasingly automated?
One possible answer treats the university primarily as an engine for producing credentials and knowledge. There, the core question is output: Are students graduating with degrees? Are papers and discoveries being generated? If autonomous systems can deliver those outputs more efficiently, then the institution has every reason to adopt them.
But another answer treats the university as something more than an output machine, acknowledging that the value of higher education lies partly in the ecosystem itself. This model assigns intrinsic value to the pipeline of opportunities through which novices become experts, the mentorship structures through which judgment and responsibility are cultivated, and the educational design that encourages productive struggle rather than optimizing it away. Here, what matters is not only whether knowledge and degrees are produced, but how they are produced and what kinds of people, capacities and communities are formed in the process. In this version, the university is meant to serve as no less than an ecosystem that reliably forms human expertise and judgment.
In a world where knowledge work itself is increasingly automated, we think that universities must ask what higher education owes its students, its early-career scholars and the society it serves. The answers will determine not only how AI is adopted, but also what the modern university becomes.
The romance of Lowell
Seal of the City of Lowell, one of the first great textile-manufacturing towns in America.
Pawtucket Canal at Central Street looking west, in Lowell. The 19th Century textile mills have been converted to other uses, if not torn down,
-Photo by John Phelan
“A golden Byzantine dome rises from the roofs along the canal, a Gothic copy of Chartres arises from the slums of Moody Street, little children speak French, Greek, Polish, and even Portuguese on their way to school. And I have a recurrent dream of simply walking around the deserted twilight streets of Lowell in the mist, eager to turn every known and fabled corner…it always makes me happy when I wake up.’’
— Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), American novelist and poet and Lowell native
Beauty and work
“Snowbound,’’ by N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), a famed painter and illustrator who grew up on a farm in Needham, Mass.
Drawing Presidential lines
“George Washington’’ (1968) and “Abraham Lincoln”(1968), (both ink on paper), in the show “Oscar Berger Presidential Portraits”, at the New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, through Aug. 30.
The museum says:
“Internationally acclaimed as ‘the greatest caricaturist of world celebrities,’ Oscar Berger (1901–1997) depicted the ‘Who’s Who” of world history throughout his career.
“Born in 1901 in Czechoslovakia, Berger became a cartoonist in Prague, before moving to New York, where his work appeared in leading publications, including The New York Times, Life, and the New York Herald Tribune. Following in the tradition of other notable caricaturists, such as Thomas Nast (1840–1902) and Georges Goursat (1863–1934), Berger aimed to capture the likeness and character of his models and to distill and exaggerate their ‘essence.’
“In 1968, Berger embarked on an ambitious project to depict our nation’s presidents, from Washington to Nixon. His presidential caricatures are distinct in style and technique, however, in that they are each made with one continuous line. As Berger himself explained, ‘through the bearded and the cleanjowled, the somber and the sly, the able and the not-so-able; the line flows along, endlessly witnessing the persistence of the American consensus.’ For Berger, an imaginary line connected each drawing, encompassing all of the presidents and symbolically representing the continuous history of American leadership. Saturated with wisdom and wit, Berger’s portraits aim to entertain while also conjuring the personalities and legacies of the American presidents.’’
Dump snow on Boston Sidewalks? Sure
In Boston’s Back Bay.
From The Boston Guardian. This article, slightly edited for New England Diary, is by Daniel Larlham Jr.
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s publisher/editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
There are only so many places for the accumulated snow to go as Boston waits for it to melt away, Back Bay resident Martyn Roetter was quite perturbed to hear from a neighbor in the early morning of Feb. 13 that snow-removal contractors were clearing the snow from the bike lane and onto the sidewalk in front of their Beacon Street building.
Cyclists have recently expressed frustration over the lack of clear bike lanes across the city, with some going as far as clearing the lanes themselves.
But Roetter, who recently stepped down as chair of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay and remains a member, says he was surprised to hear from his neighbor of 20 years that snow was being moved into the already cleared sidewalk path.
When asked by the neighbor, Roetter alleges, the workers claimed that they were contracted by the city. The neighbor was able to convince the crew to re-clear the snow from the sidewalk paths.
“Why would you clear snow from the bike lanes, which are hardly used at all of course at this time of year and certainly not under the snowy conditions that still prevail, why would you take snow from that and dump it from sidewalks which had been cleared?” Roetter added.
Later in the day Roetter took stock of several Beacon Street blocks from Clarendon Street onwards and noted that the bike lane had been cleared as well, with the snow moved to the sidewalk snowbanks, and not the paths.
“I think it’s important that we provide residents with the most professional snow-removal process as we can to ensure residents are safe crossing our streets and walking our sidewalks, especially persons with disabilities, our seniors and young children going to school,” said City Councilor Ed Flynn, who represents part of the Back Bay. “It’s about public safety. It’s about quality of life for all of residents.”
Flynn added that so far this year, the rank-and-file public-works team did the best job that they could at snow removal under difficult circumstances.
“However, I don’t believe the mayor’s office and the city council provided the critical support to effectively remove the snow. Leadership is about accepting responsibility, and that responsibility rests squarely with the mayor and the city council.”
Others have been quite pleased with the city’s snow-removal efforts this year (at least before the Feb. 22-23 storm), Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, said that this year’s plowing and continued snow removal have been superior.
“What we saw in the Back Bay, sort of the business portion of Back Bay, was the prioritizing of and the full clearing of travel lanes.
