Vox clamantis in deserto
Accepting cold feet
“Maine Coast Winter 1909” (oil on canvas), by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul in the state of Maine.”
― Marilynne Robinson (born 1943), from her novel Gilead
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“Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals.’’
— Paul Theroux (1941), American travel writer, novelist and essayist
‘Remaking the land’
“Totem #1 (primal places)’’ (acrylic, oil on birch panel), by Molly Dickinson, in her show “Of Longing and Loss,’’ at the Jamestown (R.I.) Arts Center, Nov. 20-Jan 9.
She has asked:
“Do we find beauty in nature, or only after we have reshaped the landscape to our own purposes? Perhaps impossible to answer, as little of these lands have escaped the imprint of human activity. I paint my pieces directly, quickly, so that one feels my hand, my marks, remaking the land, too.’’
‘Humor and hope’
“Noggin,’’ in Kathleen Schneider’s show “Taken to Heart,’’ at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, Oct. 16-Jan. 23.
The gallery says:
“Through the methodical, time-intensive processes of dyeing, sewing, printing, and assembling, Kathleen Schneider creates sculpture, textiles, and prints that are labors of love, reflecting on our ever-changing world. Inspired by daily life, poetry, and treasured books, her work explores the relationship between personal experience and larger social and political histories. Using vibrant colors and shadows cast by the work, the artist investigates how humor and hope can exist alongside uncertainty and struggle, inviting viewers to consider how the current political landscape impacts our lives and communities. Schneider gives emotions, speech, and activism physical form, showing how personal reflection can become collective action.’’
Chris Powell: When the state is too hard on ex-cons
—Photo by Rainerzufall1234
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut coddles many criminals. Someone may be convicted of a half-dozen or more offenses in separate incidents over a period of years and still not be locked up at all, much less be deemed incorrigible and locked up for good.
Despite all the prattling done by the state's liberal politicians about guns, at last count most gun-crime charges were being plea-bargained away in favor of guilty pleas to such charges as robbery and assault, crimes that are mistakenly considered more serious. If gun crimes were prosecuted more vigorously, there probably would be much less gun crime.
But the other week a report from the Connecticut Mirror demonstrated how state law is inflicting unnecessary cruelty on former offenders and even punishing them for rehabilitating themselves.
The report highlighted the case of a North Branford couple, Tracy and Billy DeSenti, who had done serious prison time, the woman for drug offenses, the man for assault and larceny. Upon their release they met in a program for former offenders and married married. They supported each other, stayed out of trouble, got jobs, bought and renovated a house, and showed that troublesome people sometimes can rehabilitate themselves.
But when the man died and the house passed to his wife, state government determined that his estate owed the state $233,000 as repayment for the cost of his incarceration.
Shocking as this was to the widow, Connecticut has enforced such a law for many years. The widow could discharge her late husband's debt only by selling the house and taking an apartment whose rent was higher than her former mortgage payment.
The law is fair to a certain extent -- the extent involving financial windfalls. After imposing serious costs on society, former offenders shouldn't get rich through no substantial efforts of their own. They should be required to cover the cost of their imprisonment if they come into big money via things like lottery winnings, lawsuit settlements, damage awards, major inheritances, and such.
In a case that may raise similar issues, a man who had done prison time in Connecticut and was the father of a young girl who was murdered, apparently by family members, is suing the state Department of Children and Families on behalf of his daughter's estate, even though he had abandoned the girl and her mother long before the murder. If the estate wins a lot of money, he might have to repay the state for his prison costs but still get rich in the name of the daughter he abandoned.
But the house owned by the North Branford woman and her late husband was not the product of a windfall. It was something they earned honestly through years together. While the house can be construed as an inheritance for the surviving spouse, it came to her only at the cost of her husband's life.
Each year state government recovers about $3.3 million in incarceration costs from hundreds of former prisoners. It's a substantial amount that shouldn't be foregone lightly.
But few former prisoners have substantial assets and so most aren't billed. Most former prisoners struggle to re-establish themselves in life, and the more they are ground down by circumstances, the less incentive they have to live honestly and not return to crime. Indeed, prison is usually a profound punishment long after a prisoner's release, and most former prisoners do return to crime within a few years.
