Those vague 'common-law marriages'

No need to buy these.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

The story of Kevin Gaugler, of East Providence, and his former-live in girlfriend, Angela Luis, reported in a July 1 Providence Journal story by Katie Mulvaney headlined “A Cautionary Tale: Long relationship is not a marriage,’’ is a cautionary tale about legal obligations and the lack thereof and the rootlessness of American life.

The five-year-long Gaugler-Luis case (the lawyers must have prospered!) involves Ms. Luis’s assertion that she and Mr. Gaugler were in a common-law marriage.  But the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled in May that his 23-year relationship with Ms. Luis was not a common-law marriage. As  Ms. Mulvaney  noted: “Rhode Island is one of several states that leave it to the courts to determine whether a long-term relationship constitutes a common-law marriage.’’

Ms. Luis had big economic reasons for wanting the relationship to be declared a (kind of) marriage. It would have given her half the marital assets after they split up, including half the proceeds from selling a house that he had bought as well as his retirement accounts and insurance policy.

Complicating things were that he had helped raise Ms. Luis’s son as his own.

There’s enough disorder in American life. “Common law marriages’’ should be abolished and what we used to call “illegitimacy’’ (which is closely correlated with poverty) discouraged.  The states ought to encourage individuals to understand and take on the legal obligations of regular marriage, especially regarding children and property.

The great Newport dorm dispute

Ochre Court, at Salve Regina University.

By Robert Whitcomb

This was written for GoLocal24.com
 

Town-gown battles are common. However, the current one in Newport, between Salve Regina University and some neighbors over the school’s plans to build two large undergraduate dormitories, is exotic because its campus is in a spectacular seaside area of mansions, beautiful landscaping and powerful, articulate and opinionated people. The proposed project would be on university-owned property bounded by Victoria, Shepard, Lawrence and Ruggles avenues – in the city’s famous Gilded Age mansion section.

The two dorms, one with 214 beds and the other with 196, would go in the National Historic Landmark District, Salve’s portion of which features 21 historic buildings, including Gilded Age mansions. The school lost 45 dorm beds last year when it sold Conley Hall, one of the reasons it cites for wanting to build the two new dorms. Junior and senior class students must now live off campus. The new dorms would house the juniors.

To move ahead to construction, the university needs, among other things, two special-use permits to build in such a district.

Salve is pushing to get the City Council to approve amendments to the city’s zoning ordinance very soon to allow this big project. Then the project could go on to the Planning Board this summer, and the Zoning Board and the city’s Historic  District Commission in the fall. The project’s foes would probably have their best chance of killing it in the last body.

Bill Hall, the school’s CFO/vice president for administration, told me that Salve wants to build the dorms because, he says, “the on-campus presence of all three classes will create a more cohesive, vibrant campus community where {more} students interact with each other as they study, work, play and serve together…..Having all three classes (freshpersons, sophomores and juniors) will also include more out-of-class interaction between students, faculty and staff as well as greater mentoring of younger students by older students.’’

Where should Salve's students be housed?

Salve also asserts, in its sales pitch to the city, that the dorms would, in Mr. Hall’s words, “help minimize the costs of providing public services for this population {of students}’’ – particularly regarding police and fire -- because on-campus Salve security and other personnel would take care of much of that. And he said that reducing the number of commuting students would ease parking problems on local streets; the juniors would park their cars in the new lots to serve the two dorms.

He denied that the dorm rooms would be used as summer rentals, including Airbnb’s, in that high-rent season – and said that they’d only be provided for conference attendees in the summer.  Still, Salve must be looking forward to gaining substantial new revenue from the new buildings in a time when many small colleges and universities have been struggling, forcing an increasing number to close every year.

But some (perhaps most) neighbors see red in this project, which they complain would irreparably damage the famous National Historic Landmark District. The fiercest foes are probably Judy and Laurence Cutler, who own the National Museum of American Illustration, which would abut one of the proposed dorms.  Judy Cutler is one of the leading scholars and collectors of classic American illustrations and Laurence is an internationally known architect.

The Cutlers say the project would create a “hot-house environment’’ in the famous neighborhood because of the size of the dorms and the many additional on-campus cars -- and thus parking spaces – associated with the new-dorm residents.  Indeed, foes say that the dorms would overwhelm the historic district.

As for Salve’s proposal to build them in something like the Shingle Style associated with Newport, she told me: “Simply adding wooden shingles and eaves doesn’t make a modern building fit into the existing historic neighborhood….The proposed designs appear incredibly artificial and look no different than standard low-cost housing projects and tenements’’. The neighborhood, “with open space, gardens and Gilded Age architecture, should not be sacrificed for profit-driven low-cost housing development.’’

