In the fourth dimension

“Harborside” (mixed media on gallery-wrapped canvas), by Sue Charles, at Alpers Fine Art, Rockport, Mass.

She says:

“Long lines of landscape space, curious shapes, the interconnectedness of light, air and every thing...the mute profundity of nature. A painting exists in many dimensions. It is an object crafted of wood, cloth and paint and it represents three dimensions on two.  It holds the fourth dimension of time in it's marks and it expresses metaphysical ideas of memory, spirit, experience and emotion. A painting is thought made visible. The best ones stay with you like a hummable melody. I aim for that.’’

Paul Osterman: Not so happy Labor Day

From The Conversation (except for image above)

When I leave my Boston condo every day, I say good morning to the concierge, who works for a contracting company providing staff to residential buildings. When I conduct an interview in a nearby building, the people who clean that office at night are contractors. The person who serves me my lunch sandwich is a part-timer with no career prospects in that job.

When my best intentions to eat well are for naught and I gorge on Doritos, I remember that the tasters PepsiCo hires to test the chips’ addictiveness are contractors.

These are all examples of what I call “disposable jobs.” People who have them work at an employer’s site, but their employer makes no commitment to them regarding career prospects or job security. My research shows that employers treat more than 1 in 3 U.S. workers as disposable. That comes to just under 57 million full- or part-time workers out of the nation’s workforce of 162 million.

I am a labor economist. In my new book, “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment,” I explain why this is happening, what forms it takes, how common it is, what the consequences are for people and for society, and what can be done about it.

3 different varieties

To learn more, I commissioned a nationally representative survey of over 6,000 people in late 2022. I also interviewed nearly 100 workers, employers and policymakers.

I found that there are three categories of disposable workers.

1. Contractors who are employed by a staffing firm but work at a client’s site. Examples include temporary office workers, building cleaners and security guards. Many of these people are poorly paid, but some, such as travel nurses, are highly compensated. My survey shows that these contractors account for 13% of the workforce.

2. Freelancers who work for companies, organizations or agencies without being employees. Examples include Uber and Lyft drivers, food delivery drivers, computer programmers and freelance journalists. In my survey, organizational freelancers represent 5% of the workforce. I don’t include in this category freelancers who work for individual people, such as most dog-walkers and handymen, because my focus is on how employers treat their employees.

3. Marginal workers who are employed by companies, organizations or agencies. They lack career opportunities, and their jobs have high turnover built in. Marginal workers account for 17% of the workforce in my survey.

Marginal work is important due to its magnitude and because although those jobs look standard, they are designed to be disposable.

Sometimes there’s no way to progress in your job. bpawesome/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Who are marginal workers?

Staff attorneys are quintessential marginal employees. They’re hired by law firms as employees, but the central feature of their jobs is that they are not on the promotion ladder to partner. Unlike their career-track counterparts, they have no job security. They are often hired to do the grunt work on a specific case, with the understanding that there is no commitment to keep them on if business lags or the project ends.

Adjunct professors are another good example. This group includes part-timers who teach a small number of courses and full-time contract faculty, but in both cases they lack job security and aren’t on track to obtain permanent, tenured, academic jobs.

In 1970 people with tenure or tenure-track jobs constituted 73% of those teaching at colleges and universities. By 2021 only 32% had that status, and the rest were adjunct instructors or contract faculty.

Part-time marginal workers

Another example of marginal work is part-timers.

Employing part-time workers costs less than having full-timers on the payroll. Part-time jobs pay an hourly wage that is nearly 20% below what workers with full-time jobs earn after age, education, occupation and industry are taken into account. When benefits are considered, the gap rises by another 5%.

A second advantage of part-timers from the employer’s perspective is higher turnover, which provides an easy path to be able to adjust the size of the workforce and which enables them to avoid investing in career development.

When a team of researchers led by professor Susan Lambert interviewed 88 employers that pay low wages, they found that many use part-time work to make their workforces more “flexible.” One manager explained that high churn of part-timers gave the company so much flexibility that they didn’t need temp workers.

“Temp workers: We don’t need them,” he said. “Wait a day for turnover.”

(Paul Osterman’s book, Disposable Workers, explains how ties between employers and their employees are fraying. Harvard University Press)

Evidence that employers try to maximize the number of people working for them part time instead of full time and with benefits arose after the Affordable Care Act fully took effect in 2014.

The ACA requires that employers with 50 or more employees either provide them with health insurance or pay for them to buy it, but only for people who work 30 or more hours a week. Otherwise they pay, as of 2026, a penalty of US$3,340 per uninsured employee.