Upon their release most prisoners are unaware of their liability to repay the state for their incarceration if they ever succeed financially, and if, in fairness, the Correction Department started warning them about it upon their release, they might sense a millstone around their neck and lose enthusiasm for staying out of trouble. The state would be telling them: We'll never let you succeed financially through your own efforts.
So the General Assembly should reconsider the incarceration costs repayment law. The law should continue to apply to true windfalls, but what former prisoners earn by their own efforts and commitment to rehabilitation should be exempted.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years\ (CPowell@cox.net)
Stupidity will keep you from going insane
Print of the McLean Asylum in 1853, then in Somerville, Mass. It moved to Belmont, Mass., in 1894. Founded in 1811, the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital remains among the world’s most important private mental hospitals, encompassing extensive treatment and research.
"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894), Boston-based physician, poet, professor and polymath
Awed by seasonal change
“Menagerie’’ (colored pencils on bond), by Linda Klein, in her show “A Walk in the Park,’’ at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Nov. 4-20.
The artist says:
“For many years, I have walked the trails and paths in the parks around Framingham and Sudbury, {Mass.} and I have had the experience of watching nature change over the seasons.
During those walks I have seen a tightly curled green stalk unfurl into a showy green fan. I have seen moss slowly grow over a dead log creating a soft carpet for insects to make their homes. Trees move from the wind often swaying above my head, and their movements create sounds: creaking or swishing, bird calls, bees buzzing, insects digging or flitting.
As the seasons change, the greens begin to fade into shades of ochre, rust and brown. The leaves slowly float down from the trees or drop their needles to gather on the paths.
But during winter the sounds are quiet, almost absent except for the occasional bird flitting from tree to tree or the scuttle of some small animal looking for food.
I love this time. I am awed by its beauty and humbled by its very existence.
More from the sewer of scams that is the Internet
Beware invoices you might get in your email from “Geek Squad.’’ They are probably yet another criminal con.
I found this warning from the Federal Trade Commission:
· The Bait: You get an email or text with a fake invoice claiming a $200 to $500 auto-renewal charge for "Total Tech Support" or "Secure Guard".
· The Urgency: It claims your account will be billed unless you call a phone number within 24 to 48 hours.
· The Trap: If you call, the fake support agent offers a refund, asks for remote access to your computer, and manipulates your bank screen to steal your money.
And watch this show about international scammers.
What to do with those defunct colleges’ campuses? How about schools for real ‘seniors’?
The Dakin House dorm at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass. Hampshire is the best known of defunct or soon-to-be-defunct small New England liberal-arts colleges. It’s closing at the end of its current semester.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal 24.com
Some small New England colleges are treasures, while some seem superfluous, and a few have been close to scams. In any case, the region’s small liberal-arts colleges have been closing at an accelerating rate in the past few years. Blame changing demographics, especially the decline in the number of college-age students; the steep price of higher education; Zoom, and the rise of artificial intelligence (whose effects already include a decline in thinking, let alone critical thinking, among students). AI, Zoom and even Google undermine -- for some people -- the perceived usefulness of being physically present on a campus. Then there are other technological “advances” with good and bad effects.
One of the most, er, exciting things about artificial intelligence is how easy it makes it for malign forces to lie, to erase the space between truth and falsehood.
Some have noted that as the Internet has been killing newspapers (which might be considered educational), it has also been killing colleges. Anyway, at least 10 New England colleges have closed (or are about to close – e.g., most famously Hampshire College) since 2020.
One way to help keep some of these smaller colleges open is for them to save them money by having multiple colleges merge some of their administrative functions and costs (such as purchasing) and to cross-market. That could include letting students cross-register and try different college campuses in different semesters, by means of a central coordinating organization, such as The New England Board of Higher Education. Appeal to students’ curiosity and adventurousness. For example, some might want to be in a city one semester and in the country another, or, more importantly, want out courses not available at their home campuses. But promote New England colleges as a general brand.
Think regionally!
Look at what the University of Vermont, while not a small liberal-arts college, is doing. To boost enrollment, starting next year UVM will be offering plus-35 percent tuition breaks to students from other New England states in 31 majors.