Founders of the National American Illustration Museum oppose the Salve plan

Preserve Rhode Island also opposes the dorms. “The proposed buildings are much larger than adjacent historic buildings and so are out of scale with the surrounding historic area,” says a document signed by Valerie Talmadge, the organization’s executive director.

“The design and detailing of the new buildings is uniform and institutional, and therefore not characteristic of the district,” she wrote.

But Janet Robinson supports the “project as a resident within the historic district and as a taxpayer.” But then, she’s chairwoman of the Salve board of trustees! She’s also a former president and chief executive of The New York Times Co.

“The architectural design of the two residential buildings is outstanding and is very much in keeping with the current architecture represented in the area,” Robinson has asserted.

 “The size, scale and mass of the buildings are all very appropriate’’ and “The landscaping that is proposed to complement these buildings will make an important contribution to the arboretum nature of the entire neighborhood.’’ The Cutlers, whose Newport property includes an arboretum designed by the famed Frederick Law Olmsted, take strenuous exception to that last assertion.

It seems obvious to me that many neighbors would be happy if Salve didn’t add any new buildings to its generally beautiful and highly eccentric campus anchored by nicely retrofitted old mansions. But as Mary Emerson, of Wetmore Avenue, told the Newport Historic District Commission: “If the dorms must be built, and Salve is determined to use that style {what she calls “mock-shingle’’}, then they must make the dorms smaller…Several smaller dorms, in lieu of the proposed prison-like structures….would be much fairer neighbors to nearby buildings.’’

However, Mr. Hall, while saying that the university is open to compromise, such as on building design and materials and laying down “porous’’ parking surfaces for the students’ cars in order to reduce water-runoff problems, the cost of putting up, say, four smaller dorms instead of two big ones would be prohibitive – four elevators instead of two and so on.

I’d guess that the Historic District Commission will turn down the dorms’ current size and that in the end something a bit smaller will go up. Meanwhile, look for a long, hot summer on the issue, despite the cooing ocean breezes.

Robert Whitcomb is editor of New England Diary.

The freedom to be trapped in traffic

From Robert Whitcomb's  "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

"Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.''

-- Ambrose Bierce

That America is increasingly a plutocracy and not a democracy might be suggested by a story in The New York Times headlined “How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country.’’ The story details how the Koch lobbying group Americans for Prosperity has been working to block efforts around to address gridlock and air pollution. The Koches, who inherited their company, Koch Industries, from daddy use highly sophisticated data-analysis tools to sow fear, misunderstanding and confusion about projects they don’t like.

The Times story focuses on Nashville, whose voters, after an intense propaganda campaign by the Kochs, turned down a $5.4 billion public-transit program that polling before the Kochs arrived had been expected to easily win because the Music City is choking on car traffic and air pollution.

Good mass transit reduces traffic, boosts economic  development and reduces air pollution. (I’d add warily it also helps to address man-made global warming but most Republicans don’t seem to believe in that. After all, what do 97 percent of scientists know?) It’s no accident that the richest U.S. cities – New York, Boston, etc., have dense (if far from perfect!) mass-transit systems.

Koch servant Tori Venable, who runs Americans for Prosperity, came up with an intriguing remark on why the car culture should continue dominant in crowded cities: “If someone has the freedom to go where they want, do what they want, they’re not going to choose to public transit.’’ Eh? Millions of people take mass transit every day because they want the freedom to nap, to read, to brood, and to avoid being hit by the idiot weaving in and out of lanes while texting.

Among the assorted inane things that Koch-connected people say about public   transit  came from Randal O’Toole,  of the Cato Institute, who said “Why would anybody ride transit when they can get a ride at their door within a minute that will drop them off at the door where they want to go?’’

Well, how about those folks who don’t want to be trapped in traffic, which ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber are making much worse in many downtowns.  Buses, trolleys and light rail take cars off the roads. And what about poor people who can’t afford to pay ride-hailing services (which jack up their prices substantially at job-commuting times)?

Rarely do the Koch Brothers act for any other reasons than economic self-interest, e.g.,- promoting wide-open immigration to keep wages low and tax cuts focused on the very rich. So consider that Koch Industries is a big producer of gasoline and asphalt and makes a variety of automotive parts. The more  that people drive, the richer these billionaires become. To read The Times piece, please hit this link.

Of course, the Kochs can fly over the traffic in their helicopters.

Robert Whitcomb: Boston transit trials and triumphs

MBTA trolley bus.

From, Robert Whitcomb's Boston Diary, in The Boston Guardian, where a version of this piece first ran.

A  little historical perspective is needed as we whine about MBTA  delays and cancellations (especially during and after winter storms) and gridlocked street traffic.

The fact is that Boston  has much better mass transit now than it had, say, three decades ago. Most importantly, there’s a lot more of it available. And for all their occasional breakdowns, the MBTA subway cars, trolleys, buses and commuter trains are generally in better condition than they were when I lived in Boston fulltime, almost 50 years ago.  (These days I ride MBTA subways and commuter rail once or twice a month.)