Another team of researchers compared trends in part-time work in three low-wage industries – retail, hotels and restaurants, before and after the ACA rolled out. They found that the use of part-timers increased by 500,000 in the years after the Affordable Care Act was implemented. This suggests that companies add to their part-time ranks to save on the health insurance costs of standard employment.

Forces behind this trend

Why do employers want many of their workers to be disposable?

A primary motive is to save money. Employing freelancers and contractors means they can avoid mandatory benefits such as Social Security contributions and, for larger employers, contributing to the cost of health insurance.

Marginal workers, to be sure, do receive these benefits. But the high turnover built into their jobs means that their employers can invest less in their training and avoid the management costs otherwise associated with layoff severance and fair treatment on the job.

An additional motive for many employers is a lack of respect for what front-line employees can contribute. A 2023 report from the McKinsey consulting firm illustrated this tendency when it asserted that 5% of employees deliver 95% of “an organization’s value.”

This claim, which I believe is inaccurate, still speaks volumes about the attitude of McKinsey and the firms they interviewed regarding the other 95% of workers. They see those employees as disposable.

Outsourcing cleaning services might seem like a good way to cut costs, but in hospitals it can undercut safety. Jupiterimages/BananaStock via Getty Images Plus

Less pay and job satisfaction

My survey showed that contractors, freelancers who work for employers and marginal employees all earn less than regular workers do.

In addition, the survey found that contractors and marginal workers are notably less satisfied with their jobs compared with regular workers, whereas freelancers, due to their ability to choose where and when to work, are more satisfied.

The public also pays a price for the use of disposable workers. As examples, researchers have found that hospital infection rates rise when cleaners are contract workers and that the use of contractors leads to a higher rate of industrial accidents.

Paul Osterman is a professor emeritus of human Resources and management at the Sloan (Business) School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and the Lumina Foundation for research described in this article.

Evidence of absence

“Evidence of Absence”(woodcut Japanese technique), by Kevin Frances, in the group show “Home Sweet, Somewhere,’’ at Phillips Exeter Academy’s Lamont Gallery, Exeter, N.H., through Nov. 21.

The gallery explains:

“Kevin Frances’s story {is} about the lives of the people who live in them; the human presence is evident, but the people are absent. In ‘Home Sweet, Somewhere,’ Frances expands his ‘Superposition’  body of work, which is set in the home of a fictional couple. The artist begins by creating a scaled model of an imagined home. He then takes photographs of the hand-built miniature, which then become the inspiration for his woodblock prints. While the artist says the series, ‘is first and foremost about a relationship,’ the process blurs our understanding of reality, perception, and what is really there.

UMaine to promote 3-D homes using state’s wood products

House created through 3-D printing.,

— University of Maine photo

From The New England Council 

The University of Maine has received $4 million in congressionally directed spending to support the construction of nine 3-D printed homes for people experiencing homelessness in the Greater Bangor area. The university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) will use its BioHome3D technology to design and construct the homes.

The University of Maine first showcased its BioHome3D technology in 2022 by printing a 600-square-foot prototype home; each home built with the new funding will be similarly sized and made to withstand Maine’s climate. Since then, the ASCC continued developing large-scale 3D printing technology, including unveiling the world’s largest polymer 3D printer in 2024.

The project could provide a new way to support those experiencing homelessness while making use of materials from Maine’s forestry industry and reducing reliance on traditional construction methods. “By using waste wood from the sawmills, we drive costs down. And by using automated manufacturing, we address the labor issues, the shortage issues that we have in Maine,” said Dr. Habib Dagher, executive director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at UMaine.

Too hot to cool off

“Bacchanal with Picnic” (oil and collage on canvas), by Patty Adams, in her show “Bathers and Bacchanals, at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Sept. 30-Nov. 1

She says:

“There are bodies and there is nature. They are profoundly connected.

““In this work I have drawn on the art historical imagery of the nude figure in nature both as bathers and revelers. I have tried to capture their joy and pleasure of being alive in the natural world.

“I was inspired by discovering Grace Hartigan and how she used Henri Matisse’s ‘Bathers by a River’ as an inspiration  for her own ‘River Bathers.’  Her painting  was strangely like and yet unlike Matisse’s. I wanted to have a similar experience.

“The above painting is based on a  similar but more general inspiration from Rubens and Poussin and their paintings of orgiastic dancers and satyrs worshipping Venus and Pan. This painting is oil on canvas but its surface has been enlivened by collaged elements of paper and theatrical gels.’’

