Vox clamantis in deserto
Llewellyn King: Electronics is robbing Us of much Human contact
1897 photo
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
You don’t have to be sitting by yourself on an island to be lonely. Loneliness is everywhere.
Studies from universities, governments and public health groups find that the world is in the grip of a loneliness pandemic. More than half the U.S. population is said to be suffering from loneliness. It is classified globally as a mental health problem.
Paradoxically, the studies place most of the blame on our interconnected society and social media: If we communicate electronically, we isolate ourselves. The COVID-19 pandemic also increased our social isolation, and working from home accelerated the trend.
I would suggest that we have been drifting toward loneliness for a long time. Years ago, I wrote about what I called the “box culture.”
In the box culture, people live in a box (apartment), ride down in a box (elevator), get into a box with wheels (car), drive to a stack of boxes (building), ride up in a box (elevator), enter another box (office), and stare into a box (computer).
That, I believe, led to greater isolation. No common dwelling; no common transportation, like a bus or train; and little common work habitat.
The phrase “my space” began to be part of the conversational language. A social networking service named Myspace was launched in 2003.
Email and texting gave isolation a boost even before COVID-19 gave it a massive steroid shot. Now we might be inhabiting “my isolated space.”
Adding to this world of paradox is perhaps the biggest paradox of all — the death of the telephone for the purpose it was invented: talking.
Not only has the telephone declined to near-oblivion as a way of talking to others, but it has also become something of a burden. I find that when I suggest a telephone call, the recipients want to set a time.
When did setting times for calls creep into our lives? It wrings the pleasure out of the telephone, which was always a spontaneous instrument.
When Irving Berlin wrote the song “All Alone by the Telephone” in 1924, he didn’t envisage that people would make appointments to talk.
We have robbed ourselves of the glorious spontaneity, or heartbreak, of the telephone. I have always thought of it as the instrument that can transmute life’s leaden metal into gold unexpectedly, as Omar Khayyam wrote, or as a ray of sunshine you didn’t expect to break through the fog, as Noel Coward wrote. Even just the laughter of an old friend can break out the sunlight on a dismal day.
I can’t catch the laughter in a text. Email is fine for a joke, but it fails where the telephone succeeds: catching the sublimity of laughter, the warmth of love.
Another source of isolation has been the conversion from shopping — the operative part of that word is “shop” — to online buying, a different experience. Or rather, another way of removing the warmth of human interchange from the transaction.
If you are among the legions of the lonely, I would like to suggest, aside from the highly recommended places people meet, like volunteering at a charity or an amateur theater group, going to a pub or to church, do something radical: Speak to a stranger.
My wife and I became friends with two people and their families because I spoke to a stranger in a hotel in Washington, and we spoke to one at a concert in Rhode Island.
We have friends who met while standing in line at an ATM and married not long after. Weight Watchers, when they held meetings, was recommended among the cognoscenti as a place to meet people.
These suggestions may sound trivial, but they are the commerce of life, some of which we have shelved in favor of electronic communications.
In particular, I feel for those who are shut-in by disease and suffer terrible loneliness. They are the loneliest of the lonely.
For many years, I have written and broadcast about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. It is a terrible disease whose victims have no energy, get no refreshment from sleep, and suffer a plethora of pain, usually for life.
Electronics may have robbed us of much human contact and caused a pandemic of loneliness, but not for those sentenced to loneliness by disease.
On X: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant.
Branching out
“Bifurcated Tree” (oil), probably in north-central Massachusetts, by Gamaliel Waldo Berman (1852-1937).
Contradiction in terms?
Then Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announcing a Save America's Treasures historic-preservation grant for the Old North Church, in Boston, 2003
“Being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention.’’
— Mitt Romney (born 1947), the Bay State’s Republican governor in 2003-2007. By current MAGA standards, he’s a liberal. A fiscal conservative and a businessman, he’s also a father of Massachusetts’s near-universal health-insurance system, a model for the Affordable Care Act.
‘Time, space and Energy’
“The Red Piece” (cut, carved, bent painted wood), by Mario Kon, in his show “visions on wood, at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through March 29.
He says:
“I have an affinity for the visual tension that transforms space geometrically. I draw lines, curves and shapes to divide the flat plane in order to create movement and depth. Negative and positive spaces are held together by the way light touches the surfaces, achieving balance between opposing forces.
“I work on wood because of its organic qualities, and approach my work with a spontaneous yet focused curiosity about the mysteries held on the surface as well as deep within. Drawing, painting and sculpture, are some of the techniques I use as the tools for navigation during the process of creation. Much of my work seeks to express the interaction of time, space and energy as it exists in the universe.’’
Halle Parker: in R.I. and elsewhere, federal cutbacks threaten anti-lead programs
Lead paint flaking off porch.
Via Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
Tighter regulations and an influx of federal money in recent years have helped communities across the U.S. initiate efforts to clean up lead contamination in soil, drinking water, and older homes. But Congress and the Trump administration have partially rolled back those rules and resources, potentially making it more challenging for cash-strapped cities and towns to undertake sweeping lead remediation programs.