And consider the South Station bus-train complex at the center of the MBTA empire: for decades a depressing, dirty domain for derelicts. Now it’s a spectacular intermodal center, served by more subway, commuter rail and bus lines than a generation  ago,  as well as by  Amtrak’s semi-high-speed Acela. I love that the MBTA’s still newish Silver Line will take you  directly to Logan Airport from the complex.

I can well remember when young having to wait for a bus  across the street from South Station --   a creepy area dominated by the dubious Essex Hotel and frequented by panhandling bums, sexual predators and sexual businesspeople, among my other pals.  (“Hey, cutie, have a light?’’) I had to take a bus because for a long time there were no trains to the South Shore, where I had relatives, the old New Haven Railroad having long since collapsed. Finally, the MBTA extended  rail commuter lines down there.

And the burying of the Central Artery and related Big Dig work has  often smoothed traffic and made downtown Boston more attractive and  thus more prosperous.

The rebuilding/expansion of the Back Bay MBTA-Amtrak station will further improve life for transiteers. The station now is dank, dark and cave-like – an unsettling entry for travelers entering the gorgeous Copley Square neighborhood.

Now,  if they could finally directly connect  South and North Stations so  that you could take an Amtrak or commuter train to north of Boston from south of it without having to  get off at South Station and go to North Station by MBTA, cab or Lyft or Ube -- the current ridiculous situation. And more ferries, please, including on the Charles River.

Of  course, Boston street traffic is  often horrendous.  That’s in part because  the city has a dense public-transit system, which makes it more prosperous, which brings in more businesses and individuals, which clogs the streets and spawns the need for more mass transit, etc.  At the same time, far, far too many people persist in driving their cars everywhere in this compact city.  

Uber and Lyft have also worsened traffic, by putting many more vehicles on the road to serve cell-phone dependents who might otherwise have taken the subway, trolleys or buses. Boston needs to get many more people into transport  that takes up much less room on the streets than all these cars with one passenger. That means we need more and better buses, not that I will ride in one.

Robert Whitcomb is president of The Boston Guardian, editor of New England Diary and a GoLocal24.com columnist.

Pot in the air

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary, in GoLocal24.com

As Rhode Island, Massachusetts and some other states (if not the Feds) loosen laws against marijuana cultivation  and use, pot smokers are becoming increasingly noxious neighbors in apartment and condo buildings. I have noticed the rich aroma of the stuff in some buildings and certainly on many sidewalks.

Reminder: Marijuana cultivation, sale and use are still prohibited under federal law, which presents considerable confusion in states that allow  sale and use of the stuff anyway. The Feds have long looked the other way on this, fearing that the federal law is just too difficult to enforce, considering some states’ policies and that millions of people regularly smoke pot.

Non-pot smokers are being forced to inhale this psychotropic smoke, which, to say the least, is unhealthy. Of  course, breathing second-hand tobacco smoke is bad for you, too, but it doesn’t affect your clarity of mind as marijuana smoke does. In some places, you can become involuntarily intoxicated.

Pot has become such a big business and tax-revenue supplier that, barring rigorous enforcement of federal laws still on the books, the problem of second-hand smoke can only get worse. And I laugh at the argument that states’ effective legalization of the weed primarily serves as a way to alleviate physical pain. Most people smoking pot just want to get mildly or very stoned for the pleasure of it, and there’s much profit and tax money to be made from the stuff.

To read an entertaining Boston Globe story on second-hand pot smoke, please hit this link.

Let it be high if beautiful

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

The Fane Organization wants to put up a 46-story skyscraper in downtown Providence. Some folks are outraged at its height. Not me. I wouldn’t mind if it were 90 stories if it had a superb design. Wouldn’t it be fine if people a ways down on Narragansett Bay could look north and see a  gorgeous, glittering tower on  the horizon announcing that there’s a real city there!          

But unfortunately, based on what’s been shown so far, it’s likely that something banal, like a condo tower in Fort Lee, N.J., will go up

Flowering reuse

"The Bridge of Flowers,'' in Shelburne Falls, Mass.

-- Photo by FFM784

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

There’s a lot of abandoned infrastructure in New England. After all, we’re an old region. It’s always pleasant to see old structures reused in ingenious ways. Take the Bridge of Flowers, in Shelburne Falls, in western Massachusetts. This is a lovely arched concrete railroad span built in 1908 by the evocatively named Shelburne Falls & Colrain Street Railway Co.

The bridge was abandoned in 1927 because of the financial woes of the company and was quickly overgrown with weeds. But within a couple of years, local volunteers came up with the idea of carting soil onto the bridge and turning it into something that they named the Bridge of Flowers. It became a tourist attraction, with a great diversity of blooms through the growing season.