That kind of Place

Downtown Northampton, Mass., a city of 29,571 people. Photo was taken on Nov. 1, 2025

— Photo by Quintin Soloviev

“Northampton (Mass.) is the kind of place where a professor, potter, unemployed musician, former mental patient, a woman with a handsome alimony, call all be found on Sunday mornings sitting near each other at sidewalk tables outside the coffee shops.’’

-Tracy Kidder (1945-2026), famed author of nonfiction books

‘Meditative photography’

From Lynn Brately’s photo show, entitled “Layers,’’ at the James Library and Center for the Arts, Norwell, Mass., Sept. 2-Oct. 10

She explains:

“I practice meditative photography and focus primarily on water and sky. I live near the Charles River, one of my places for quiet observation. Here are abundant layers: surface reflections and ice; turtles, fish and rocks below; birds, clouds, solar circles and the moon above.”

“The best camera is the one that I have with me,’’ she says, emphasizing the immediacy and accessibility of her creative process.

As life gathers at the base of wind-turbine installations

Jonah crab.

Excerpted from an article in ecoRI.org (not including picure above)

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Since the first offshore wind project was developed in Rhode Island in 2016, University of Rhode Island researchers have been attempting to understand their impacts on local marine ecosystems. That work is continuing with first-year URI Ph.D. student Emmanuel Oyewole’s study of the artificial reefs that are often found at the base of turbines.

It’s been established through research surrounding offshore wind that the base of turbines serves as a foundation for algae and coral, which acts as a base for a booming ecosystem.

In an attempt to find the cause of this blossoming of aquatic activity, Oyewole is studying the movement and dietary habits of one special creature found at the base of offshore wind turbines: Jonah crabs. He’s working with his academic advisor, Kelton McMahon, an associate professor of oceanography…

Jonah crabs were often overlooked by Rhode Island commercial fishermen and were thrown away when caught in lobster traps, according to Oyewole, but as the local lobster population has declined due to overfishing and warming waters, the Jonah crab population has become a viable source of income.

Here’s the whole article.

Suspended visions

Suspended painted screens created by Charlet Davenport for her show “Their Own Vision,’’ at the T.W. Wood Museum, Montpelier, Vt., through Sept. 23

The museum says:

“Davenport has masterfully painted recognizable copies of Vermont painter T.W. Wood (Thomas Waterman Wood, 1823-1903) paintings on one side of fiberglass screens suspended from single wires about chest level to viewers. On the other side of the screens are depictions of figures that hold personal significance to Davenport, such as her great-great-grandfather James Holland, a watercolorist of great renown who taught in Queen Victoria’s household. Also included in ‘Their Own Vision’  installation are handmade ceramic vessels and prints from Davenport.’’

Self-portrait (1884) by Thomas Waterman Wood.

Chris Powell: Behind chronic school absenteeism

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Chronic absenteeism in Connecticut's schools fell substantially in the school year just ended, state officials announced last week. But their data show the problem remains at what should be appalling levels in many places, especially the state's cities, and the official diagnosis of the problem is incomplete.

Students are classified as chronically absent if they miss 10 percent of their school days, and the new state average for chronic absenteeism is down to 16.4 percent. Officials attribute the decline in part to the state's Learner Engagement and Attendance Program, in which school employees visit the homes of chronically absent students, inquire about problems, and offer help. It's basically social work. This is said to address the "root causes" of chronic absenteeism.

As might be expected, the new data shows that chronic absenteeism correlates heavily with a community's poverty. Hartford's rate is 33 percent, New Britain and Bridgeport are at 30 percent, New Haven 28 percent Norwich and New London 25 percent and Waterbury 22 percent. In turn, poverty correlates with family dysfunction and demoralization.

But Connecticut and the country have always had poverty, and today's high levels of chronic absenteeism are new. So what changed?

First, government stopped enforcing student truancy laws and policies. Today there are no penalties for parents who fail to see that their children get to school. 

And second, educational standards were eliminated and replaced with social promotion. Now there are no tests for advancement and graduation. Nearly all students are advanced from grade to grade and given high school diplomas irrespective of learning, and they and their parents know this. While schooling grows ever more expensive to taxpayers, there are no reprimands or penalties for treating it with contempt.

So why should the demoralized attend school consistently if advancement and graduation will follow anyway if they don't? This policy may be the biggest "root cause," but educators and elected officials don't dare to address it.

* * *

Two recent columns of mine were criticized falsely last week in replies by elected officials.