That’s the case in New Orleans, where an investigation by Verite News found high lead levels in about half of the playgrounds on city property and found detectable levels of the toxic metal in most homes that tested their drinking water in a voluntary program.
No level of lead exposure is safe, according to federal environmental officials, but undertaking a comprehensive cleanup can be financially prohibitive. New Orleans is facing a $220 million budget deficit that has led to city employee furloughs and layoffs.
Congress allocated $15 billion over five years to lead pipe replacement under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a Biden-era measure set to expire at the end of this year. In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency also tightened the standards for lead-contaminated soil for the first time in 30 years and mandated that water systems replace all lead service lines by late 2037.
But a spending package passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in January redirected $125 million of that lead remediation money to wildfire prevention. And since October, the EPA has partially rolled back protections against soil contamination, raising the federal hazard level in urban areas and the threshold for removing contaminated soil.
Tom Neltner, the national director of the nonprofit advocacy group Unleaded Kids, said it was the first time an administration had loosened the limits on lead in soil.
“ We’ve seen the Trump administration say positive things about its commitment to lead but then take actions that undermine that,” Neltner said.
But, he added, progress is still being made in some communities.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the changes made under the Trump administration have reduced confusion and uncertainty that could hamper cleanup efforts.
“The Trump EPA’s record on protecting Americans — especially American children — from lead is unmatched,” Hirsch said in an emailed statement. “In just the last year, the Trump EPA backed up its commitment to reducing lead exposure in children with BILLIONS of dollars and historic action.”
She cited a November EPA announcement of $3 billion available to pay for water pipe replacement. That money is from the 2021 infrastructure law passed during the Biden administration.
Verite News spoke with people in Michigan, Indiana, and Rhode Island to learn how they addressed their lead pollution, with the aim of finding options that could be applied in New Orleans and other cities.
“ We don’t need to do research on lead anymore,” said Tulane University professor Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist who researches the toxic metal and its sources. “What we need are policies to get the lead out of the environment.”
Benton Harbor, Michigan: Lead Pipes Begone
Benton Harbor, a predominantly Black beach town of about 9,000 people on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan, spent three years out of compliance with federal drinking water standards. The concentration of lead in the water remained dangerously high until residents and organizations petitioned the EPA in 2021, drawing responses from state and federal officials.
“Nobody should be drinking lead in their water for this long,” said Elin Betanzo, an engineer who provided the petitioning residents with technical support.
That year, federal officials issued an enforcement order for the Michigan city to bring its water supply into compliance, and the state required Benton Harbor to replace all its lead pipes within 18 months. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, committed to securing funding in the state budget for the $35 million effort, which included bottled water distribution and paying outstanding water bills for low-income residents. The state, alongside the city, allocated money from its general fund, secured regional water loans, and cobbled together grants from several federal programs to cover the total.
By the end of 2023, city officials had completed the project. Now it’s one of 21 municipalities in Michigan that have replaced all their lead pipes. Benton Harbor had more than 4,500 pipes to replace.
The Trump administration has said it would defend the Biden-era mandate for lead-pipe replacement by 2037 against a lawsuit challenging it.
Betanzo recommended that utilities in other cities reduce barriers to line replacement to increase efficiency, as Benton Harbor’s water system did.
City officials saved time after assuming most pipes would be lead. They decided to go street by street, digging up, inspecting, and replacing nearly every pipe. If the pipe wasn’t lead, it wasn’t replaced, but nearly all were, Betanzo said.
Concentrating the mass replacement in one zone at a time made the contracts more cost-effective, Betanzo added. Contractors bid on zones in the city, and multiple contractors worked in different neighborhoods simultaneously. For transparency, progress was published on a public database.
The city also passed a law requiring lead lines be replaced, including those on customers’ side of the water meter. All residents had to allow the contractors onto their property or face disconnection. The residents didn’t pay for the line replacements.
“ The health benefits of lead service line replacement are greatest the sooner you get it done,” Betanzo noted, referencing a 2023 study she co-authored. “If you do it wrong, you can absolutely increase exposure to lead through a lead service line replacement.”
Completion of full pipe replacement is rare in the U.S., because of the cost, poor service line tracking, the time it takes, and the prioritization of other issues. In New Orleans, the process could require up to $1 billion of investment over 10 years, according to the city’s Sewerage and Water Board.
Adrienne Katner, an associate professor at the LSU Health School of Public Health, demonstrates how to sample water for lead testing in New Orleans in February.(Christiana Botic/Verite News and CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Indianapolis: Safe Dirt for Kids
It’s not just lead pipes that are problematic. In 2024, a study published in the academic journal GeoHealth estimated that nearly a quarter of homes in the U.S. have unsafe levels of lead in the soil on their properties.
To that end, Indianapolis has taken some actions that other cities can learn from, said Gabriel Filippelli, a professor at the Indiana University-Indianapolis School of Science who led the study and has researched the risk of lead exposure through soil for years.
