Quirky list of Mass 'bests'
An online news service called Your RV Lifestyle presents what it calls the best things to do in Massachusetts. It says the best is Boston’s Freedom Trail, seen above at Faneuil Hall. The list has some amusing factual errors.
— Photo by Mama Geek
Chris Powell: Vaccination objections are not really religious
Freedom of religion is freedom of belief and expression. It is not the freedom to do anything one pleases, though lately claims of religious freedom are being used to rationalize more craziness in Connecticut -- the resurgence of dangerous diseases arising from the failure to vaccinate schoolchildren.
That craziness marked a Connecticut General Assembly hearing the other day on whether the religious exemption should be removed from the state's vaccination law, now that the exemption is being claimed much too often.
One woman shrieked that her child would be vaccinated only "over my dead body." But the issue was not her death but the risk of premature death to her child and others.
Defenders of the exemption carried signs reading "My child, my choice," as if state government doesn't spend nearly a billion dollars each year for the care and rehabilitation of children damaged by their parents' terrible choices. No decent society can let children become the mere property of parents.
Another woman said, "God made my body perfect." Really? Has she never had a toothache? She well might reflect on why she never had polio, from whose scourge millions have been saved in the last 60 years thanks to the vaccines devised by Doctors Salk and Sabin.
Objections to vaccination may be based on conscience, personal preference, misapprehension, or ignorance, but to call them religious exaggerates them. At least no organized religion forbids vaccination, not even Christian Science, whose practice has been to submit to vaccination where required by law. Those claiming religious motives make no theological argument.
Indeed, state law doesn't require vaccination for children generally, only for those attending public schools, where risk of contagion is greatest. The parents who were so indignant at the hearing don't have to interpose themselves between their children and the state. Instead they can home-school their kids or enroll them in a private school indifferent to contagion.
People who want to pursue absolute liberty, including liberty to risk the health of children, can try living in the jungle. To enjoy the benefits of society, liberty must respect a few of society's rules. While society lately is being intimidated out of its self-respect, on this point it better hold fast. The religious exemption should go.
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TWO FREE CAR THEFTS: Society isn't demonstrating much self-respect with legislation advancing in the General Assembly that purports to address the epidemic of car thefts and joyriding by juveniles.
Under the bill juveniles would not be subject to detention until they had committed their third car theft. While the kids are on their car-theft spree the courts are to provide them with more of the social services that long have failed to deter them, as police lately have reported the arrests of some youngsters for car thefts just days after their arrest and release for previous car thefts.
Now the law formally will tell the kids that their first two car thefts are free. That may be fewer felonies than some kids are already getting away with, but the principle is awful all the same.
The bill also authorizes a study of the causes of the youthful car-theft epidemic, as if nobody knows that it correlates closely with the child neglect and fatherlessness perpetuated by the welfare system.
But since that correlation cannot yet be openly discussed, people will just have to keep their cars locked. The law won't be protecting them any time soon.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Connecticut.
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Exercise is so debilitating
“Trail Town USA’’ (oil on canvas), by Danielle Klebes, in a group at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, Vt. May 250-July 14.
Frank Carini: Dogfish is as tasty as cod
Dogfish
— Photo by Doug Costa of NOAA
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
Dogfish doesn’t have an appetizing ring to it. The name for this member of the shark family has kept it off dinner plates, at least in the United States. In Britain, dogfish is often the key ingredient in fish and chips.
A few years ago, in an attempt to make the fish sound more appealing, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, New England fishermen, and conservationists tried to rebrand it as “Cape shark.” The effort to create local demand for this plentiful regional species, which grew in number with the collapse of the cod fishery, hasn’t yet taken hold.
Kate Masury, program director of Eating with the Ecosystem, said that, with its mild white boneless flesh, dogfish is less flaky than cod but just as delicious.
Eating with the Ecosystem, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit that promotes a place-based approach to sustaining New England’s wild seafood, is working with consumers, chefs, suppliers, processors, and fishermen to build a market for dogfish and the many other lower-valued species swimming off New England’s coast.
“It’s about increasing consumer awareness about what is out there and creating a demand,” Masury said.