The first column, questioning whether southeastern Connecticut is ready for the massive expansion of employment for submarine construction at Electric Boat, was criticized in an essay by U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney. Courtney's essay stressed the region's efforts with workforce training. But my column never cited workforce training. Its references to unpreparedness involved only housing and transportation.

The second column, criticizing Connecticut's new law restricting police officers from getting near polling places, was denounced in an essay by Stamford state Rep. Matt Blumenthal.

Blumenthal wrote: "Powell writes that our new law 'forbids police officers from getting within 250 feet of a polling place.' Not so. State and local police can do their jobs just as they always have. The law's catch-all exception says just that: All a department or officer needs is the permission of the moderator or the secretary of the state."

But the column explicitly acknowledged the exception. It said: "The law forbids police officers from getting within 250 feet of a polling place unless they are responding to a serious emergency or their presence is approved by an election moderator." Blumenthal deceptively omitted the latter part of that sentence.

Continuing, Blumenthal claimed that the new law has no application to state and local police. He wrote: "What does the law actually do? It stops federal agents and troops -- people with no lawful role in Connecticut elections -- from being stationed at polling places to intimidate voters."

But Blumenthal simultaneously noted that Connecticut Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas issued state and local police a partial exemption from the law. She wouldn't have done that if the law didn't apply to state and local police, an application Blumenthal now strangely denies.

In any case state law can't restrict the disposition of federal agents and troops, since the Constitution establishes the supremacy of the federal government in such matters. Otherwise General Sherman never would have taken Atlanta and the South would have won the Civil War with a simple court injunction.

There was nothing inaccurate or misleading about either column.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).

In times of ‘collision and interruption’

“Surface to Surface #3 (woodcut monoprint), by Catherine Kernan, in her show “Intention and Surprise,’’ at Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts, Brattleboro, Vt., through Oct. 18.

She says:

“Working at the interface between printmaking and painting, these singular prints are the result of combining multiple large-scale woodblocks and offsets to polycarbonate plates.

“By never inking the same way twice, using many viscosity rolls, and rarely printing directly from the blocks to paper, the process remains engaging and unpredictable.

“The images are metaphors for the erratic, often confusing, sometimes revelatory psychological path we must all navigate through times of collision and interruption.

“Occasionally the pathway is clear, but the destination is an aspiration, not a certainty. My visual vocabulary is one of fragmentation, interruption, reflection, and variation.

Although abstract, the works are grounded in my direct observation of nature—specifically one lake in upstate New York that I have returned to my entire life, stimulated by the changeable perceptions of light on the water, foliage, and depths below the surface.’’

Kent Jones: The U.S.-Canada trade war: Time to read up on the Great Depression

Liquor store shelves in Ontario emptied of booze from the United States.

From The Conversation (excluding image above).

WELLESLEY, Mass.

The United States and Canada, historically close allies, are moving further into a full-blown trade war with no end in sight.

On Aug. 25, 2026, Canada imposed tariffs of up to 50 percent on hundreds of U.S. goods after the U.S. placed similar, long-threatened levies on Canadian products. It followed the collapse of trade talks that had been inching towards a deal.

The next day, Preasident Trump called Canada “one of the worst countries in the world to deal with.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney claimed Trump was trying to “destroy” his country’s auto industry. Only a few days earlier a deal was reportedly very close.

One of the most notable aspects of the collapse in trade negotiations lies in Trump’s unprecedented use of an untested tool in the Tariff Act of 1930, otherwise known as the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Economists generally agree that the act’s escalating retaliatory tariffs extended the Great Depression by sparking a global trade war. Amplified by foreign retaliation and falling global gross domestic product, U.S. trade fell by two-thirds from 1929-1932.

Smoot-Hawley contains a provision known as Section 338, which provides an additional feature: The president may, on his own authority, impose unilateral tariffs of 50% if a foreign country’s policies “discriminated” against the United States.

But the section was never invoked, as the damage from the other Smoot-Hawley tariffs was already done. That is, until July 2026, when Trump first threatened the 50% tariffs on Canada for its “discriminatory treatment” of U.S. products.

As an economist who has studied trade policy for 49 years, I can explain how the two countries got embroiled in a trade war and what it means for U.S. consumers, companies and the midterms.

Why did the trade deal collapse?

Both sides are finger-pointing at the other over what caused the proposed deal to fall apart during the final days of the trade negotiations.

The Canadians were interested primarily in reducing high U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos. They claimed they had a preliminary deal to lower steel and aluminum tariffs to 25 percent from 50 percent.