The Indy Parks & Recreation department partnered with Filippelli’s team to test a dozen parks relatively close to the contaminated site of a shuttered lead smelter.
Out of all the parks tested, Filippelli’s team found only one hot spot, beneath an old bench from which lead-based paint had flaked off into the surrounding soil.
The parks department followed Filippelli’s suggestion to replace the bench and add concrete and a thick layer of mulch and plants on the ground, so kids wouldn’t be able to play directly in the contaminated dirt.
“It was a relatively low-cost intervention,” he said, estimating it cost a few thousand dollars. The ground wasn’t excavated, and new dirt wasn’t brought in. “If you deal with it by dilution and by capping, remove the source, you’re solving the problem for today and probably many, many years to come.”
The contaminated dirt may need to be removed in some cases and replaced with clean soil, such as after severe, widespread pollution from industrial sources. But Filippelli said such extensive remediation can be impractical and too expensive for cities to undertake on their own.
Where full remediation is cost-prohibitive, Filippelli said, there are more creative solutions, like landscaping, covering the area with new dirt, or mulching. These methods won’t eliminate the lead entirely, but they will significantly reduce exposure risk.
“You can eliminate the hazard at a fraction of the cost,” he said.
Cities could also look to New York City’s free Clean Soil Bank program, which places uncontaminated soil left over from construction projects in neighborhood-level banks for volunteers to distribute, he said.
Rhode Island: Stopping Lead at the Source
New England, home to some of the nation’s oldest homes, has led the U.S. in mitigating one of the largest ongoing sources of lead contamination: paint.
In 2023, the state legislature in Rhode Island, where most of the homes were built before lead paint was banned in 1978, passed a package of laws strengthening the state’s ability to enforce tenant protections.
Prior to 2023, the state had long required most landlords to have their property inspected to ensure it met “lead safe” guidelines, said DeeAnn Guo, a community organizer for the Childhood Lead Action Project. Although no level of lead is considered safe, replacing windows and doors that have lead paint, painting over all interior and exterior walls, and mitigating contaminated soil significantly reduce the risk of exposure.
But for years “there was no incentive to do it,” Guo said, “aside from it being the right thing to do.”
Now, landlords can be fined if they don’t have an active lead certificate on file for homes built before 1978, and the property has to be inspected every two years to remain in compliance. Before the new law, less than 15% of rentals were certified. In late 2025, that had increased to 40%, Guo said.
The state has also seen a steady decline in the levels of lead found in children’s blood.
Guo said it helps that the state has federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to subsidize its LeadSafe housing program. If a homeowner or landlord owns an old house, they can apply for the state to send an inspector. If lead is found, the state will then send a certified contractor to address the problem at little to no cost to the property owner.
Rhode Island prioritizes low-income households and homes with pregnant women or children under 6 years old, because of the heightened health risk. It can also help pay to remediate homes if a child living there has elevated levels of lead in their blood.
States and communities looking to start a successful lead paint abatement program using HUD money should combine strong enforcement, public education, and offers of subsidies, Guo said. It also helps to include community members in the planning process, she said.
Under the Trump administration, however, it might become harder for more communities like New Orleans to receive money for a “lead safe” program. Last year, HUD asked Congress to eliminate new funding for its lead hazards program, stating it would be restored in 2027. But advocates for more lead protections argue that once funding is lost, it is unlikely to be approved again.
“It shows the White House’s hypocrisy, where they talk about lead as being important and then propose eliminating the funds that are essential to cleaning up affordable housing,” said Neltner, the Unleaded Kids director. “This administration talks about the importance of children and then seems to be careless about children’s brains.”
This article was produced in collaboration with Verite News. The four-month investigation was supported by a Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting grant funded by the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute. It was also produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship fund and Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism.
Halle Parker is a reporter for Verite News: hparker@veritenews.org
No, it’s not Irish
New England boiled dinner with cabbage, potato, white turnip, rutabaga, carrot, onion and parsnip
Boston Guardian article, slightly edited here, by Mannie Lewis
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
Corned beef and cabbage is a popular meal on St. Patrick’s Day, but it did not originate in Ireland.
It was not until around a million Irish fled their homeland for America during the Great Famine of the 1840s that the cheap cut of meat was integrated into the new immigrants’ diet, according to Sean Grant, former executive director of The Irish Cultural Centre of New England.
The traditional Irish boiled dinner consists of pork, known as “back bacon” or “rashers,” potatoes and cabbage, carrots or parsnips.
However, pork and lamb, other prominent meats on the island, were often hard or impossible for the impoverished working people of Ireland to afford, so they usually ate only vegetables and starches, Grant said.
When the new immigrants arrived in America, they found that corned beef, an inexpensive meat that was easily acquired, could be boiled with potatoes and cabbage, and provided a cheap source of protein that could not be found in Ireland, Grant said.
The famine began when a potato disease known as “late blight” infected and destroyed vast amounts of the country’s potato crop, a staple nourishment for the nation’s small-farmer class.
The population of Ireland was depleted by 20 to 25 percent during the Great Famine, when starvation and disease caused people to drop dead on the sides of roads and sparked a mass exodus from the nation.