More than 100 edible wild seafood species thrive in the region’s salty waters. But finding most of them, such as dogfish, ocean perch, scup, periwinkles, sea robin, or sea urchin, at a local market or on a restaurant menu is a challenge.
A new Eating with the Ecosystem study that used citizen scientists to track the availability of these under-appreciated species documented some interesting observations about local fish and shellfish in the New England marketplace.
Unsurprisingly, the region’s seafood counters are heavily dominated by five classic New England species: lobster, sea scallops, soft-shell clams, cod, and haddock.
At the other end of the market spectrum, however, half of the 52 local species included in the recent study were found less than 10 percent of the time. Many of these species, including dogfish, whiting, skate and Atlantic butterfish, which is often caught as bycatch in the squid fishery and shouldn’t be confused with its West Coast version, are among the most abundant species in the ocean ecosystem off the New England coast.
But despite their prevalence in local waters, these four species were found even less often, only 3 percent of the time. Dogfish was only found twice out of 198 searches, and skate 14 times (252). Both butterfish (268) and whiting (198) were found eight times.
The Eat Like a Fish citizen science project studied wildlife in a human habitat: the markets, kitchens, and tables that form the final links of the supply chains that connect ocean to plate. (Eating with the Ecosystem)
The report’s findings are based on a research effort called the Eat Like a Fish citizen science project. The project’s 86 participants hailed from all walks of life and resided in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire.
For 26 weeks, from May to October of last year, the 86 volunteers, including 19 from Rhode Island, visited seafood markets, grocery stores, farmers markets, and seaside fishing piers in search of the 52 New England seafood species. Each participant received a weekly list of four randomly chosen local species and searched for them in up to three local markets. Upon encountering one of their species, they took it home and made a meal out of it.
“Citizen scientists found a stark mismatch between what’s swimming in local waters and what’s available on local seafood counters,” said Masury, who coordinated the research project. “This imbalance can strain the resilience of New England’s underwater ecosystems and undermine the well-being of the people who depend on them. Moving forward, we hope to see the New England marketplace do a better job of reflecting the full diversity of what our waters have to offer.”
The study’s goals were to understand how well New England’s retail marketplace reflects the diversity of local seafood and to draw on the volunteers’ lived experiences to help explain why these mismatches exist and what can be done to correct them.
As ecosystems change more rapidly because of climate change, Masury said diversity must become a cornerstone of the way we eat and market seafood. She also noted that understanding the assimilation of local species by the regional seafood supply chains is an important first step in achieving greater symmetry between ecosystems and markets, reducing impacts on ocean food webs, and positioning local fishing economies to be resilient in the face of change.
Citizen scientists who took part in the project say it was informative, challenging, and frustrating.
“At the inception of the project, I had no doubt that I would find, prepare, and marvel at my brilliance with new, exotic, local species of seafood each week,” said Sherri Darocha, a participating citizen scientist from Rhode Island. “I never dreamed that most weeks it would be so challenging to find even one fish on my list. After twenty-six weeks, I have plenty of pent-up fish envy that will only be soothed by finding species that have eluded me, like cunner and red hake.”
To assist consumers in finding these largely ignored species and help reduce the strain on the region’s ocean ecosystem, Eating with the Ecosystem offers several tips for consumers interested in expanding their local seafood options:
Seek out local species you haven’t tried before. Many citizen scientists discovered new favorite seafood species by going outside their comfort zone.
Don’t shy away from whole fish. Using every part of the fish reduces waste. The more mess you make in the kitchen, the more you will enjoy the meal that follows.
If you don’t see a particular local species available at the seafood counter, ask for it. Letting your fishmonger know you would like to buy it will help build demand.
Many fishmongers can locate hard-to-find local seafood species if you notify them in advance. Special ordering these species helps show fishmongers that there is interest in purchasing them, without requiring them to assume any risk.
When experimenting with new species, make it a social event. Team up with friends and family members who share your commitment. Citizen scientists relished the long-distance camaraderie that developed through the Eat Like a Fish project.
To help seafood lovers diversify their diets, Eating with the Ecosystem recently produced a cookbook called Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries. Populated with whimsical ecological tales, imaginative artwork, and simple yet elegant recipes, the 100-page book celebrates 40 under-appreciated fish and shellfish that populate the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.
Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News, where this article first appeared.
Ecologically friendly burials
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Having long thought that expensive coffins and other accoutrements of human burials are a waste of money and not particularly good for the environment (I’ve had somewhat awkward arguments about this with relatives after family deaths) I applaud this week’s opening of “The Ellipse,’’ at beautiful Swan Point Cemetery, on Providence’s East Side. This will be an area for burials in which, the cemetery administration says, “a
process is followed by which all elements going into the earth are biodegradable, ‘’ most especially, of course, the corpses. Hold the preservatives and the metal coffin handles!
(But cremation is the neatest way to go.)
Of course, except in those rare families with strong genealogical interests, knowledge of, and interest in, our ancestors is pretty much nonexistent beyond our grandparents’ generation. We fade into the past remarkably fast.
I do like visiting Oak Grove Cemetery in Falmouth, Mass., which was founded in 1848 but includes the remains of plenty of 18th Century (and maybe even late 17th Century) people moved there from family graveyards. In a sign of how stable small-town life was in those days, there are dozens of what’s left of my ancestors there, including some recent entrants. I was mildly disappointed to learn that there’s no room left for myself and my immediate family. But then I thought: Why take up room?
Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote the lyrics for “American the Beautiful,’’ is buried in Oak Grove.
Ross E. O'Hara: Food insecurity at New England colleges
Via The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
Food insecurity—defined by the nationally respected Wisconsin HOPE Lab as the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner—is a troubling trend on college campuses across the country, including in New England.
For example:
A 2016 survey by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education found that 24 campuses operated or partnered with a food pantry, and a third saw an increase in the number of students utilizing that service.
A 2018 report by the HOPE Lab found that 44% of Massachusetts students at two-year colleges and a third of students at four-year universities were food insecure.
A 2018 study of nearly 1,000 students at the University of New Hampshire found 25% had experienced food insecurity in the past year, with first-generation students and students who receive financial aid at higher risk.
A 2017 study of several thousand students at the University of Vermont found up to 25% were food insecure, with significantly higher rates among students who identify as first-generation, persons of color, and transgender/queer/non-conforming.
As higher education becomes available to many who never before had access, more students than ever are forced to choose between meeting their basic needs and the costs of attending college. While institutions devise strategic solutions to avert this burgeoning crisis, one avenue of support that many students are not taking advantage of is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
In January, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report, titled Better Information Could Help Eligible College Students Access Federal Food Assistance Benefits, which acknowledges for the first time at the federal level the problem of college food insecurity.
The GAO goes on to recommend SNAP as a way to help many of these students cover their basic needs. Although a 1980 federal law bars college students from accessing SNAP—based on the outdated assumption that students’ parents will support them—it does grant exemptions for students who demonstrate need, for example, by working at least 20 hours per week or having dependent children. The GAO estimates that these criteria cover over 3 million low-income students nationwide, yet nearly two thirds of those eligible do not access SNAP benefits. How can we get more students who need assistance to sign up for SNAP?
The GAO puts its answer right in the title: Better Information. Many students are unaware of their eligibility, and many colleges are confused by the byzantine rules set forth by the federal Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). The GAO’s main recommendation to remedy this situation is for FNS to clarify the eligibility criteria on its website and make that information easier to find. While these steps will no doubt help, we now know too much about human psychology to think that better information is sufficient to solve this problem. We need to leverage behavioral science to nudge more students to access SNAP.
Behavioral science uses evidence-based strategies to frame and disseminate “better” information in a way that motivates action. These techniques are especially valuable when confronting food insecurity, a problem hidden by many students out of shame. Examples of these behavioral techniques include:
Social norms. The GAO reports that 80% of colleges surveyed struggled with “overcoming the stigma some students associate with accepting help for their basic needs.” Messaging that normalizes seeking help (e.g., “Many college students need help paying for food …”) can ameliorate that stigma by letting students know that they’re not alone in their challenge and move them to access needed resources.
Loss aversion. According to prospect theory, losing $10 is more painful than winning $10 is joyful. An MDRC study that leveraged loss aversion (e.g., “Don’t miss out! Ends April 29!”) increased attendance at an eligibility meeting for an income-supplement program by 73%. Messages that reframe SNAP as a benefit that can be lost, rather than something to be acquired, could motivate student uptake.