Other states in the region are doing similar things. Read about the New England Board of Higher Education’s Tuition Break program.
For that matter, members of such organizations as the Twelve College Consortium (linking better known and financed schools in the Northeast) have for decades pooled resources by encouraging cross-registration and promoting each others’ special strengths.
With intense competition for students from colleges and universities in the rest of the United States, some with fast-growing populations, olde New England’s colleges and universities, in the region that virtually invented American higher education, must collaborate much more.
Of course, small financially wrought colleges will continue to close, and in some places that could help address the region’s serious lack of housing affordable for low-and-middle-income people. Convert dorms and other college buildings into rental and/or owned housing. The lack of housing has increasingly hampered New England’s economy, though the region remains the nation’s richest, to no small degree because it’s the most educated and all-in-all the most honestly and competently governed, whatever the corruption that pops up in some localities.
College-campus-to-housing conversations are starting to happen around New England. Consider, for example, that a local community housing-development group is moving to buy the campus, in Craftsbury, Vt., of Sterling College, which closed this year.
Also, as I’ve written here before, another good way to address the housing shortage, and therefore high costs, is to encourage the use of prefabricated and modular construction, which is cheaper, and faster to put up, than traditional housing construction. And it can be quite attractive.
Or maybe parts of some of these closed campuses could be converted for use as public K-12 schools.
I got a suggestion from my friend Dr. Edward Iannuccilli asking if some of those closed colleges might be good venues for elderly people to take courses while staying in these “defunct’’ campuses’ dorms. While the demographic of college-age young people is shrinking, that of old people is surging!
Dr. Iannuccilli, a well known author, best known as a memoirist, as well as distinguished physician and former health-care executive, noted:
“I've attended and given several presentations, including Circle of Scholars, the Learning Connection, and Lifelong Learning.
“They are always well attended by engaged, enthusiastic senior citizens.’’
Maybe turn some of these campuses into colleges for senior citizens, where some people might even get late-in-life degrees. More productive than taking a cruise.
Trump won’t like this
On Buzzards Bay: The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, in New Bedford, Mass., which is next to Dartmouth.
A slightly edited report by The New England Council
UMass Dartmouth has received $730,090 from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) to expand offshore wind workforce development and advance research supporting responsible industry growth. The funding is part of $4.2 million announced by the Healey-Driscoll administration for offshore wind workforce and research projects across Massachusetts.
UMass Dartmouth received three awards totaling $730,090: $250,000 to continue its Closing the Experience Gap offshore wind internship program, $280,501 to continue research on the potential effects of offshore wind development on cod spawning grounds in Southern New England, and $199,589 to develop a regional data-collection strategy supporting offshore wind monitoring in the Gulf of Maine. The internship program provides students with paid 200-hour internships at companies and organizations working in offshore wind and related industries. Over the past four years, the program has created nearly 100 internship opportunities for more than 40 students and nearly 20 companies and organizations, with the new funding expected to support about 30 additional internships over the next two years.
“UMass Dartmouth is grateful to the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the MassCEC for this important funding,” said UMass Dartmouth Provost Ramprasad Balasubramanian. “These grants create meaningful opportunities for our students to gain hands-on experience in a growing industry while contributing to work that matters for the Commonwealth. By connecting education, research, and industry, UMass Dartmouth is helping prepare the next generation of talent, strengthen the local and state economy, and advance Massachusetts’ renewable energy strategy.”
William Morgan: Sculpting Melville, boosting Mass. South Coast tourism
This summer a dramatic statue of author Herman Melville was unveiled at the Seamen’s Bethel, across from the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Mass. One wonders if Melville were quite as handsome as his depiction in bronze by Stephanie Rocknak. The author of Moby Dick is rendered dramatically, a windblown figure merged with a whale’s ribs and the ocean’s waves.