Traditional Irish fare was not the only thing altered by Irish emigration, Grant said.
“St. Patrick’s Day historically has been totally different in Ireland,” Grant said. “It was a religious day. You went to Mass, you went for a meal, and that was it.”
Former Mayor Raymond Flynn, who grew up and still lives in South Boston, echoed Grant’s statements. “You wouldn’t see a single person in Dublin with a beer or other drink in their hands,” because of the reverence for the religious holiday, said Flynn.
Bottoms up
16th Century tankard
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –
When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!
By Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), of Amherst, Mass.
Tiny us
“Freedom Seeker” (photo)by Austin Bryant, in his show “Where They Still Remain,’’ at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, Mass., through March 15.
William morgan: When the names of Railroads Really meant something
A framed initial stock offering of a mid-19 Century Maine railroad is for sale for $70 in a New Bedford antiques shop.
.
Chartered in 1845, the Bangor & Kennebec Railroad was capitalized at $1 million, with 10,000 shares valued at $100 a piece. The attached coupons allowed an investor to recoup $30, plus interest, twice a year at the railroad’s head office, in Bangor. Two coupons were redeemed from this certificate.
Typical of many railroads in America of the time, the Penobscot & Kennebec had a very short route of just 55 miles, connecting the mill town of Waterville on the Kennebec with Bangor, at the head of Penobscot Bay. Although the distance was short, the passenger and freight line was crucial to connecting eastern Maine timber and agricultural products to Portland, much faster and more dependably than by water. In 1862, the Penobscot & Kennebec was amalgamated with the Androscoggin & Kennebec, along with the Bangor & Piscataquis, into the Central Maine Railroad in 1862.
Along with the long-gone days of wood-burning locomotives, and handsome stock certificates that were works of art, the Penobscot & Kennebec recalls when railroads (and steamship lines and manufacturing companies) proclaimed their businesses with names that were both descriptive and romantic. Remember the major railroads, such as the Pennsylvania, the New York, New Haven & Hartford, and the Chesapeake & Ohio? Their history has been tarnished by forcing bland monikers on them–Conrail, Amtrak, and CSX. An anodyne corporate, computer-generated label is no match for the mantle of two mighty Maine rivers redolent of our Native American heritage.
William Morgan, a Providence-based writer, including of many books, went to camp in Maine in 1955, taking the Boston & Maine from North Station to Gardiner on the Kennebec River.
Don Morrison: Go trademark yourself!
Registered trademark symbol.
Say what you want about Donald Trump -- I certainly do -- he is not shy about putting his name out there.
That moniker, of course, is emblazoned not only on the hotels, office buildings and golf courses he has built as a property developer, but also on what marketers call “line extensions” -- golf clubs, sneakers, steaks, vodka, wine and a Trump quilted vest “for her” ($375 at trump.store.com). More than any of his predecessors, out current president is a genius at what marketers call “branding.”
Nonetheless, eyebrows were raised recently when the Trump Organization announced it had trademarked his name for use on airports. The news came as Florida’s Republican-dominated House passed a bill, now before the Senate, to put that name on Palm Beach International Airport (PBI).
And why not? The guy has a big house called Mar-a-Lago just minutes from the terminal. In addition, he spends time at another one in Washington, D.C., where he also wants to Trump-stamp nearby Dulles International Airport (IAD), currently named after a 1950s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles.
Trump’s company also said it had trademarked his name for use on such airport feet of accessories as luggage, animal carriers and, oddly, “shoes to protect airline passengers during airport security screenings.” Trademarking would, apparently, let the President collect a fee every time his name is slapped on an airport, or when a Trump-branded item is sold, whether though his website or in a concourse giftshop.
The president’s legal strategy is clearly tied to his ego-boosting quest to put his name on everything from the Kennedy Center to childrens’ savings accounts. But it got me thinking: If he can do it, why can’t I? After all, college athletes in 2021 won the right to monetize their “name, image and likeness” (NIL) and have since made fortunes through endorsements and other deals. I’m no athlete, but I do write the occasional article. So why not try some potentially lucrative line extensions, such as song lyrics or greeting cards or fortune-cookie messages?
I contacted the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A nice lady there said I could indeed trademark my name and told me to visit the agency’s website, uspto.gov, for details. There I found a primer on how, for a $350 fee, I could obtain that potentially lucrative protected status.
The first step was to check the site’s searchable database to see who else was using my surname. Back came several hundred Morrisons offering everything from “cafeteria services” to “a brush for cleaning between toes.” I narrowed the search to those toiling in the creative arts and found a mere 108 of my namesakes. Prominent among them is Van Morrison, the Irish singer-songwriter who has been knocking out Top 40 hits since the 1960s (“Wild Night,” “Brown-eyed Girl”). He had trademarked his first, middle and last names for music-making and related activities.