In the late stages of the negotiations, however, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was apparently lobbied heavily by U.S. steel and aluminum producers to hold the line on these tariffs. Lutnick was also against reductions in the U.S. auto and truck tariffs and allegedly withdrew whatever reductions were on the table.

As a result, other parts of the deal started to unwind as well.

The Canadians had offered to reopen the Keystone oil pipeline deal that had been canceled by President Joe Biden in 2021. But once the deal on lower steel, aluminum and auto tariffs was nixed, Canada pulled the Keystone deal off the table as well.

The U.S. had also demanded that Canada reverse the Canadian provinces’ removal of U.S. liquor off their store shelves. Sales of U.S. booze in Canada have plunged as a result.

But the lack of progress on the major metal and auto tariffs, combined with a backlash from the Canadian provinces themselves, forced that concession off the table as well.

Donald Trump, left, and Mark Carney attend a G7 meeting in Evian-les-Bains, France in June 2026, about a month before Trump announced the Section 338 tariffs. Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP

What tariffs did the US place on Canadian goods?

Canada is a major supplier of goods to the U.S., exporting about US$451 billion in 2025 – ranking second after Mexico.

As soon as talks broke off, the Trump administration followed through on earlier threats to impose a 50 percent tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian exports, including auto parts, forestry products, furniture, textiles, whiskey and hockey equipment, under Section 338 of Smoot-Hawley.

That’s about 4 percent of Canada’s exports to the United States.

How did Canada retaliate?

Canada’s Carney responded with his own already prepared list of $20 billion in U.S. imports to face tariffs of up to 50 percent, targeting products that he surely bets will anger voters in swing states heading into the midterm elections.

Examples include Wisconsin cheese, Maine seafood and Kentucky washers and dryers – GE Appliances is headquartered in Louisville, Ky.

How did two very close allies get into a trade war?

Tensions between Canada and the U.S. and have been high ever since Trump returned to office.

He has continually complained about Canada “ripping us off” and being “among the worst countries” in the world to deal with.

And he has repeatedly threatened to make Canada the 51st state, an issue that has particularly angered Canadians and served to unite public opinion across the political spectrum against Trump.

For Carney, a critical sticking point was the late addition by U.S. negotiators requiring Canadian trade policy to align permanently with U.S. interests. Carney viewed this demand as a transfer of Canadian sovereignty to the U.S., a step toward making Canada “the 51st state.”

So all in all, perhaps it’s not so surprising that a near deal would collapse into a trade war.

In addition, Canada has been unusual in standing up to Trump in this way. The only other country to do that is China, and it’s risky for a smaller country like Canada to retaliate in this way. But Canadians are pretty united in their unfavorable views of Trump, so Carney has a strong domestic position to stand up to him.

American beer was among the products hit with retaliatory tariffs by Canada. AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt

What does this mean for US consumers and businesses?

The 50 percent tariffs Trump unilaterally imposed on Canada apply to goods that had previously been exempt from most other tariffs due to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced NAFTA in 2020.

Since tariffs are a tax on the purchaser, U.S. consumers and companies will have to pay 50 percent more to buy the products subject to the tariffs. Many of the Canadian imports are concentrated in U.S. border states such as Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin. Another border state, Michigan, is closely tied to automobile production with the Canadian province of Ontario.

In many cases, Canada’s retaliatory tariffs will be felt most strongly in states where Trump’s Republican Party stands to be affected by reductions in U.S. exports that will result from the levies.

The political backlash against Trump’s tariffs in the U.S. doesn’t appear to be deterring him from imposing more of them, even as the impact of midterm elections hinges on results in several swing states along the Canadian border.

While the total impact on overall U.S. prices may not be large, the combination of U.S. and Canadian tariffs together could be significant for products that are heavily traded between the two countries, such as Michigan auto parts and New England seafood, as well as in U.S. regions where Canadian market shares are large. U.S farmers and manufacturers may also lose sales to Canada.

If Trump’s tariffs remain in place and U.S. importers can no longer absorb the tariff costs and remain profitable, U.S. prices are likely to continue to rise as importers require consumers to pay a larger share of the tariffs. It’s probably unwise to predict what Trump will do with tariffs between now and the midterms or now and the end of his term in 2028. A victorious Democratic Party in charge of the House and Senate could change the political landscape considerably.

It’s worth noting that the global trading system that emerged in 1947, from the ashes of war, depression and tit-for-tat trade battles, was purposely designed to eliminate trade wars, since they typically make us all worse off. And the trade liberalization that followed worked, delivering enormous wealth to the U.S. and the world economy in the years since.