So important -- psychologically, sociologically and economically -- had the  Bridge of Flowers become that when in the early ‘80s, the bridge required major repairs, locals came up with more than half a million dollars to fix it. Volunteers continue to plant and care for the plants

Heartening reuse. You could to say the same thing about bike paths on old railroad rights of way, although it would be better for the environment and economy if some of these old routes were instead passenger rail lines again. Even the famous East Bay Bike Path, in Rhode Island.

Coping with the Clutter Crisis

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal 24.

With the rapidly swelling population of people 65 or over, you can bet that the Clutter Crisis will intensify as elderly people strive to simplify their lives, which might include living in a smaller home. There’s been  quite a spate of stuff in the news media lately about the anti-clutter industry, probably because of the flood of new retirees.  The industry causes some clutter itself with its innumerable books, consultants and anti-clutter plastic boxes for sale.

Years ago, as my children were going off to college, I wrote a piece whose title I’ve long since forgotten for The Providence Journal about trying to get rid of stuff that had piled up over the decades. Flotsam and jetsam.

We’ve made some progress but of course more stuff has flowed into the house in the intervening years. Now we have resumed the clearing out process.

It’s mostly tedious but coming across old pictures, toys, kids’ books, etc., raises pangs of nostalgia  and regret. And you always think that a child or grandchild might be interested in keeping such items. But that’s rarely so. It’s just more stuff for the dumpster or the Salvation Army. Perhaps a few nice or at least very old pieces of furniture, a couple of pictures, especially an old oil painting or two, and a family Bible might be acceptable to the next generation but that’s about it.

So  do them a favor and get rid of as much as you can before your demise. As the song from the Thirties, says “It’s later than you think.’’

Great idea, but don't put it near us

The near-island called Nahant -- very exposed to rising seas.

-- Photo by Svabo

Adapted from  Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

There’s an entertainingly ironic not-in-my-backyard battle under way in Nahant, Mass., on the northern side of Boston Harbor.  The town, once perhaps best known for summer places of Boston Brahmins, has hosted, apparently without controversy, Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center since 1967.

Nahant, of course, is one of those coastal towns that faces the threat posed by rising sea levels and stronger storms caused by global warming.

But now Northeastern wants to build a 60,000-square-foot addition to the center in order to turn it into an internationally respected coastal sustainability institute. The structure would be built in a way to minimize its visual impact. The Boston Globe reports that two stories and a basement would go into the side and top of  a concrete bunker that housed two anti-submarine guns in World War II.  To read The Globe’s story, please hit this link:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/19/nahant-quiet-seaside-research-center-has-turned-into-bitter-battleground/mKkUCPnoKdriw4T1meezoO/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos4

Postcard from around 1910, when Nahant was best known as a summer resort.

R.I. economic advance and anxiety

"Anxiety" (1894), by Edvard Munch.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Given that Rhode Island’s economy is generally doing better than it has for years (of course the booming global economy explains much of this), that her administration has not been touched by  major scandal (yet) and that she is a very articulate and personable person (more apparent in small groups than in big ones or on TV), Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s lack of popularity surprises me.

Some of this is probably Rhode Islanders’ traditional cynicism and distrust of politicians, fueled by past scandals and tribalism. Some of it may be due to the fact that her administration has run a program to attract businesses with tax and other incentives to move to the state, causing some resentment/envy among the businesses already here. I, too, have skepticism about “bribing’’ companies to move to Rhode Island with special deals, preferring to entirely recruit on the basis of the location, quality of the physical and educational infrastructure and that vague but important thing “quality of life.’’

But in the real world, all states wave goodies to lure companies. Maybe if the six New England states agreed not to get into bidding wars with each other it would cut down on tax-incentive brandishing: Promote the region as a whole.

(To read about Vermont’s controversial business incentive program, which may have negative lessons for other New England states, please hit this link.

http://digital.vpr.net/post/can-you-prove-vermont-s-main-business-incentive-creates-jobs-it-s-debatable#stream/0)

And of course she also has to deal with the fallout from the UHIP/Deloitte benefits-payments system disaster, variants of which happened in some other states, too.

But maybe her biggest problem is simply that many see her as a cool technocrat who doesn’t connect with them

Former Sen. and Gov. Lincoln Chafee may run against Ms. Raimondo in the Democratic primary from the left, whose members are, as with the Tea Partiers on the right of the GOP, the most enthusiastic voters. As Richard Nixon, who tended to run from the right but govern in the center  or sometimes even center-left, famously put it in a conversation with John Whitaker, an aide:

“The trouble with far-right conservatives … is that they really don’t give a damn about people and the voters sense that. Yet any Republican presidential candidate can’t stray too far from the right-wingers because they can dominate a primary and are even more important in close general elections.”