So, I went to the website’s start-your-application page. There, I made a stunning discovery: I am already protected. Turns out, everything we write (or paint or compose) and make for public consumption (e.g., on a page or a canvas) is automatically protected by a form of trademark called a copyright. I had somehow eclipsed Trump -- at least in our mutual line of work, since I write all my own stuff and he usually doesn’t.
Now I radiate a new confidence. It’s unlikely someone would use my name or replicate my distinctive style and grace, of course, but if anyone even tried... well, I’d sue their socks off and retire rich as a toe-brush tycoon. Our wealth-respecting President would be pleased.
This new armor made me wonder about a related problem that affects us all. If the words I crank out are protected, how about the numbers and other attributes that I —and you -- produce as we move through the world? Internet platforms shamelessly sell our “data” (names, email addresses, spending habits) for use by third parties to target us for their pitches and wares. I’m no lawyer, but if we generate such data for all to see, aren’t we entitled to copyright protection? And shouldn’t we get a cut of the take?
I raised this point with another nice lady at the Patent and Trademark Office, who referred me to the website. It seems to be mute on the subject, though I haven’t lost hope. Instead, I dig through the site and other legal sources for guidance on how to press my case. No breakthroughs yet, but I march on.
I also thank Donald Trump for helping me realize that the law is the law, and that something so seemingly ludicrous as trademarking one’s name for use on airport-screening shoes should be taken seriously. Say what you want about our president, he occasionally gets something right.
Don Morrison is a columnist, author, lecturer and co-chairman of the advisory board at The Berkshire Eagle, in Pittsfield, Mass.
UNH’s new ocean-Mapping Center to open next year
UNH ocean-mapping center
Edited from a New England Council report:
“The University of New Hampshire has broken ground on a new 70,500-square-foot facility at UNH’s flagship campus, in Durham, that will house the Center of Excellence for Operational Ocean and Great Lakes Mapping. Funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the state-of-the-art research, office, and instructional space in Durham is expected to open in fall 2027.
“The facility builds on a longstanding partnership between UNH and NOAA, dating back to 1999, that has made the university a global leader in ocean floor and coastal mapping. Since its inception, the center has mapped more than one million square kilometers of ocean floor, discovered shipwrecks, and pioneered the use of autonomous vehicles for ocean data collection. The new building will include high-bay areas for staging equipment and small vessels, as well as dedicated space for industry partners to co-locate — with the number of companies co-locating at UNH growing by more than 400 percent since 2022.
“‘This new building will provide an advanced facility for our world-renowned Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping and expand UNH’s decades-long leadership in hydrographic excellence,’ said UNH President Elizabeth Chilton.”
And consider our own ‘Fantastical narratives’?
“Piri the Dreamer and Flying Coyote in the Garden (at Night)” (flashe on canvas), by Josias Figueirido, in his show “Horizons of Rest,’’ at the Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine in Bangor, through May 2.
The museum says:
He depicts “whimsical environments with colorful, stylized trees and flora that serve as backdrops for his eccentric, cartoon-like subjects: Piri the Dreamer and his companion Flying Coyote, as well as other hybrid creatures. The exhibition brings together an assortment of recently completed large-scale paintings along with a series of small canvases. Through the artist’s quirky settings and characters, we are invited to contemplate our own fantastical narratives and meaning. Figueirido’s work with animation and digital technology offers an additional experiential opportunity for visitors. Using augmented reality viewed through a cell phone, the artist’s vibrant and playful subjects come alive to inhabit the physical space. Depending on how the viewer navigates the gallery, hybrid beasts can be seen flying about, while fictional botanicals appear in three dimensions.’’
Fatal embrace?
“Museum of Natural History” (archival pigment in cotton vellum, silver leaf on reverse), by Peter Sandbach, at Glimpse Gallery, Concord, N.H.
Gerald FitzGerald: our ‘last, best Ride’
A “HoJo’s” restaurant, with its emblematic red roof and steeple.
We sat on counter stools for 23 hours at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Pennsylvania trying to hitchhike to New York City on a turnpike shut down by a blizzard. There were four of us. It was early February, 1966, and things were not looking good.
I'm unsure why my big brother, Chip, and his girlfriend, Ellen, had thumbed out to Cleveland from New York City for a turnaround weekend to begin with, since they each had regular jobs. Paul Burke and I had just flunked out of our Ohio college, John Carroll University. Perhaps they came to empathize or, probably, to help out. Now we were broke, stranded, and had most of 500 miles left to cover.
Like Paul, I had spent my last three bucks on dinner, but it came with bottomless coffee until the waitress on our fourth shift in ripped off the sign taped to the mirror, tore it in half and dropped it into the trash. For a few hours Chip and Ellen had tried to catch shuteye lying down in a small booth. Half the battle was holding onto our individual real estate in the crowded restaurant. No vehicles had moved for many hours other than to pull into the HoJo’s lot and park in the snow.
There had been no more of those for the longest time. I remember questioning a waitress on how she and the rest of the staff managed to get to work since the thruway was closed. She told me that there were cleared local roads behind the restaurant. I started thinking how I might use that fact possibly to change our intended route home but hadn't thought long before something else changed.