I believe it would be a shame if we returned to those days, and the unfortunate economic consequences that came with them.

Kent Jones is a professor emeritus of economics at Babson College, in Wellesley, Mass.

He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

New England business, the life and death sectors

Looking across to Kendall Square, Cambridge, the heart of Massachusetts’s biotech sector.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Some good news for the economy of Greater Boston (in which I include northern Rhode Island):

A joint venture between Cambridge-based Moderna and New Jersey-based Merck has achieved considerable success in a large-scale trial of an mRNA vaccine designed to reduce the risk of recurrence and spread of the potentially lethal skin cancer called melanoma. This has implications for other cancers, too. No wonder Moderna’s stock price soared on the news.

Hit this link:

Meanwhile, Whoop Inc., which makes screenless fitness trackers, plans to double the size of its Boston headquarters, by leasing another 107,000 square feet in the Fenway Park area.

Will Ahmed, the company’s CEO, told Bloomberg News:

“Boston’s been underrated in regards to a lot of what it can provide an up and coming company.’’ The city, he says, breeds “missionaries” who, in Bloomberg’s paraphrase,  “stick with an employer because they believe in its mission, in contrast to the mercenary mindset of many in Silicon Valley.’’

“The folks that get a little caught up in the hype cycle of a tech company, or get too caught in the valuation speak or what’s en vogue, they are less likely to stick it out through some of the more challenging periods,” Mr. Ahmed told the news service.

Bloomberg explained that Whoop is “a leader of the Massachusetts AI Coalition, a group of companies and investment firms organized this year that’s seeking to stem the westward migration of startup founders educated at the state’s elite universities like Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.’’ There ought to be New England-wide coalition doing this.

xxx

From the life business to the death business:

Lots of current and prospective skilled workers in southern New England may be planning some big spending plans with the new $76.6 billion contract for General Dynamics’ Electric Boat Division to build  a total of 14 new nuclear-powered submarines at Quonset Point, R.I., and Groton, Conn. This will lead to hiring at least another 8,000 people, in addition to the about 24,000 now working for the company!

Some of these subs will carry nuclear-armed missiles. But to fire them might result in the  end of civilization and much life on Earth. We make weapons that we want to assume will never be used while showing a willingness to use them!

Edgy types in Lowell

“Lowell Night” (watercolor on paper), by Jonathan Collins, in his paintings show “Kerouac: Beat and Counterculture Portraits,’’ through Oct. 31, at Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, Mass.

Nautical fantasies

Work by Ralph Cahoon (1910-1982) in his show “Fashioning a Fantasy World,’’ at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, Mass., Sept. 23-Dec. 20.

The museum says:

Cape Cod folk artist Ralph Cahoon’s nautical fantasies and the characters who brought them to life have been celebrated for decades on the Cape and beyond.  This show invites viewers behind the curtain to explore the rich historical fashions that informed the figures populating Ralph’s expressive scenes: Pearl-adorned mermaids admire their loveliness in golden mirrors, naval officers dine in uniform at a 19th-Century seaman’s society, peasant women work diligently at the day’s laundry, and refined Italian ladies and gentlemen observe an exhibition of mysterious mer-creatures in 18th-century Venice. Ralph drew on his wealth of knowledge, accrued through self-study of global art and maritime history and his prior business in antiquing, to outfit his mermaids, sailors, peasants, and ladies with the costuming necessary for the rich worlds he created and shared with his collectors. “Fashioning a Fantasy World” explores how Ralph, with a decades-long passion for designing and developing these unique characters, achieved the perfect look for his now-iconic figures.’’

Chuck Collins: Deconstruct those myths about ‘socialism’! Ike a socialist?

Via InsideSources.com

BRATTLEBORO, VT,

The debate over capitalism vs. socialism often looks like a battle of cartoon caricatures: Monopoly Man versus the Marx Monster.

Across the planet there are countless flavors of capitalism and socialism, unique mashups of free markets and government policies. Into this muddle wade the right-wing ideologues who fear the red “socialist” demon hiding in every corner.

If Fox News existed in the 1950s, they would’ve labeled Republican President Dwight Eisenhower a socialist for taxing the wealthy and making broad public investments to expand homeownership, enable debt-free higher education, and build infrastructure and technology that expanded the modern middle class.

Yet, what do these labelers call modern-day China, a country that mints hundreds of billionaires a year and dominates global markets with private production? Are they socialist or capitalist?

Meanwhile, social democracies, like Canada and the northern European countries, have progressive tax systems and strong social-safety nets. Sweden, with its generous welfare state, has higher rates of entrepreneurship than the United States.