The way we saw that function, was there was capacity for vehicles to be able to function in the Back Bay in a way that was far superior, than say, the last few years.”
Mainzer-Cohen explained that as a kind of step one in the snow-removal process. The next was to triage and remove some of the large and problematic snow piles that accumulated.
On Berkely Street, Mainzer-Cohen said that there had been signs posted less than a week after the original plowing notifying of additional snow removal. Later, the snow in the bike lanes had been removed.
She added that if any snow had been spillover into the already clear sidewalks paths, it was likely done by mistake.
“The snow is going somewhere, and there can be inadvertent placement of snow in a place that had been shoveled. Really, the whole goal is to hit all these marks.”
The mayor’s press office did not respond to requests for comments by deadline on whether bike-lane clearing was a current priority for the administration or if contractors had been instructed to clear snow onto the sidewalks.
Daniel Larlham Jr. reports for The Boston Guardian.
In Bristol, artists from around America reflect on the nation’s 250th anniversary
The Bristol (R.I.) Art Museum presents a national exhibition titled “When in the Course of Human Events,’’ Feb. 22-April 10, featuring works by 65 artists from across America marking the 250th anniversary of the United States,.
— Work by Nancy Whitcomb
The museum says:
”This exhibition invites artists to reflect on what follows the iconic opening line of the Declaration of Independence, exploring what it means to experience human events in our contemporary world.’’
“The exhibition was juried by Meredith Stern, a printmaker, publisher and socially engaged artist. Her work has been featured in large-scale installations nationally and internationally, and is included in the collections of the Library of Congress, RISD Museum, MoMA, and the Obama Presidential Museum.’’
Nancy Whitcomb writes of her work above:
“My piece, ‘The Spirit of ‘76’ (detail here) is made from the cover and ripped out pages of an old American history book. Old pages were turned into shapes and covered with blue and red encaustic paint. This is my shrine to the democracy we are losing.’’
A dream of the woods
“WABANAVIA’’ (digital film), by Jason Brown, at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine.
In the dreamscape video Wabanavia, Brown, with Maine Wabanaki and Swedish backgrounds, serves as the lead protagonist who explores familiar yet fantastical environs that draw upon his personal heritage, traditional Wabanaki greeting songs, Scandinavian musical notes and Norse mythology.
Chris Powell: The $45 million Randy Cox case displays Contradiction of Two political Principles in Connecticut
MANCHESTER, Conn.
While there was plenty of negligence in the case of Randy Cox, the man who was paralyzed after his arrest by New Haven police in 2022, the court decision concluding the case's criminal aspects suggests that the negligence really wasn't that of the officers it was blamed on.
Cox had gotten drunk and was holding a bottle of liquor and brandishing a gun he carried illegally as he walked past a street fair, scaring people, one of whom called the cops. They arrested him and put him into a van for transport to the police station. Inside the van he resisted arrest, yelled, kicked, and rolled on the floor before sitting on the van's bench. But the bench had no seatbelts and when the driver stopped hard to avoid a collision, Cox slid head-first to the wall at the front of the passenger compartment, breaking his neck.
Rather than wait for an ambulance, the officer driving the van continued to the station, where other officers didn't believe Cox's protests that he couldn't move. They figured he was just drunk and faking injury, so they manhandled him into a wheelchair and then into a cell before medical help arrived.
Since Cox is Black, New Haven and then the country were filled with shrieks of racism as his catastrophic injury became clear, though most of the officers who handled him after his arrest were also members of minority groups. Mayor Justin Elicker, who is white and whose city is two-thirds minority, was quickly intimidated out of treating the situation honestly. Scapegoats were needed to calm the political controversy.
Fortunately for the mayor, five officers were soon charged criminally. Two pleaded guilty in plea bargains -- one of them was fired and lost her appeal for reinstatement and the other retired. The remaining three insisted on innocence and this month were more or less vindicated. Superior Court Judge David Zagaja granted them "accelerated rehabilitation," a probation that dismisses charges, ruling that the officers had not meant to hurt Cox and had not caused his catastrophic injury.
Impartial observers could have seen as much long before now. The city's responsibility for Cox's injury was entirely a matter of the failure to install seatbelts in the prisoner transport van, a failure dating back many years, a failure for which New Haven and its insurance company have paid Cox and his racism-contriving "civil-rights" lawyer $45 million, which, it is hoped, will cover the lifetime care Cox is likely to need.
While politically correct Connecticut may not be able to acknowledge it, the heavier responsibility here falls on Cox himself. Getting drunk in public is never a good idea. Getting drunk, carrying a gun illegally, and brandishing it at a street fair, scaring people and compelling police to arrest you, is a worse idea.
Of course no one is paying more for his mistake than Cox himself, but if he had been white and a member of the National Rifle Association, he might not have been forgiven as quickly he was, with the criminal charges against him dropped because of his injury and the mayor, still playing politics, treating him as an innocent who was persecuted by the police.
As for the three officers who now have beaten the criminal charges against them, all were fired but one regained his job through an appeal and the two others continue their appeals.
Mayor Elicker says he disagrees with the judge's decision to dismiss the charges against the three officers, so presumably he will continue to oppose reinstating the two still appealing. But a fairer resolution would be a settlement reinstating them with less than full back pay in recognition that for three years they have suffered far out of proportion to whatever they did wrong.
All this leaves political liberalism in Connecticut to sort out the wonderful contradiction of its two silliest principles: that minorities are always right, and so are members of government-employee unions.
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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
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