Even getting up off your stool to use the bathroom required care. Someone had to watch the seat to enforce its “taken” status. Just getting up to mosey across the restaurant to look out a window at the snowbound highway might be interpreted as surrender by any of numerous standees. But I thought that I had spied some sort of vehicle barreling through the white drifts of the eastbound lanes. That required inspection.
Sure enough! A truck flashing lights and pushing a plow was braving the blizzard. Not only that, but spaced carefully behind that plow were two black, shiny sedans making beautiful headway.
They all pulled into the HoJo’s. I don't think that the plow driver ever got out of his truck but two guys in rumpled raincoats stepped from one sedan and headed toward the restaurant's vestibule. I signaled a suggestion to Paul that we cover the entrance.
Of course, you're going to hit up a potential ride on their way out, not on their way in. You don't know whether people are staying or going. These two men stalked straight past us and the food cashier on toward the back of the building. Then they did the strangest thing: They checked out the ladies room. One went inside while the other stayed out in the hall. Ditto to the gents. After that they stalked right past us without a word back out into the snow. They looked so unfriendly that we said nothing at all. Surely, they were packing. We figured them for mobsters or bodyguards or both. Nothing that helped us.
When they reached the sedans the doors of one opened simultaneously and out stepped a strikingly attractive young couple, one from each side. The raincoats positioned themselves front and back, as if surrounding the young man and woman who were clearly high-end. Dressed in casual, crisp ski wear the young man was ramrod straight and his dark-haired, similarly attired, companion looked downright elegant. We let them pass smoothly. They headed to the rest rooms.
Chip and Ellen were closer to us now. I gestured for Ellen to come stand next to Paul. Then, stepping away with Chip to make the exit less crowded, I turned to Paul and said:
“When they head out you do the talking.”
“Me? Why?” Burke replied.
“Because you were raised in Greenwich.”
I must have dropped my eyes for a bit because I didn't see anyone in the group stop at the cash register to order food or drink. Still, the mobsters and their elegant couple sailed past smiling Ellen and polite Paul, who asked if they might have a little extra room in their two cars and plow truck. The silent, raven-haired Luci Baines Johnson, youngest daughter of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, stepped into the snowy parking lot licking an ice cream cone. The young man with her was John Patrick Nugent, whom she married later that year.
The celebrity travelers gave us nothing, of course, unless perhaps indirectly. Once they moved out it seemed like everybody started dribbling back to their vehicles. I've no idea whether the turnpike was officially opened around the time that the president's daughter and companions left or whether people just started realizing that if the celebrities could move on down the road so could regular folk.
The first free ride went to Chip and Ellen in the quickly warm cab of a big tractor-trailer. Much later Ellen told me that she had been nervous about the driver because he had a generous supply of uppers. While his passengers declined his offer, the driver regularly shoveled handsfull of pills into his mouth with, or without, coffee. Still, she calmed down after a while when she got to stretch out in the sleeper berth.
Paul and I, too, snagged a big rig about which I recall nothing at all except that it carried us into Jersey. I guess we got dropped off somewhere near Newark and were trying to get to Hoboken for the Hudson Tubes, the under-the-river subway to Manhattan. Talk about hope and trust, between us we had no money at all.
I would give a lot to have been bright enough even to ask the first name of the guy who gave us what Paul many years later described as our “last, best ride,” or even to remember the make and model of his car. He was maybe mid-30's and driving an old coupe, black or gray two-door, with a snow shovel lying across the the back seat. We each tossed a bag on top of the shovel.
The car had the kind of front seat where each side bent forward to allow passengers into the back. We joined the driver sitting three abreast up front. He told us that he had worked construction through some kind of shape-up but that “the Puerto Ricans” would work for lower wages and between that and the weather – but mostly the Puerto Ricans -- his construction hires dried up. He was pretty hot about it. The driver smoked Camel cigarettes (Paul's brand). The driver said that he was listening to the local radio that morning and learned that there was some kind of line-up in an hour or so to shovel snow for the City of Hoboken. That's where he was headed. This must've been early Monday morning, but I remember it was daylight.
Not only did that generous young man give Paul and me more smokes, when we pulled up at the Tubes station he gave us the remaining pack. Then he asked if we had the fares. It was pretty obvious that we did not. The driver dug deep and pulled from his pocket four quarters, giving each of us fifty cents to go with the cigarettes. I wanted to hug the guy.
As I recall, the Tubes cost about a quarter each, one way. Coffee and a doughnut inside the station at the window above a slice of counter cost another quarter. Fingers wrapped around cardboard cups, Paul and I were warm and happy – strangely subsumed by the comfort smokers feel who had gone a while without but whose addictive cravings are now satiated. It is a satisfaction you can actually touch, even in memory.
Chip and Ellen had offered us to stay with them on East Fourth Street in Greenwich Village while we looked for jobs. In about two months, they would marry after signing a new lease on an apartment on West 92nd Street with a cutaway kitchen overlooking what Chip called “the Grand Ballroom.” We – Paul and I and fellow flunk-out good friend Ralph Chiesi, could then take over “the 4th Street” for ourselves.