There are many seminal novels by major novelists that are indelibly associated with cities, but it might be fair to say that Melville’s tale of Ishmael, Captain Ahab, and the white whale has contributed much to boosting contemporary New Bedford‘s fortunes. With its two whale skeletons and a half-size model of a whaling ship, the Whaling Museum is one of New England’s great treasures, drawing a steady stream of tourists to a spectacular if small area of restored buildings in what some might see as an otherwise tawdry town with limited attractions. Whaling made New Bedford America’s richest city in the mid-19th Century, and the popularity of the great American novel has kept the romance of that past alive.
Most artists have second jobs as teachers, and Rocknak is no exception, except that at Hartwick College, in Upstate New York, she teaches philosophy and cognitive science. Perhaps best known for her narrative, life-size bronze of Edgar Allan Poe in Boston, complete with a raven and papers blowing in the wind, most of her work has been in wood. With the Melville, Rocknak was experimenting with a combination of traditional public statuary and abstraction – mixed metaphors, if you will. And she is mostly successful — the rib and wave connection is awkward at best, but civic monuments are tricky, and far too many run to a kind of Soviet realism, which often comes across as mawkish.
The very nature of public sculpture is conservative, so Rocknak sagely offers acknowledgments to some of very best mentors. Melville’s right hand on the whale’s rib recalls the great Baroque artist’s Bernini’s exceedingly lifelike rendition of Pluto’s hand pressing into the maiden’s thigh in the Abduction of Proserpina. The standing figure of Melville echoes the equally nautical Admiral David Farragut in New York by Augustus St. Gaudens, where the sculptor wisely relegated the water nymphs and waves to the plinth.
For a possible book on the 9/11 memorials, I looked at hundreds of commemorative monuments from all across America. At the end there were fewer than a score of works that qualified as exceptional art. Stephanie Rocknak’s Melville, on the other hand, is a triumphant tribute to the author of Moby Dick.
William Morgan encountered Moby Dick in a course on American literature at Tufts University. A Providence-based architectural historian and photographer, Morgan is the author of American Country Churches and Yankee Modern, among other titles.
But we made it to fall
"Summer of the Dead” (oil on Masonite), by Robert S. Neuman (1926-2015, in the show “Robert S. Neuman: Expressive Roots,’’ at the Elizabeth Moss Gallery, Falmouth, Maine, through Oct. 17.
The gallery says:
“Expressive Roots’’ presents an artist whose curiosity and imagination fused painterly impulse with rigorous draftsmanship. On Maine's own Mount Desert Island, he became a local legend by bartering paintings for a summer home where he grew into a fixture of the island's buzzing art scene. As he reached towards new ways to see the world, unabashed bold color and human vitality became cornerstones of his artistic practice. Neuman struck his own path, never distracted from pursuing his highly personal vision. His life's work represents an unwavering contribution to the continuation of abstraction in American art with curiosity and imagination that continues to inspire new generations of viewers and makers.’’
Jeff LeBlanc: Decoding Gen X communication in the workplace
From The Conversation, except for graphic above
BOSTON
For all the talk about generational differences at work, some of the biggest differences show up in surprisingly ordinary moments.
Take being late for work. A Gen Z employee in her 20s I spoke with works at a small, locally owned café and restaurant run by an older Gen X owner. When she realized she was going to be late one day, she texted him. He was frustrated. To him, being late was serious enough to warrant a phone call, and a text felt too casual and impersonal.
She saw the exact same interaction very differently.
“He’s super busy, so I felt a call was going to take up too much time,” she told me. “So I texted. I thought it was more considerate.”
Both thought they understood what respectful workplace communication looked like. They just had completely different definitions of it.
I study workplace culture and communication, and I see this type of misunderstanding as increasingly common in multigenerational workplaces. And this is becoming more pronounced as Gen Z moves further into the workforce. The oldest members of Gen Z are now approaching 30, while the youngest are in college and high school.
What’s distinctive about the older members of Gen Z is that many went through college, internships or their first jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, when much of our communication moved online and masks often covered half our faces. And there’s a new twist now, as artificial intelligence changes how we communicate all over again.
The result isn’t necessarily that Gen Z employees communicate better or worse with their bosses and colleagues than previous generations did. I argue that they have simply learned to do so in a very different environment.
When a text means something more
The café example is an easy one to dismiss as younger workers preferring texting and feeling that phone calls are for important occasions only.