These countries also have higher rates of social mobility than the United States — meaning it’s easier for lower-income people to escape poverty and become stable. The American Dream, apparently, has moved offshore.

These welfare states, with their higher taxes on the wealthy, exist comfortably alongside healthy market economies. However, in the United States, whenever a politician proposes that billionaires pay their fair share of taxes so we make public investments in opportunities for everyone else, they are labeled socialist or even communist.

These criticisms conflate a set of policy proposals, most of them quite popular, with an economic system where the government owns the means of production. However, this well-trod attack doesn’t seem to be working anymore, especially for younger generations.

Younger voters see the grotesque inequalities of wealth and power that distort the economy and block opportunity for the non-rich. They witness how large corporations have captured Congress and blocked popular reforms to defend consumers and counter monopolies.

They watch with alarm as billionaire-backed private-equity firms buy up health-care facilities and squeeze consumers in every corner of the economy. They see how both major political parties have been captured by the billionaire donor class and failed to address stagnant wages and rising basic costs.

All generations now understand that the old American Dream has expired, with seven in 10 experiencing economic insecurity. These folks still hope hard work could lead to a decent life — to own a home, take a vacation, pass opportunities to their children, and retire before they die. They feel the constant stress of knowing they’re one job loss, illness, disability or divorce away from living in their car.

Without a strong party representing working people’s concerns, political realignments are happening in both parties. A new generation of progressives and a handful of self-described democratic socialists argue the economy should work for everyone, not just the billionaire class.

They believe new technologies — such as AI — should serve everyone, not just billionaire tech bros and their global conglomerates. They believe the government has an important role in expanding healthcare, blocking oligarchy and breaking up big corporations.

They advocate for expanding affordable housing to aid people struggling to find decent housing in a hyper-speculative market. Instead of subsidizing private developers, they advocate for housing owned by nonprofit organizations, resident cooperatives, and — egads! — government entities, such as housing authorities.

These progressives believe we should stop subsidizing the fossil-fuel industry and end tax breaks to the Jeffrey Epstein class. They support investments to help us transition to sustainable energy, lower energy costs and reduce climate disruption.

The right-wing pundits — and some so-called moderates, too — are hoping that when they trot out the “socialist” bugaboo, your mind will freeze and you’ll start frothing at the mouth. They’re afraid that you will ask why the current system isn’t working and wonder if there are alternatives. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

When someone brandishes the word “socialism” as if it’s a stink bomb, take a courageous look at the actual ideas — higher taxes on the rich? Medicare for All? A raise for working people? — being proposed. There might be more common sense than you thought.

Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and co-edits Inequality.org for the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest book is “Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.” He wrote this for InsideSources.com. 

Essence of vistas

“White Cloud” (oil on canvas), by Nancy M. Vignola, in her show “Wanderings,” at the Providence Art Club through Sept. 10.

She says:

“My artistic journey frequently embarks from the landscapes of my voyages, harnessing the essence of my chosen hues. These pigments become the very heartbeat of my work. Guided by these evolving palettes, I embark on sketches that capture the essence of these enchanting vistas, distilling them into refined forms. With each successive layer of color, the piece evolves, transforming in density and depth, until its dynamic spirit is unleashed.’’

New center is established to take on rare diseases

Quite a setting for research! The Jackson Laboratory campus in Bar Harbor, Maine

— Jackson Laboratory photo

Edited from a report by The New England Council

“Augusta, Maine-based Jackson Laboratory and Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) have joined Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad Institute in launching the Center for Therapeutic Genetics (CTG), a collaboration focused on developing precision genetic medicines for patients with rare and ultra-rare diseases. The center aims to make patient-tailored treatments more precise, reliable, and repeatable by sharing methods, data, and training.

“An estimated 350 million-400 million people worldwide live with one of about 8,000 rare diseases, yet fewer one than in 20 has an approved treatment. The center will apply tools, models, processes, data, and protocols developed for one treatment program to others. Jackson Laboratory contributes expertise in rare-disease models and translational science, while BCH contributes expertise in individualized genetic therapies and the clinical implementation of genomic medicine.

“‘We’re at a moment in genomic medicine where, for many rare diseases, the question is no longer whether we can treat them, but whether we will build the systems to do it,’ said Cat Lutz, vice president of the Rare Disease Translational Center at Jackson Laboratory. Timothy Yu, a physician in the Division of Genetics and Genomics at BCH, said, ‘We used to see precisely tailored therapies for children with genetic diseases as remarkable exceptions. CTG is built on the conviction that they don’t have to be.”’