The Tubes station in Manhattan was on or near Christopher Street, in the West Village. That was nearly a straight shot walk to East Fourth through the top of Washington Square and past Gerdes Folk City. Closer to Christopher Street, Greenwich Avenue yawned like an open mouth leading up two blocks to unseen ladies who jammed against the high windows of the Women's House of Correction catcalling and jeering in the sunny warmth.
O yeah, things sure looked good again.
Gerald FitzGerald’s career has included being a newspaper editor, a writer, a prosecutor, a defense lawyer and a civic leader.He lives on the Massachusetts South Coast.
Editor’s note: The once very big and now defunct Howard Johnson’s restaurant chain was founded in 1925 in Quincy, Mass. The last “HoJo’s” closed in 2022.
Former U.S. diplomat: Don’t expect regime change in Iran
After the largest buildup of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, American and Israeli military forces launched a massive assault on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.
President Donald Trump has called the attacks “major combat operations” and has urged regime change in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the strikes.
To better understand what this means for the U.S. and Iran, Alfonso Serrano, a U.S. politics editor at The Conversation, interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.
MEDFORD, Mass.
Regime change is going to be difficult. We heard Trump call for the Iranian people to bring the government down. In the first place, that’s difficult. It’s hard for people with no arms in their hands to bring down a very tightly controlled regime that has a lot of arms.
The second point is that U.S. history in that area of the world is not good with this. You may recall that during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the U.S. basically encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then made its own decision not to attack Baghdad, to stop short. And that has not been forgotten in Iraq or surrounding countries. I would be surprised if we saw a popular uprising in Iran that really had a chance of bringing the regime down.
A group of men wave Iranian flags as they protest U.S. and Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 28, 2026. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
Do you see the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground to bring about regime change?
I will stick my neck out here and say that’s not going to happen. I mean, there may be some small special forces sent in. That’ll be kept quiet for a while. But as far as large numbers of U.S. troops, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Two reasons. First off, any president would feel that was extremely risky. Iran’s a big country with a big military. The risks you would be taking are large amounts of casualties, and you may not succeed in what you’re trying to do.
But Trump, in particular, despite the military strike against Iran and the one against Venezuela, is not a big fan of big military interventions and war. He’s a guy who will send in fighter planes and small special forces units, but not 10,000 or 20,000 troops.
And the reason for that is, throughout his career, he does well with a little bit of chaos. He doesn’t mind creating a little bit of chaos and figuring out a way to make a profit on the other side of that. War is too much chaos. It’s really hard to predict what the outcome is going to be, what all the ramifications are going to be. Throughout his first term and the first year of his second term, he has shown no inclination to send ground troops anywhere.
Speaking of President Trump, what are the risks he faces?
One risk is going on right now, which is that the Iranians may get lucky or smart and manage to attack a really good target and kill a lot of people, like something in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base.
The second risk is that the attacks don’t work, the basic political leadership of Iran survives, and the U.S. winds up with egg on its face.
The third risk is that it works to a certain extent. You take out the top people, but then who steps into their shoes? I mean, go back and look at Venezuela. Most people would have thought that who was going to wind up winning at the end of that was the head of the opposition. But it wound up being the vice president of the old regime, Delcy Rodríguez.
I can see a similar scenario in Iran. The regime has enough depth to survive the death of several of its leaders. The thing to watch will be who winds up in the top jobs, hardliners or realists. But the only institution in Iran strong enough to succeed them is the army, the Revolutionary Guards in particular. Would that be an improvement for the U.S.? It depends on what their attitude was. The same attitude that the vice president of Venezuela has been taking, which is, “Look, this is a fact of life. We better negotiate with the Americans and figure out some way forward we can both live with.”
But these guys are pretty hardcore revolutionaries. I mean, Iran has been under revolutionary leadership for 47 years. All these guys are true believers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work with them.
Smoke rises over Tehran on Feb. 28, 2026, after the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images
Any last thoughts?
I think that the timing is interesting. If you go back to last year, Trump, after being in office a little and watching the situation between Israel and Gaza, was given an opening, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Qatar.
A lot of conservative Mideast regimes, who didn’t have a huge problem with Israel, essentially said “That’s going too far.” And Trump was able to use that as an excuse. He was able to essentially say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far. You’re really taking risk with world peace. Everybody’s gonna sit at the table.”
I think the same thing’s happening here. I believe many countries would love to see regime change in Iran. But you can’t go into the country and say, “We don’t like the political leadership being elected. We’re going to get rid of them for you.” What often happens in that situation is people begin to rally around the flag. They begin to rally around the government when the bombs start falling.
But in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge human rights crackdown in Iran. We may never know the number of people the Iranian regime killed in the last few months, but 10,000 to 15,000 protesters seems a minimum.
That’s the excuse Trump can use. You can sell it to the Iranian people and say, “Look, they’re killing you in the streets. Forget about your problems with Israel and the U.S. and everything. They’re real, but you’re getting killed in the streets, and that’s why we’re intervening.” It’s a bit of a fig leaf.