But that misses what I think is the more interesting point: The employee wasn’t trying to avoid her boss. She thought she was respecting his time.
For her boss, by contrast, the phone call itself carried meaning. It communicated that she understood the seriousness of being late.
Neither one had explained that expectation to the other.
Managers shouldn’t assume that employees attach the same meaning they do to a particular form of communication. If being late requires a phone call, they need to say so. A two-minute conversation about expectations can prevent both people from walking away from an interaction believing the other was disrespectful.
Another common stumble concerns openness, which might feel like oversharing.
One Gen Z worker I spoke with had recently started a job at a large New England company in a blue-collar industry. He was struggling with severe anxiety and decided to tell his baby boomer manager. The manager was sympathetic, but also uneasy.
“It made me feel uncomfortable, if I’m being honest,” the manager told me. “I didn’t want to downplay his anxiety, but I’m not sure I needed to know.”
That distinction matters. His reaction wasn’t that anxiety wasn’t real or that his employee should simply get over it. But he questioned how much of it belonged in their professional relationship.
Many older workers learned that professionalism is about setting clear boundaries between personal and professional life. Members of Gen Z are coming of age during a period when conversations about mental health and personal well-being are considerably more public. What feels like honesty to one person can feel like oversharing to their boss.
This doesn’t mean that managers have to become therapists, and employees don’t have to disclose everything happening in their lives. But both may need to recognize that their comfort level around disclosure isn’t universal.
What younger workers may see as honesty could be seen as oversharing by older colleagues, who tend to keep more boundaries over personal information. Aleksandra Sapozhnikova on Unsplash, CC BY
Learning to read a room when the room disappeared
Some workplace communication is never spoken at all. Think about how people traditionally learned to read a room. They watched faces around a conference table. They noticed a change in a manager’s tone. Someone caught them after a meeting and quietly explained what had just happened.
Now think about someone who was 18 or 19 in 2020.
At exactly the age when many young people would have been developing these skills in college, internships and early jobs, the room disappeared. Classes went online. Internships became remote. When people returned in person, masks sometimes made facial communication more difficult.
That doesn’t mean that members of Gen Z can’t read facial expressions, but we should be careful about assuming everyone had the same opportunities to learn the unwritten signals of professional life. If feedback matters, I believe managers should say it. A disappointed expression on a Zoom call is a poor substitute for a conversation.
I thought that was understood
Imagine a manager telling a young employee: “I need this by Friday.” The employee sends it back at 4:30 p.m. that Friday afternoon. The manager is annoyed because they intended to review it that morning, make changes and send it along to someone else.
The employee is equally confused. The deadline was Friday, and they met it.
This deadline mismatch gets at something I have repeatedly encountered in my research with Gen Z workers. In a survey I conducted of 250 Gen Z professionals across industries, clear structural expectations emerged alongside fairness and empathetic engagement as recurring themes.
If an employee wants clarity, it shouldn’t automatically be confused with hand-holding. An employee can want autonomy and still want to know exactly what success looks like. “Friday” and “Friday by 10 a.m. because I need three hours to review this” communicate very different expectations.
Artificial intelligence may make this issue even more important. We can now produce polished emails, summarize meetings and generate information faster than ever. But more communication does not guarantee more understanding.
I believe that may be the larger lesson for every generation working together. We tend to mistake the workplace norms we learned for common sense. They aren’t. They were taught to us by the workplaces, technologies and moments in history in which we began our careers.
Gen Z is learning theirs in a very different world.
Jeff LeBlanc is a learning facilitator for online master of business administration at Boston University.
He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or other organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.
Boston University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.
Robert Glover: In Maine and elsewhere, how to boost voters’ trust in elections
From The Conversation (except for picture above)
ORONO, Maine
Recently, I moderated a national event that had college students speaking with election officials, something I often find myself doing this time of year. This year, a new question kept coming up: “If I’m voting by mail, can I trust my ballot will actually show up?”
For college students, such considerations have urgency. Many are voting in their first major election, often while living away from home. They may be deciding whether to register where they attend college or request an absentee ballot from home. This year, many are weighing whether they trust the process that will bring their vote from the mailbox to the ballot box to be counted.