Memory as reconstruction

“A Piece of Pie” (oil on canvas), by Debra Samdperil, in her show “All Is Not Lost,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Oct. 1-Nov. 1.

She says:

“For me, painting is not a means of illustrating an idea but a way of discovering one. I approach abstraction not as the absence of representation but as a means of expanding it—allowing emotion, memory, and imagination to exist simultaneously. 

“Images only emerge through a process of accumulation, erasure, and response, where each mark suggests the next. I am very interested in the way memory functions as fragmented, layered, and constantly reconstructed. Familiar shapes appear like half-remembered forms or fleeting thoughts that dissolve into gestures and color. Color functions as both structure and emotion. Black lines alternately define, interrupt, and destabilize, creating tension between containment and release.

“The finished work remains open-ended: a visual conversation between order and improvisation, memory and invention, structure and chance.’’

William Morgan: Seeds of its own destruction?

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

— Photo by Quintin Soloviev

(All photos below by William Morgan)

Two buildings in the downtown historic district of Portsmouth, N.H., suggest the problems of history and growth in what has become a “destination.” The delicate Federal-style customs house of 1817 speaks of New England’s glorious maritime past. The recent Buckley’s Market, a franchise dining and food emporium, represents an awkward attempt at being contemporary.

Penhallow Street, Portsmouth. Customs House to left; Buckley’s to right; Temple Israel at end of block

The Customs House served as the harborside city’s post office until 1858, when it was replaced by a granite Italianate pile designed by Ammi B. Young, the New Hampshire native who served as the first Supervising Architect of the United States Treasury. Despite the grandeur of Young’s imposing civic palace, the 1817 Customs House (no doubt by a local housewright) is typical of Portsmouth’s remarkably cohesive townscape composed of somewhat utilitarian two-and three-story brick structures.

 What a lovely way to turn a corner: a small structure achieves monumentality through graceful proportions, offset by exquisite fanned Palladian windows.       

Right across the street from this appropriately gentle neighbor is the market-restaurant-office-block, clearly a bully who gives the architectural finger to one of the most attractive historic downtowns in New England. No plaque alerts us to the architect’s name, presumably a corporate hack, who through ignorance or just meanness, wanted to inflict urbanicide. Yet, a sensitive modern design could enhance the street, contributing to its evolution. Instead, we have a combination giant football and aquarium, along with a mélange of silly aqua-colored details.

A nautical take on the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in Canton, Ohio?

Despite the promise of an impressive entrance, the way into the marketplace is a cramped, silo-like funnel, decorated with kitschy floating fish. Perfect for Miami Beach, perhaps, but it is difficult to ascertain how this is related to New Hampshire’s colonial capital. On the other hand, this tacky intrusion may be the future of this once handsome small city. Portsmouth, like Nantucket, Newport and Salem, are seeing themselves over-developed–literally destroyed by the very thing that made them so appealing. The cultivation of beauty planted the seeds of their own destruction.

On summer days, especially, and on weekends during the entire year, crowds of tourists jam the streets, in search of what? History, or T-shirts and ice cream, beer and margaritas? Several behemoth luxury hotels–all in brick, in developers’ pathetic attempt to blend in with the city’s early fabric–have recently been built and more are under construction. One wonders who their patrons are. Meanwhile, working folk in the Portsmouth area have to commute farther and farther in search of affordable housing.

In the 1960s I had my first job, as a researcher, at Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke, a Williamsburg-like village composed of endangered 18th-Century houses brought to the site. Such historic preservation was something of a novelty to the tawdry Navy town. A friend from nearby Wells, Maine, then described Portsmouth as the sort of town where on Sunday mornings hung-over men saddled up to the drugstore soda counter and ordered Bromo-Seltzers. A Baltimore friend to whom I introduced Portsmouth, declared it was “Annapolis without money.”

A Japanese tanker moored in the Piscataqua River, just a few hundred yards from downtown

That gritty dockland vibration is still preserved by the working waterfront (huge mounds of salt for New Hampshire’s icy roads, for example, are stockpiled on the edge of the tourist district), the presence of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (which is actually in neighboring Kittery, Maine) and a few frayed edges. But how long can Portsmouth protect its rich physical history from the curse of gentrification?

William Morgan is a Providence-based architectual historian and critic and photographer. The author of many books, he also writes essays on American popular culture. His books include Academia: Collegiate Gothic Architecture in the United States, Monadnock Summer, The Cape Cod Cottage, American Country Churches, among others.