Removing hassle factors. Every step in applying for public benefits is a hurdle that can trip people up. A recent experiment by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that eliminating a prescreening form increased completed applications to adjust child-support payments by more than 12 percentage points. Colleges can remove hassle factors for students needing SNAP by housing related offices (e.g., financial aid; food pantry; counseling) within a single building, using student data already in their possession to automatically prescreen students for benefits, and streamlining application processes as much as possible.
Do techniques like these actually help students with food insecurity? Yes. My colleagues and I at Persistence Plus work with colleges across the country to enhance their student success initiatives through behavioral science. With regard to basic needs insecurity, colleges have witnessed firsthand how behavioral science increases the number of students who benefit from valuable campus resources, like food pantries and emergency aid. For example, an Ohio community college saw a 51% increase in use of the food pantry in just one month after students received a text message from us, such as “Some students miss meals due to $ but they’ve found help at the food pantry. Do you face this challenge?” Students who responded in the affirmative were provided with further social norming to reduce stigma and information on how to access emergency aid.
Behavioral science could enhance the impact of the myriad efforts of New England colleges to support students facing basic needs insecurity.
For example, Bunker Hill Community College, in Charlestown, Mass., has been a national leader in addressing food insecurity. Bunker Hill now houses New England’s first Single Stop location. This “one-stop shop” for connecting students to public benefits has been shown to increase persistence at U.S. community colleges by up to 11%. Bunker Hill is also evaluating a food voucher program that provides eligible students with $25 per week to spend at on-campus food service venues.
Many other colleges have now opened food pantries, such as the Magic Food Bus at Middlesex Community College, in Middletown, Conn. This renovated school bus (minus Ms. Frizzle’s pet lizard) has provided hundreds of students with non-perishable food, toiletries and other essentials. The University of Vermont this year piloted a meal-sharing program, operated by Swipe Out Hunger, where students with unlimited dining hall plans can donate meals to students with limited access. As these programs continue and expand, colleges should keep in mind how their messaging around basic needs insecurity could benefit from behavioral science to drive students to these resources.
The GAO’s recommendation to revamp the FNS website and make college students’ SNAP eligibility easier to understand is an important step, but behavioral science can take us further by enhancing the impact of better information using low-cost and evidence-based strategies. Stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels should consider not only how to raise awareness of SNAP among colleges and students, but also how to leverage behavioral science to increase use of these funds so desperately needed by so many.
Ross E. O’Hara is a behavioral researcher at Persistence Plus. He shares his thoughts on behavioral science in higher education monthly in his blog, “Nudging Ahead.”
John L. Lahey: Make curricula faster, cheaper and better
Quinnipiac University’s Arnold Bernhard Library and clock tower, the focus of main campus quadrangle, in Hamden, Conn. Sleeping Giant Mountain is in the background. The author of this essay is a former president of the university.
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
During my 40-plus years working in higher education I have witnessed a remarkable transformation in a wide range of industries – telecommunications, computing, transportation, media, publishing, manufacturing and retailing, to name a few. In almost every case these transformations have resulted in an improved product and/or service that is more responsive to consumer needs, more efficient and effectively produced, and offered at lower and lower cost to the consumer. The most obvious exception to all of these industry transformations is higher education.
Every year for the past 10 years I’ve made it a point to attend a futuristic conference in Silicon Valley having nothing to do with higher education. I was more interested in learning how high-tech Silicon Valley entrepreneurs viewed the world and the culture that attracted and produced these innovators and their startup companies. I was truly amazed at the extent to which these Silicon Valley entrepreneurs believed they were just one algorithm away from radically changing a long-established industry, its product or services, or creating an entirely new one. The mantra for these entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley generally is: faster, cheaper, better.
Using these same standards of faster, cheaper, better, let’s apply them to higher education and the changes that it has witnessed over my 50-plus years dating back to 1964. For starters: The bachelor’s degree that I earned in 1968 took me 120 credit hours, eight semesters, and four years to achieve. The per-credit-hour charge back then was $21. That same degree today costs about $1,200 per credit (both based on private university tuition costs). With respect to “better,” I’m willing to accept that today’s undergraduate education is at least as good as it was when I was a student, although frankly I’m hard-pressed to say that it is significantly better. And with respect to “faster,” the same bachelor’s degree that I earned in 1968 still today takes 120 credit hours, eight semesters, and four years to complete.