This uncertainty comes after a monthslong legal fight over the U.S. Postal Service’s role in mail voting, sparked by President Trump’s attempts to dramatically limit mail voting. On Sept. 14, 2026, the Supreme Court barred new Postal Service restrictions on election mail from taking effect.
The court’s decision resolved the immediate question of whether the restrictions would stand. But it did not settle the larger question that now hangs over this election: Can voters trust the machinery of elections in the first place?
I’m a political scientist, and I study elections and voting. For more than a decade, I’ve helped lead nonpartisan student voter engagement efforts at the University of Maine and helped recruit and train student poll workers. I also serve alongside them, administering elections.
That dual role has given me an unusual view of elections – both as a researcher studying public attitudes and as someone who has spent many long days watching the wheels of American democracy turn firsthand.
Maricopa County in Arizona offers public tours of its tabulation and election center. Screenshot, Maricopa County Recorder's Office
Why voters trust elections
Research on confidence in elections points to several factors that play a role in whether voters trust outcomes at the polls.
The most obvious factor is their experience. Voters who encounter problems casting a ballot are likely to have less confidence in the election process.
But the people they encounter matter as well.
Research shows that competent, well-trained poll workers increase voter confidence and that voters’ perceptions of election legitimacy can be affected by whether the people administering the election reflect the racial and ethnic identities represented in the communities they serve.
Familiarity is also critical. If voters are familiar with the processes that translate voter will into outcomes – such as how access to ballots is kept secure and how they are tabulated – they’re likely to have higher confidence in elections. When individuals lack that familiarity, conspiracy theories and misinformation may fill in the gaps.
And then there is one factor that election administrators do not and cannot control: who wins. What political scientists call the “winner-loser” effect can be striking. Pew Research Center reported after the 2024 election, which Trump won, that 93% of Trump voters felt the 2024 elections were administered at least somewhat well, compared with just 21% of Trump’s supporters after the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
So in the face of wavering voter trust – some of it driven by forces outside their control – what can election officials actually do?
‘Come look!’
One response from election officials has been simple: Mundane processes that most voters once had little reason to think about are increasingly being made visible to the public.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, voters can watch livestreams of signature verification, early-ballot processing, ballot tabulation and more. The county opens testing of its voting equipment for public observation and even offers tours of its election center.
In Maine, where I live, the secretary of state’s office uses live feeds to invite viewers into recounts and ranked-choice voting tabulations. The process can run for days. Much of it consists of watching election officials sit quietly at tables until someone approaches the camera to say something like, “We’re going to reconcile the ballots from Sagadahoc County.” Then it’s back to watching people work.
What voters see is almost comically mundane: checklists, sealed containers, bipartisan teams of observers, rigorous procedures to track who has had access to ballots, and individuals doing repetitive administrative work.
And that’s the point. Election officials cannot control whether voters like the outcome, but they can make the processes that produce it visible and comprehensible.
Election officials in Philadelphia demonstrated ballot counting at the Philadelphia Election Warehouse ahead of the 2024 general election. Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images
Democratic inoculation
There is an even more immersive way to make elections understood and thus credible: Invite the public to help run them.
American elections require an extraordinary amount of community labor. Researchers have estimated that a presidential election requires roughly 1.4 million poll workers – a temporary civilian workforce about the size of the active-duty U.S. military.
Yet until recently, researchers have paid surprisingly little attention to what happens when people move from voting in an election to actually administering one.
My colleagues and I have been studying that question in Maine. We surveyed poll workers before and after they served in the 2022 and 2024 elections. After working an election, their concerns about voter fraud and voter or poll worker intimidation declined. And those changes weren’t confined to one political party.
Interestingly, serving didn’t necessarily change what people believed about whether fraud or intimidation happens. Instead, firsthand experience seemed to change how threatening those possibilities felt.
We call this process “democratic inoculation.”
Spending a day checking voters in, accounting for ballots and watching election safeguards operate doesn’t make someone completely immune to doubts about elections. But it may make sweeping claims about a chaotic or easily manipulated system harder to square with what they witnessed with their own eyes.