“The far-right kooks are just like the nuts on the left. They’re door-bell ringers and balloon blowers and they turn out to vote.’’

Watch out for the 'balloon blowers'

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Given that Rhode Island’s economy is generally doing better than it has for years (of course the booming global economy explains much of this), that her administration has not been touched by  major scandal (yet) and that she is a very articulate and personable person (more apparent in small groups than in big ones or on TV), Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s lack of popularity surprises me.

Some of this is probably Rhode Islanders’ traditional cynicism and distrust of politicians, fueled by past scandals and tribalism. Some of it may be due to the fact that her administration has run a program to attract businesses with tax and other incentives to move to the state, causing some resentment/envy among the businesses already here. I, too, have skepticism about “bribing’’ companies to move to Rhode Island with special deals, preferring to entirely recruit on the basis of the location, quality of the physical and educational infrastructure and that vague but important thing “quality of life.’’

But in the real world, all states wave goodies to lure companies. Maybe if the six New England states agreed not to get into bidding wars with each other it would cut down on tax-incentive brandishing: Promote the region as a whole.

(To read about Vermont’s controversial business incentive program, which may have negative lessons for other New England states, please hit this link):

http://digital.vpr.net/post/can-you-prove-vermont-s-main-business-incentive-creates-jobs-it-s-debatable#stream/0)

And of course she also has to deal with the fallout from the UHIP/Deloitte benefits-payments system disaster, variants of which happened in some other states, too.

But maybe her biggest problem is simply that many see her as a cool technocrat who doesn’t connect with them

Former Sen. and Gov. Lincoln Chafee may run against Ms. Raimondo in the Democratic primary from the left, whose members are, as with the Tea Partiers on the right of the GOP, the most enthusiastic voters. As Richard Nixon, who tended to run from the right but govern in the center  or sometimes even center-left, famously put it in a conversation with John Whitaker, an aide:

“The trouble with far-right conservatives … is that they really don’t give a damn about people and the voters sense that. Yet any Republican presidential candidate can’t stray too far from the right-wingers because they can dominate a primary and are even more important in close general elections.”

“The far-right kooks are just like the nuts on the left. They’re door-bell ringers and balloon blowers and they turn out to vote.’’

The old town vs. gown danse macabre

Entrance to Ochre Court, Salve Regina University's first building. Salve is in the middle of the famous mansion district of Newport, R.I. (See Salve news below.)

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

The fierce opponents of Brown University’s plan to tear down four historic houses and move another one to make way for a new performing-arts center have won a victory. The university has decided to move the site of the facility. This would be smaller than the one originally planned and some of it would be underground. Four houses that had been threatened will be unmolested. Meanwhile, the quirky Lucien Sharpe Carriage House Sharpe Building will be moved from its present site to another in the neighborhood.

The people on College Hill want it both ways: They want to live near a prestigious university with a (mostly) beautiful campus but they don’t want to let the institution do some things that a growing university needs or at least wants to do in and around its campus.

It’s Brown, and to a lesser extent the Rhode Island School of Design, that prop up property prices and make College Hill such a vibrant urban neighborhood. But Brown, if it’s to remain competitive with the Ivy League and other institutions it sees as its peers, must continue to build. Expect more battles.

The latest big town-gown battle around here is in Newport, where Salve Regina University wants to build two big dorms to house hundreds of additional students. Some of the neighbors are scared that this would mean a flood of rowdy young people. And the preservationists think that the proposed buildings would be way out of scale for the neighborhood.

But the leaders of even relatively poor colleges like Salve feel that their institutions must grow or die. And even tiny colleges change their name to “university’’ to sound more important.

Getting New Hampshire more on track

The old train station in Woonsocket, R.I., that's the headquarters of Boston Surface Railroad Co.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

In further acceptance that southern New Hampshire is part of Greater Boston (as is northern  the rather new Boston Surface Railroad Co. to provide commuter service from Nashua and Bedford, N.H., to Lowell, Mass., where passengers could link up with the MBTA. The only passenger rail service that the Granite State has now is Amtrak’s Downeaster, which connects Boston and Brunswick, Maine (via Portland), with stops at Dover, Durham and Exeter.

Mayor Donchess says the service would be a public-private partnership.

Some readers of past columns might remember that Boston Surface Railroad plans to open  a commuter rail line connecting Providence and  Worcester,  with service now expected to start in the summer of 2019.

Great stuff!

Vegetable freak shows

-- Photo byDavid Politzer

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Many years ago, when I worked at the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP), I was amused that late summer and early fall brought lots of phone calls from gardeners and farmers claiming that they had grown the world’s largest vegetable – be it a tomato, a cucumber, a pumpkin,  a gourd, etc.