In short, the degrees that higher education awards today versus 50 years ago are neither faster nor better and certainly not cheaper. Earning a degree today costs about 57 times more than what it did five decades ago. All of which leads me to an opportunity for efficiency which has largely been overlooked in higher education, namely the curriculum. And the beauty of this opportunity is that it offers the best if not the only hope for higher education to satisfy all three of the Silicon Valley goals of faster, cheaper and better.
Seven years ago, at my urging, Quinnipiac University developed a number of accelerated dual-degree bachelor’s/master’s programs (originally called 3-plus-1 programs). The first one we developed was a bachelor’s in business combined with an MBA. The second was a bachelor’s in communications combined with a master’s degree in communications/journalism. These two combined offerings already existed at Quinnipiac as separate degree programs that required five years or 10 semesters to complete at the cost of five years or 10 semesters of tuition.
Our newly developed accelerated dual-degree programs offered these same two degrees in four years or eight semesters at a cost of four years or eight semesters of tuition. This accelerated program reduced by one full year both the time of completion and the cost of tuition yielding a savings or cost reduction of 20% or approximately $40,000. In addition, shortening the time of completion by one year allowed the graduates of these programs to enter the workforce one year earlier, offsetting the cost even further depending on the salary earned that first year after graduation. For example, a net income from a first-year take-home salary of $60,000 combined with $40,000 in reduced tuition effectively reduces the cost of dual degrees by 50% from $200,000 for the traditional five years of tuition to $100,000 with four years of tuition payments of $160,000 reduced to $100,000 by earning $60,000 net income in the fifth year.
These accelerated dual-degree programs have been expanded to other schools and colleges at Quinnipiac and now include additional 3-plus-1 programs, as well as 3-plus-2 programs and 3-plus-3 programs for dual degrees that traditionally required six or seven years to complete at a cost of six or seven years of tuition.
The common thread for all of these dual-degree programs is that they shorten the traditional amount of time required by one year, reduce the cost of the dual degrees by one year’s tuition and allow the graduate to enter the workforce one year earlier, earning an extra year’s salary. The popularity of these programs has grown such that over 20% of the Quinnipiac freshmen entering in the fall of 2018 were enrolled in one of these dual-degree programs.
The key element in the success of these programs both academically and financially is the curriculum and specifically the elimination of duplication within the curriculum for a bachelor’s and a master’s in the same program, such as business or communication. Most people believe the cost of higher education has gone up dramatically in large part because we are a personnel intensive industry. But I submit that the reason we need so many faculty and other personnel is because the curriculum has expanded and expanded over the years with little effort to eliminate unnecessary duplication of content among many bachelor’s degrees and their corresponding graduate degrees.
To end on a positive note: If we do indeed expand our focus on the curricula and eliminate unnecessary duplication within degree programs, we will not only lower the cost of higher education, but unlike with traditional cost reduction efforts, we will not compromise quality. Reasonable class sizes and full-time faculty-to-student ratios can be maintained for optimal learning. At the same time, more efficient curricula will more effectively engage and challenge today’s students who are far ahead of educators in their desire for all things faster, cheaper, better.
John L. Lahey is president emeritus and professor of logic and philosophy at Quinnipiac University, in Hamden and North Haven, Conn.. He served as president from 1987 to 2018.
Cooperating trees
“Woolroot (driftwood, cooper, wool and oil pastel), by Leslie Wilcox, in her show “Enrootables,’’ at Boston Sculptors Gallery, April 3-May 5.
The gallery says:
“Inspired by evidence of trees’ underground social network known as the
‘wood wide web,’ Wilcox shrouds sea-distressed deadwood
with twisted metal screening to explore earthbound similarities and shared connections between
human forms and life-sustaining, mutually communicative arboreal forests.