Maintaining faith
None of this means that transparency or firsthand experience can eliminate distrust in elections.
The harder question is whether seeing how elections actually work can help people maintain faith in the system even when their candidate loses.
With another national election just weeks away, we may soon find out how far that confidence can stretch.
Robert Glover is an associate professor of political science and honors at the University of Maine. He has received funding for election-related research from the Scholars Strategy Network.
]
‘The waters wrecked the sky’
—Unsplash photo by Matt McNulty
The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low —
He threw a Menace at the Earth —
A Menace at the Sky.
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees —
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And threw away the Road.
The Wagons quickened on the Streets
The Thunder hurried slow —
The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak
And then a livid Claw.
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests —
The Cattle fled to Barns —
There came one drop of Giant Rain
And then as if the Hands
That held the Dams had parted hold
The Waters Wrecked the Sky,
But overlooked my Father’s House —
Just quartering a Tree —
“The Wind Began to Rock the Grass,’’ by Emily Dickinson (1830-1885)
Chris Powell: In Conn., wrapping racial demagoguery in religious sanctimony
MANCHESTER,Conn.
What is too extreme politically for Connecticut in the era of President Donald Trump and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani?
According to a television commercial from Gov. Ned Lamont's re-election campaign, the extremism is that of the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, who this year voted against legislation that purported to prohibit federal immigration agents from making arrests at schools, churches, and other supposedly sensitive locations.
The commercial's narrator, the pastor of a church in Norwalk who is Black, accuses immigration agents of arresting people "based on the color of their skin." The pastor continues: "Thankfully, Governor Lamont stepped in. He signed a law barring ICE agents from our churches and our schools. But Ryan Fazio sided with Trump to allow ICE into our schools and our houses of worship. I really can't imagine him being governor. That is too extreme for Connecticut."
But the legislation was and remains a fraud.
Contrary to the pastor's assertion, the law doesn't prevent federal agents from entering schools and churches or any other places, for state law has no authority over federal law-enforcement agents doing their jobs, as the governor and the legislators who voted for the legislation know. The law is unconstitutional and unenforceable as the pastor himself might have noticed from the governor's failure even to try to enforce it, since any enforcement would risk armed confrontation between the federal agents and state police.
How ironic, then, for a Black pastor to take the same sort of "states' rights" position that was made in defense of slavery and racial segregation. Claims of state supremacy over the federal government used to be considered too extreme politically for Connecticut.
But now that illegal immigration is politically correct and being used to alter legislative districting in favor of the political party that has created "sanctuary" states, claims of "states' rights" are in fashion in the very region that courageously stood up against them when the Union and basic human rights were at stake.
Indeed, why isn't the nullification being waged by the Lamont administration -- the facilitation of illegal immigration and the interference with immigration-law enforcement -- also too extreme politically for the state?
This issue deserves more serious treatment than it can get from a campaign commercial wrapping deception and racial demagoguery in religious sanctimony.
DEMAND MORE FROM STUDENTS: Public education officials in Connecticut long have refused to address or even acknowledge the problem of social promotion in the schools even as the few proficiency tests the state administers keep illuminating a vast number of students who never gain proficiency in English and math and thus enter adulthood equipped only for menial work.
Some people outside the education bureaucracy acknowledge the problem but think it is now so overwhelming that nothing can be done about it. After all, if academic proficiency was required for promotion of students, in many schools more students would have to be held back every year than would advance to the next grade.
But somehow a few Southern states lately have made progress with their most disadvantaged students by refusing to advance them past third grade unless until they become good readers. That has gotten the kids' attention and that of their parents. In any case many students won't ever meet academic standards unless their schools demand it on pain of some kind of penalty.
Other incentives for performance are easy to imagine. Participation in school sports and other activities outside the classroom could be made a privilege earned by better grades. High school diplomas could be imprinted with a student's grades for each year of his education. Various kinds of diplomas could be awarded signifying student achievement levels, with the lowest levels signifying mere attendance or the lack of it, and employers could be encouraged to ask young job applicants to present their diplomas for review of their qualifications.
Results in student performance might be demanded from teachers and school administrators as well, adjusted for the disadvantages of the students they receive each year.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
What about them?