Now, as I said earlier, the problem with this is if your next line is, “You know, we’re going to really soften this regime up with bombs; now it’s your time to go out in the streets and bring the regime down.” I may eat these words, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The regime is just too strong for it to be brought down by bare hands.
This article was updated on Feb 28, 2026, to include confirmation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.
Take a few minutes for YOU
Fritz Holznagel here, quizmaster for The Conversation. If
Fire as an Artist’s tool
“Root 1” (fire on Eastern Red Cedar), by Wayland, Mass.-based artist Pam Kainz, in her show “Present Tense,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, March 4-29.
She says:
“I use fire as a tool to mark and sculpt wood. My practice is grounded in observation, attending closely to what the material already holds and working in response to its inherent qualities. When my torch meets wood, a carefully controlled yet inherently unpredictable dialogue begins, one that requires full presence and attention.
“The surfaces of found cedar roots are torched to reveal, preserve and honor their natural forms. Their branching arm-like structures extend outward, echoing systems of growth and exchange, suggesting an ongoing search for nourishment and connection.
“My ‘Edge Burns’ series explores the material transformation as painted wood yields to fire. Working with single colors on wood panels, I use controlled burning to activate the painted surfaces. Each panel holds a charged tension, where stillness and change negotiate their boundaries.’’
First Parish Church in the affluent Boston suburb of Wayland.
—Photo by John Phelan
Despite this N.E. winter
In recent decades, the number of warm temperature records in March has outpaced cold temperature records over a growing portion of Earth's surface.
Sweet sign of season
“Sugaring Off,’’ painting by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka Grandma Moses)(1860-1961), at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum. With global warming, maple-syrup production has tended to come earlier in recent decades, but it might be a tad late this year as this very cold winter eases.
Chris Powell: Can Connecticut Democrats rise above identity politics?
Still “Unum”?
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Why are some people Democrats and others Republicans?
Personal identities have always had something to do with it. Some people inherit party affiliations from parents. Many Democrats come from the working and government classes. Many Republicans come from the propertied and professional classes.
Ethnicity often has had something to do with it as well.
Many Irish immigrants to Connecticut became Democrats because Republicans were in charge when the Irish arrived and were often hostile to newcomers. The next wave of immigrants, the Italians, found themselves in a rivalry with the Irish and so many became Republicans.
Upon their liberation after the Civil War, Blacks became Republicans because Democrats were aligned with the former Slave States. Blacks began migrating to the Democrats in the 1960s, when Republicans took them for granted and Democratic leaders became more aggressive about civil rights and racial equality.
Political culture is involved as well. The anti-Vietnam War movement originated as a largely youthful rebellion in the Democratic Party during a Democratic presidency, and within a few years the party had become not just anti-Vietnam War but also the party of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and perpetual protest. President Richard Nixon exploited the resulting fear of civil disorder and had the Republican Party pose as the representative of the "silent majority," the cultural establishment.
Political correctness is based to a great extent on identity politics, the assignment of the electorate to interest groups based not on public policy but on mere personal characteristics. Democrats see identity politics as a recruiting tool, though it may alienate as many people as it attracts.
Identity politics was the object of an appeal made this week by the vice chairwoman of Connecticut's Democratic State Central Committee, Vanita Bhalla, who urged people to join one of the state party’s "caucuses."
"Our caucuses," Bhalla wrote, "are where Democrats come together around shared experiences, organize, and make sure our party reflects the full diversity of Connecticut. They help shape policy conversations, strengthen relationships across communities, and bring new voices into our work at every level. Joining a caucus is a great way to meet like-minded people."
But the 10 Democratic caucuses Bhalla identified actually proclaim insularity and conformity, implying that members of each group think the same and want something for themselves as a special interest rather than something benefiting the public generally. The special interests the Democrats imagine cultivating with caucuses actually may be hard to figure out.
As policy matters, the LGBTQ+ Caucus may want state government to support the claim of transgender people to a right to participate in sports contrary to their biological sex, and to support sex-change surgery for minors. The Women’s Caucus, at least a caucus of Democratic women, may want state law to tolerate late-term abortion. The Black and Hispanic caucuses may want more state financial aid to the municipalities where most Blacks and Hispanics live.
But what do the Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Caucus, the Disability Caucus, the Immigrant Voters Caucus, the Muslim Caucus, the Small Towns Caucus, and the Veterans Caucus want in public policy that differs from what most other people, or at least most other Democrats, want for everyone?
Do these caucuses ever go beyond the personal-identity interest and approach the national or state interest -- the public interest? Indeed, as these caucuses suggest, is it really possible to approach the public interest only after people are sorted into identity groups? If caucuses are necessary -- and local Democratic town committees insufficient as forums -- why not organize them according to policy issues instead?
Organizing people by identity groups risks stereotyping and caricaturing people -- the opposite of the "diversity" the caucuses are supposed to reflect. But then "diversity" isn't really the objective. Getting votes is, whatever the cost.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).