Supplanting human bones with driftwood tree roots, Wilcox creates organic skeletal forms tightly
encased in copper and bronze screens, referencing bark or sapwood or skin. ‘Enrootables’ cultivates a
glimpse beneath the forest floor to reveal shared alliances through communication and care among
multiple species. And while mimicking our own modern behavior, themes of cooperation for mutual
benefit are discovered, including human dependence on trees’ filtration of carbon dioxide. Evidence of
trees living among their parents, siblings and offspring growing twice as tall and living twice as long
fosters this transfer of knowledge and expertise to future generations, thus safeguarding the existence
of thriving forest biospheres. Can what we learn from these strategies ensure the same for the future of
humankind? (Companion reading: The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben).’’
Small colleges' existential crisis
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The number of small nonelite New England private colleges that are closing because of dwindling finances and enrollments continue to grow. The latest is Green Mountain College, in tiny Poultney, Vt., and the College of St. Joseph, in the small Vermont city of Rutland.
This is sad because some of these colleges have very usefully served to help educate those whose academic backgrounds and family issues may have blocked them from getting into richer and/or more prestigious institutions. But these closings can also be a heavy economic blow to the small towns and cities so many are situated.
Can online courses take the place of most of these little colleges? How important is in-person teaching? To me, very.
Eating from the same tree
Two taps in a maple tree, using plastic tubing for collecting sap to be boiled to make maple syrup.
“We’re taping trees my grandparents’ parents” tapped. We look at it like this: a corn farmer can eat corn from the same field his great-grandfather planted, but he can’t eat from the same stalk. But an old syrupin’ family eats from the same tree.’’
-- New England farmer Tom Hunter quoted in Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon
Todd McLeish: Threats remain to National Monument off the Northeast coast
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the only national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, remains controversial more than two years after it was designated by President Obama in September 2016.
Fishermen brought suit to overturn the designation — the suit was dismissed last October, but it’s being appealed — President Trump has threatened to use his executive authority to revoke the designation, despite uncertainties as to whether he can legally do so, and the Interior Department has recommended that the Trump administration reopen the monument to commercial fishing.
Peter Auster, however, argued in a lecture at Providence’s Roger Williams Park Zoo on Feb. 28 that the 4,900-square-mile area about 150 miles off Cape Cod is deserving of protection because of its high species diversity, wide variety of habitats, and its numerous creatures that are sensitive to disturbance.
A senior research scientist at Connecticut’s Mystic Aquarium, Auster was a key player in building the scientific case for why the area should be designated a national monument. He has led multiple research projects to explore the area using submersible vessels, remotely operated vehicles, and autonomous vehicles, all of which have revealed an unusual array of marine life, from “Dr. Seussian species” of fish to dozens of kinds of deep-sea corals.
“A dive into the canyons and seamounts demonstrates the magic of the ocean,” he said. “There’s a whole garden of organisms that live there.”
About the size of Connecticut, the monument includes two distinct areas, one that covers three canyons and one that covers four seamounts. (NOAA)
The monument includes a portion of the edge of the continental shelf, where the seafloor drops sharply from a depth of about 600 feet down to 3,000, and where four extinct underwater volcanoes jut upward from the seafloor. The monument got its name from those underwater volcanoes — called seamounts — and a number of canyons carved into the shelf edge by ancient rivers.
“Those canyons and seamounts create varied ecotones in the deep ocean with wide depth ranges, a range of sediment types, steep gradients, complex topography, and currents that produce upwelling, which creates unique feeding opportunities for animals feeding in the water column,” Auster said.
Using colorful photographs of rarely seen creatures to illustrate his presentation, Auster called the area a “biodiversity hot spot,” noting that at least 73 species of deep-sea corals live in the area, including 24 that were found there for the first time during a research expedition in 2013. Many of those corals serve as hosts to other creatures — crabs, shrimp, and starfish, for instance — that are only found on those particular corals.
New England Aquarium researchers have found that the monument’s surface waters serve as feeding grounds for an abundance of whales, sea turtles, sharks, and seabirds, as well as fish that migrate from the deep water to the surface every day to feed.
In addition, Maine Audubon recently discovered that the monument area is where many of the region’s Atlantic puffins spend the winter. And researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, in Woods Hole, Mass., found that significant numbers of the extremely rare True’s beaked whale, one of the deepest diving marine mammals in the world, spends the summer in monument waters.