Spruce trees carried in the boats of Samuel Thompson's militia inspired this naval ensign of Massachusetts.
“Mr. President, shall it be said, that after we have established our own independence and freedom, we make slaves of others?’’
Samuel Johnson (1735-1798), of Massachusetts’s District of Maine (as of 1820 the State of Maine), a Revolutionary War brigadier general, on the question of slavery and enactment of the U.S. Constitution, which he opposed because it allowed slavery to continue.
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Llewellyn King: Borders are mostly sealed, now forgive many migrants who are here
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Here is a disturbing game: Try to spot the illegal immigrant.
Is it the waitress, the winning one from Bulgaria, or is it the charming emergency room doctor from Pakistan, or is it one of the Mexican men working on the housing site at the corner? Maybe it is the Haitian caregiver in your home, whom you adore and are afraid to ask if employing her will compromise you.
You look hard at them because if they are illegal or also referred to as undocumented immigrants, ICE could pounce.
They are a shadow underclass, productive members of society and they are part of our national fabric.
Many of us are silent conspirators when it comes to these immigrants. We know and don’t tell. We don’t reach for the phone and if they are arrested, we feel it personally
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Some would want you to believe that a majority of these people are rapists, murderers, thieves or drug dealers. If they are, they should be arrested, tried and imprisoned. That is what the police and the FBI should be doing, not the extracurricular, often barbarous ICE.
The trouble starts with the very word “illegal” which conjures visions of an underworld of evil. Undocumented workers are indeed living in an underworld, doing essential jobs that others won’t. That labor force is part of the grease that keeps America’s wheel turning.
Whether cleaning houses, minding elderly parents or children, building houses, repairing roads or plucking chickens, immigrants, legal and illegal, are an essential part of the functioning of our society. Failure over decades to enact sensible immigration laws has left us persecuting those we depend on for so much.
The paperless came here chasing a dream which was also the legendary American Dream: a better life in a fairer, happier, safer place, where you can trade a day of work for a day of pay, even if the work was rejected by the rest of society.
Behind all crimes is motive. The motive of the person who walked across the southern border or overstayed a tourist visa is the same: a better life, a life worth living. It is the same motivation that has always brought the needy to these shores whether it was for religious freedom in the 1600s, the Irish famine in the 19th Century or escaping Hitler.
The true asylum seekers came to avoid death, an unquestionable motive.
My plea is for those who are here and have established lives of merit, not for open borders. Migration is a global challenge exacerbated by war, climate change, religious persecution, and political oppression. It causes fear that an existing culture will be overwhelmed, as when migrants bring in a different language or a disruptive religion.
These are real concerns, but should be less so for the United States than Europe or Australia. This nation is so large, has benefitted so hugely from immigration, that it should tailor its policies to local reality not global fear.
The politics of immigration are murky. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have had vigorous deportation regimes — but the statistics are skewed for President Biden and President Trump’s first administration because of the COVID crisis.
Under both the administration of Presidents Obama and Biden, enforcement was active but less conspicuous, while the southern border remained porous. Under Obama, deportations reached their zenith with 400,000 expulsion orders. In the second Trump administration, deportations will probably exceed the Obama removals total.
Among the immigrants themselves there is confusion as to their status. There are those from 13 countries who had special protected status, which included allies from the Afghanistan war, Haitians and Venezuelans, who wonder why they have lost it.
Then there are those who wrongly believe their Social Security numbers will protect them; and those who have work permits but don’t have the right to abide by a bizarre legal contradiction.
ICE agents with their thuggish demeanor appear to relish arrests and deportations. We are told ICE has numeric targets for arrests. Whenever its agents appear, they strike fear into the hearts of otherwise innocent people who wanted to share a dream.
None of us choose where to be born. Those born in awful circumstances and who come here without permission are guilty of breaking the law even while signing on to the American dream.
Now that the borders are essentially sealed, how about some American forgiveness?
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com,and he’s based in Rhode Island.
King of the North Woods
“Mount Katahdin From The West Branch of the Penobscot River” (oil on canvas), by Virgil Williams (1830-1886), at the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville,Maine.