So reading about the achievement of Joe Jutras, of Scituate, R.I., in reportedly growing a world-record-size pumpkin, a record-long gourd and the heaviest squash was a nice nostalgia trip. Of course, while Mr. Jutras’s huge vegetables are impressive (if useless), it’s very unlikely that they’d be considered records if all of the world’s many millions of farmers could have submitted their freaks.

But what do vegetables of these sizes taste like?

A pre-EPA beach

"Surf, Cohasset {Mass.}, by Maurice Prendergast, ca. 1900.

I remember sharply the look and smell of the beach that was down the hill and through the woods near our house on Massachusetts Bay. Low rocky headlines on each side. Big white-elephant gray-shingled  and faux Spanish Mission style mansions -- some summer places and some year-round— loomedamong the bayberry and poison ivy and over the gray sand and pebbles beach, which was occasionally covered by oil from ships a few miles offshore. There was often a rank smell from the oil and from anarrow stream of sewage water that frequently flowed down one side of the beach. (This was way before the Environmental Protection Agency.)  Soon after an hour in the sun, my back hurt from sunburn. 

The water, unlike Florida’s or even Buzzards Bay, was usually cold and murky. But we all went swimming in it anyway. Then we rushed home to our  gray-shingled house  a quarter mile from the fragrant beach and took hot showers.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Will these deals raise economic 'animal spirits'

“The Proposition,’’ by William-Adolphe Bougureau (1825-1905).

From Robert Whitcomb's Dec. 22 "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com.

I admire the very hard and patient labor of Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and her colleagues (presumably working with Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration) to bring some highly respected companies and quite a few jobs to Rhode Island.

The biggest recent employee hauls, all slated for Providence, will be hundreds of jobs (to start) coming to Wexford Science & Technology’s project in the 195 relocation area; 300 at Virgin Pulse (maybe in the Providence Journal Building); 100 at General Electric, and 75  at Johnson & Johnson. The hope is that those well-paid employees will be just the beginning of thousands of well-paying ones arriving over the next couple of years. (City and state official are apparently still working to bring in some Pay Pal operations, too.

We’ll see.

It was gratifying that J&J cited the presence of Brown and RISD as a reason for the project. The state hasn’t gotten nearly enough leverage from its higher-education establishments, or from its proximity to(and lower costs than) the brainiac center of Greater Boston.

A lovely change from  the 38 Studios approach.

Of course, the new arrivals will each get millions of dollars in “tax incentives’’ to come to Rhode Island -- incentives that everyone else must pay for. Such incentives are the rule in every state to varying degrees. Two big recent examples – Indiana (pressed by Donald Trump) bribing the Carrier Corp. to not send 800 jobs to Mexico and Massachusetts giving many millions of dollars in goodies to General Electric to move its headquarters to Boston’s waterfront.

Companies that have loyally stayed in their states and paid taxes there without special favors must be irritated. But life is indeed unfair – and probably getting more so. The rich get richer and the poor get…. Get used to it, especially over the next four years.

The idea behind the legal bribery is that not only will these big, rich companies bring in new jobs in themselves but they’ll give many  local vendors a lot of work and thus incentives to hire more people. That means not only vendors already in the area but also new ones coming in to serve the big shots.  The old “multiplier effect’’.

And just by having such prestigious enterprises in Rhode Island as the ones lured by the Raimondo administration, it is argued, will boost the “animal spirits’’ of  local and other business people and investors about Rhode Island.  The hope is that such optimism/local pride will then help create, or lead to the  import of, more enterprises, in a virtuous circle.

Will this work enough in all too cynical and negative Rhode Island to turn around the state for the long term? Who knows for sure, but I give a lot of credit to Ms. Raimondo and her staff for their labors while being denounced from all sides by those who provide few if any practical alternatives.

Robert Whitcomb: Reporting in pre-glitz Boston

Soon after I had graduated from college, in June 1970,  a friend suggested that I try to get a job at the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP), an old Yankee establishment newspaper that also had a lucrative TV and radio station.  I applied, but first, the city editor, the always unflappable and wry Bob Kierstead, said that I should report and write a research project  -- a little book -- for the paper to prove I could report. The book, on Boston politics, history and demographics, was meant to help the paper’s reporters cover the next mayoral and other local elections.

Mr. Kierstead found  the little book useful enough to hire me a reporter. I wish that I could find what I wrote and compare the reporting in it with the very different (much glitzier and more Manhattanish) Boston of today. Back then, Boston had a down-at-the-heels quality that evoked the Thirties, or even Dickens’s London.

Then began a crazy year of covering all kinds of stuff – from train derailments,  murders, industrial-strength arson, potheads lost in the White Mountains, race and student riots,  the start of Boston’s busing/desegregation crisis and the opening of Walt Disney World. It was one of my most vivid periods and showed me what I could do on deadline and often in considerable chaos on the road.