Despite these recent discoveries, scientists say there is still a great deal to be learned about the area.
“We don’t yet know everything we need to know to manage the monument,” Auster said.
At least 73 species of deep-sea corals live in the area, including bamboo coral. (NOAA)
On his scientific to-do list is an assessment of the biological diversity of the area and how it’s distributed in the monument; an assessment of ecological change over time; a better understanding of species interactions; and an assessment of how the region has recovered from natural and human-caused disturbances.
While the status of the monument remains in limbo, a number of additional threats may be lurking. So far, commercial fishing has only impacted the shallow areas of the monument on the continental shelf, but Auster said there are increasing efforts to fish in the deeper waters. In addition, the Trump administration is advocating for expanded oil and gas exploration in the waters off the East Coast, and the growing seabed mining industry may see the seamounts as potentially valuable sites for methane hydrate mining or manganese crust mining.
While Auster seems somewhat confident that the monument designation will hold, and he’s already working on making the case for a second marine national monument in the Atlantic — this one at Cashes Ledge in the middle of the Gulf of Maine — he acknowledged that there are influential political forces at work that could derail the monument designation.
“Like every monument, there are people who suggest that it isn’t a good thing to conserve examples of our natural heritage for future generations,” Auster said. “The end of this story remains to be written.”
Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.
Boston reveals social-investing program
Boston’s Back Bay section as seen from across the Charles River.
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
“The City of Boston has revealed a plan to invest in companies with strong environmental, social, governance (ESG) practices. Under the new policy, the city will invest up to $150 million of its operating funds in fixed-income securities of socially responsible companies.
Boston will make these investments by partnering with the Ceres Investor network, a sustainability nonprofit headquartered in Boston. Ceres uses its advocates using its investor network to address challenges such as climate change, water scarcity, pollution, and human rights abuses. Beyond investing in socially responsible companies, the city will pursue a “Community Bank Investment Initiative,” where the city will commit at least $100 million to Boston’s community banks and local financial institutions.
Boston’s Chief Financial Officer Emme Handy said, ‘This policy allows us to – while we are providing those critical core municipal services – build on that to support other valuable ESG businesses in our community banks. . . And we think it’s a great way to leverage our taxpayer dollars in a new way that supports the values of the city of Boston.”’
Chuck Collins: Bring back Eisenhower socialism
Official portrait of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House.
From OtherWords.org
Beware of the specter of socialism!
Anytime that a politician proposes a wildly popular idea that helps ordinary people, a few grumpy conservatives will call them “socialists.” Propose to reduce college debt, help sick families, or ensure the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes — suddenly you’re a walking red nightmare.
Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart is so alarmed he’s convened an “Anti-Socialism Caucus” to ward off “the primitive appeal of socialism” that will “infect our institutions.” Democrats’ talk of restoring higher income tax rates on the wealthiest or helping families with childcare was enough to trigger Treasury Secretary Steve Munchin to quip, “We’re not going back to socialism.”
These same politicians consistently vote for tax cuts for the rich and to gut taxes and regulations on corporations so they can exercise their full freedom and liberty — to mistreat workers, pollute the environment, and rip off their customers.
The “shrink government” fear-mongers want you to believe there are only two flavors of economic ice cream. Choose strawberry and you get liberty-choking gulag communism. From this vantage, any proposal to rein in the unchecked power of global corporations and the rule-rigging rich is creeping socialism.
Choice number two, blueberry, is plutocracy, a society where the super-rich lord over the rest of us. It’s an economically polarized dystopia with stagnant wages and a declining standard of living for the majority.
Conservative demagogues aim to scare you into embracing their pro-plutocrat agenda as the only tolerable choice.
The good news is there many flavors to choose from. A number of presidential candidates have proposed or endorsed policies such as low cost or free college, a higher minimum wage, taxing the super-rich, and investing in infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions.
These ideas are tremendously popular with voters, winning majority support among Republicans, independents, and Democrats. As Fox News sheepishly reported from their own polling, over 70 percent of voters support tax hikes on households with over $10 million in income — including 54 percent of Republicans.