I thought that it would be just an occupational side trip, whence I would return to school to perhaps get a doctorate in history or start a small business. But I found I had a talent for quickly if roughly understanding people, places and situations and concisely writing down fast what I had so quickly learned. What’s more, back then, I liked to travel (much more than now). Journalism spoke to these things. A college history major, I looked on my work as writing current history. Or, as the late editor of The Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, put it, “history on the run.’’

But I knew I couldn’t stay at the Herald Traveler because it was likely soon to lose its FCC license for its very profitable TV station, which, with its sister radio station, had been subsidizing the newspaper. The case went up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the owners lost for good; the paper's assets were sold shortly thereafter to Hearst, for whose  sensationalist Boston tabloid, the Record American, I had worked in a summer job as an editorial assistant/gofer.

So I applied to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was admitted, got an economics fellowship and off I went, at the end of the summer of 1971, to New York. This was just after the Pentagon Papers were printed and Nixon took America off the gold standard. The latter led me to interview  for the Herald Traveler a covey of famous economists, most notably Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith, shortly before I left for Manhattan.

It was fun  to have such access to celebrities.

And it was a relief to leave the stuffy walkup apartment I was renting on the Cambridge-Somerville line from the brother of a former girlfriend.

Robert Whitcomb is editor of New England Diary.

'As beautiful as days can be'

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

-- Robert Frost, "My November Guest''

Brakes needed in bike-path push

Excerpted from Robert Whitcomb's"Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.

Alex Marshall, writing recently in Governing.com, raised some cautionary notes about the bike-path mania in some cities.

The biggest one is whether it’s worth it to eat up a lane of car traffic to assign the space to bicyclists.  Have cities adequately forecast the number of people who are likely to use bikes and maybe even give up their cars? We see a lot of dedicated bike lanes with very few bicyclists.  Perhaps in a city with a lot of college students, such as Providence, adense and carefully planned network of bike lanes can make sense. But what would be the tradeoff against what might be heavier motor-vehicle traffic congestion created by removing lanes?

And safety would call for many bike lanes to have physical barriers separating them from car and truck traffic rather than just lines. Many of these lanes now are too dangerous, especially compared to Europe’s.

I learned in Europe, where I used to work, and rode a bike a few times in the Netherlands, that compared with the U.S., car and truck drivers there bear much more legal responsibility in crashes with bikes than do bicyclists. That’s simply because the former are driving fast, multi-ton machines. “It’s a standard sometimes known as ‘default liability,’’’ Mr. Marshall says. We need that in America. (I wonder how the coming of self-driving cars might affect all this.)

U.S. jurisdictions should look at their traffic laws and make adjustments.

Perhaps after a few years of adding bike paths, communities might very rationally decide to turn some of them back to cars, trucks, buses and install light rail. My own preference is for cities and states to focus on mass transit, not bike lanes. But, of course, they’re both admirable.

-- Robert Whitcomb

Robert Whitcomb: Blue State economics; overrated fracking; ugly Route 114

This is the latest "Digital Diary'' column from GoLocal24.

Two somewhat related stories: General Electric moving to Boston and the Red State-Blue State economic divide

For decades, we have heard about the glories of the Sunbelt, now often called the Red States. These generally Republican-run places are cited as exemplars of economic growth. Their leaders also like to assert that unlike the Democratic-leaning Blue States they’re centers of individualism, and not wallowing in tax-supported programs.

But in any event, the Red States continue, after all these years of air-conditioning, to have the nation’s highest levels of poverty, the worst health indicesand the worst sociological problems, such as violence, illegitimacy, drug addiction and so on. The Blue States are, generally, the rich states and with much better social indices.

That’s in large part because the rich folks who run the Red States do everything they can to keep their taxes low, and  thus, for example, favor sales taxes, which are regressive, over income taxes, which are not. Thus public infrastructure – in education, health, transportation and environment -- suffer.

Meanwhile, the Blue States, for their part, tend to put money into physical infrastructure, education and mass transit (in their metro areas) that help the locals keep churning out innovation. (Actually, if they want to get richer, they’d increase investmentin these areas.)

The suckers in places like much of the South follow the fool’s errand of electing anti-tax fanatics to keep the local lobbyists happy, with such political tools as touting the glories of guns to help distract the citizenry.

Because of federal policies that favor moving tax money from rich places to poor ones, Blue States heavily subsidizethe Red States, for all their latter’s whining about the Blue States’ ‘’socialistic’’ tendencies. After all, the people in the richer states pay more in federal income taxes than the ones in the poorer (generally the Red States) because Blue States’ policies have tended to make their citizens better paid than those in the Sunbelt. The real welfare states are the Red States. (An exception in all this is Utah, with its Mormon rigor.)

 I have written about thesocio-economicgap between the Red and Blue States for years.  And that gap seems to be widening again. Look at a new statistical analysis in an essay “The Path to Prosperity Is Blue,’’ by Professors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson in theJuly 31 New York Times using U.S. Census and other government data.

Which gets us to GE, whose management, led by CEO Jeff Immelt, is moving from one Blue State, Connecticut, to Boston. The main reason is the density of engineering and other talent in Greater Boston, which Massachusetts’s very good public education, healthcare and transportation infrastructure has helped to build up. (That many of GE’s up-and-coming stars don’t particularly like their current boring suburban office park also played a role in the decision to leave the Nutmeg State.  They want to be in an exciting city.)

Of course, while Connecticut’s infrastructure has been slipping it still is superior to most of the Red States’. Just the fact that it has lots of passenger trains gives it an advantage.

Massachusetts, under GOP and Democratic governors, has long accepted the importance of investment in infrastructure. That has helped make it and keep it rich – rich enough to send some of its residents’ income to Red States.

As Professors Hacker and Pierson note at the end of their piece: ‘’{W}e should remember that the key drivers of growth (and incomes} are science, education and innovation, not low taxes, lax regulations or greater exploitation of natural resources.’’

“And we should be worried, whatever our partisan tilt, that leading conservatives promote aneconomic model so disconnected from the true sources of prosperity.’’

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Speaking of “exploitation of natural resources,’’ some states, and parts of states, have had famous booms from fracking for natural gas. One of the selling points has been that because burning natural gas contributes less to global warming than burning oil or coal, that fracking is an environmentally better. But increasing evidence that fracking releases huge amounts of methane at and near the drilling sites suggests that it’s far from the wonderful transition fuel away from oil and coal that it has been made out to be.  Redouble efforts to boost wind, solar, hydro and geothermal, please.

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It’s clear that the cold killer Vladimir Putin’s Russia is engaged in a relentless cyberwar against the United States. Failure to find ways to push back to undermine the Putin regime will only embolden him further. Clouding everything is Donald Trump’s admiration for Putin and the developer’s business dealings in Russia.

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The Trump phenomenon and the return of the Clintons has of course elicited much denunciation of them. But why not more attacks on the people who hired them – the voters? Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton have been public figures for a very long time, and most oftheir strengths and dirty laundry have long been visible. In spite of that, Republican and Democratic primary voters gave them the nod, even when other candidates with good records in public service were running in both parties.

Perhaps this year’s primary campaign might encourage party organizations, in the states and nationally, to reduce the roles of the primaries, now conducted in electronic media echo chambers, and increase the influence of party elders. The idea would be to save the parties from an increasingly ill-informedcitizenry who wants to hear again and again the mantras that reinforce their wishful thinking.

Bring back the “smoke-filled rooms’’ filled with smart political operators insulated to some extent from the short-termism and demagoguery  that  some of the electronic media, in particular, facilitate.

Okay, this will probably neverhappen because it would be called “undemocratic’’ even though the parties legally have the right to determine their own rules for nominee selection. Indeed, the body politic would be healthier if the parties wrestled back the power and influence that they have lost to special-interest groups and hysterical media. The general election, of course, is quite a different creature.

And, while we’re at it, let’s bring back some of that pork-barrel spending, aka “earmarks’’ (a very minor part of government budgets) that has been a lubricant in getting legislation crafted and passed in the days before Congress became gridlocked.

Reform reform.

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Route 114 in Middletown,  R.I., on the way to the way to partly gorgeous Newport, is one of America’s uglier and more depressing stretches of strip malls and other commercial crud. Now that the Internet and middle-class wage stagnation are ravagingbrick-and-mortar stores, we can expect many more stores on this depressing stretch to close.

Hopefully, the abandoned commerce will be replaced by trees and other plants and such possible routes to a better future as solar-energy arrays or wind turbines.

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Providence needs more revenue but putting parking meters around the Thayer Street retail area has been a loser so far. The confusion and cost to drivers associated with the meters has scared away many customers, already inconvenienced  by the many parking spaces handed over to Brown as part of a desperate payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal a few years back.

The money that the city makes from the meters may end up more than offset by lower real-estate taxes because of  commerce killed by themeters.  The city needs an agonizing reappraisal of this policy for Rhode Island’s Harvard Square.

Wayland Square,  a few blocks away, seems to have avoided the worst effects of the meter invasion. Nearby free street parking and some large parking lots are probably the main  reasons. Indeed, the square bustles with stores (some new) and eateries and lots of walkers and buyers.

In both places, denser and more frequent mass transit would help address the parking problem, and in a fiscally fairer way: The added sales tax that would go to the state from prospering stores and restaurants would help finance RIPTA expansion, in a virtuous circle.

Robert Whitcomb is overseer of New England Diary.