What would today’s hysterical Republicans say about the “socialist” presidency of Dwight Eisenhower? Most likely they would call him “Red Ike.” After all, during Eisenhower’s two terms between 1953 and 1960, the wealthy paid a top tax rate of 91 percent on incomes over the equivalent of $1.7 million for an individual and $3.4 million for a couple.
That crafty pinko Eisenhower also presided over government-subsidized mortgages that helped millions of Americans purchase their first home and attend college for free. He presided over the construction of public housing and state-owned infrastructure (like highways). Indeed, he was the prime creator of the Interstate Highway System.
(In 1954 Eisenhower proposed to have the government re-insure private insurance companies against usually heavy losses on health insurance as part of a comprehensive health and welfare program that Congress ultimately rejected. Ike’s idea was to encourage a big expansion of the percentage of the public covered by health insurance.)
In the early 1960s, the specter of socialism stalked the land again, this time in the form of a proposal to create a national health insurance program to cover senior citizens. Conservatives mounted a full-throated resistance movement to what George H.W. Bush at the time called “socialized medicine.”
The rest of us know it as Medicare.
Prior to the passage of Medicare in 1965, half of the country’s seniors didn’t have hospital insurance, and one in four went without medical care due to cost concerns. One in three seniors were in poverty. Half a century later, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care, and the elderly poverty rate has fallen to 14 percent.
Now a majority of Americans support some form of “Medicare for All,” expanding universal coverage beyond seniors and disabled people to include children and adults.
Stay tuned for more fear mongering. Universal health care, the red baiters will say, will zap our national initiative and hurl us toward Soviet-style tyranny. Instead, maybe it will mean not having to choose between paying rent or for medicine.
Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Progress toward power line in Maine
From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com
Good for new Maine Gov. Janet Mills and some environmental groups for backing, against, among other interests, fossil-fuel providers and some local renewable-power providers, a $1 billion project by Central Maine Power to bring some of Quebec’s copious hydro-electric power to Massachusetts along a route in the mountainous and lightly populated western part of the Pine Tree State. This ought to reduce New England’s dependence on gas and oil being used to generate electricity.
Happily, the powerful and well-heeled Conservation Law Foundation supports the project.
Of course, the power line’s construction would disrupt some wildlife and some other environmental elements along the power line route but not nearly as much as burning gas, oil and coal does.
To read more, please hit this link:
https://nenc.news/mills-2-environmental-groups-back-cmps-1-billion-western-maine-transmission-project/
Mountain view
From the show “Alaska in Two Weeks,’’ by Ernest Stonebraker, at 6 Bridges Gallery, Maynard, Mass., through April 6. He is mostly a painter, but he took stunning photos on a recent two-week land and sea trip.
'Slip to silence'
‘March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapors progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.’’
— The late Pablo Neruda (but since he lived in the Southern Hemisphere, in Chile, he would have seen March as the start of winter, not spring!)
Dems should pray for a moderate
From David Warsh, proprietor of economicprincipals.com
To describe Martin F. Nolan, former Washington bureau chief and editorial page editor of The Boston Globe, as “an American journalist” is like calling Cyrano’s nose ‘big,’ though the rest of Nolan’s Wikipedia page gives a pretty good sense of the man. He wrote last week to say,
“I agree that Nancy Pelosi is fully qualified to run and win a presidential race. But several things, historical and personal:
“Speakers do not flourish in the Electoral College. Ask Henry Clay, Schuyler Colfax and John Garner. Old Cactus Jack did become FDR's VP, thanks to a delegate deal worked out at the 1932 Dem convention by William Randolph Hearst.
“Nancy is not interested in VP. Also, she has been so successful as Speaker that her likely successors resemble the junior varsity. Take Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, please.
“Nancy is my Congresswoman and I've known her a long time. She is a protégé of the Burton family – Phillip, Sala and John – as powerful in SF as the D'Alesandros in Baltimore [Pelosi’s father, Thomas d’Alesandro Jr. was mayor of that city]. In 2016, she worked hard for Hillary perhaps hoping that her happy reward would be the US Embassy in Rome.
“If the Dems are lucky, a plethora of socialist lefties will allow a traditional moderate to prosper. Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, which bodes well for Dem success in Pennsylvania and Michigan, states taken for granted in 2016 by the Clinton campaign.
“Warning: a President Pence will not be easy to defeat,"