Vox clamantis in deserto
William Morgan: Responding to the Industrial revolution
Maureen Meister, an architectural historian from Boston, and sometime Tufts and Northeastern professor, published a book a dozen years ago on the New England followers of Williams Morris, John Ruskin, and the English Romantics who believed that a reverence for nature, simplicity, and a return to craftsmanship could offset the ills of the Industrial Revolution. Late 19th-Century Boston was the crucible of the Arts and Crafts movement in this country, led by architects such as H.H. Richardson, Henry Vaughan, and Ralph Adams Cram, and supported by a remarkable coterie of furniture and glass, textile and ceramic designers. In her latest volume, Arts and Crafts Architecture Across America (Yale University Press, 2025), Meister gathers Tudor revival, Prairie School, Spanish revival, and further offshoots under a broad Arts & Crafts umbrella.
Ralph Adams Cram, St. George’s School Chapel, Middletown, R.I., 1924-28
“There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England”
The Boston Society of Arts & Crafts, founded in 1897, inspired similar reform-minded idealists and artisans in places such as Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Diego. Meister weaves in such humble designers as Gustav Stickley and Elbert Hubbard, in western New York, while embracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House, in Buffalo. Making the case that Wright’s Prairie Style is a fundamental part of the Arts & Crafts movement, Meister includes Wright’s Chicago works, along with Jane Addams’ Hull House and Bertram Goodhue’s Gothic chapel at the University of Chicago in The Windy City. The heartland also includes the Edenic handcraft educational community at the Cranbrook design complex, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen mentored generations of notable designers.
M.H. Baillie-Scott, The Close, Short Hills, N.J., 1912-13.
The Arts & Crafts represented a cozier, gentler side of the Gilded Age
The scope and ultimate unity of handcraft mindset is demonstrated in Collegiate Gothic campuses, in rustic inns and dude ranches in the Rockies, and the adobe of the so-called Spanish Colonial and Native American style of Texas and the Southwest. In California the “fresh air and fresh thinking” produced a blossoming of handcrafted houses, in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. All of the delightful houses, churches, and civic structures that Meister presents are “myriad responses to a question was once all-important: What native materials, landscapes, and histories will serve us when we build, to suit the special places where we live, in the United States of America.”
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, California Building, San Diego, 1911-15.
Erstwhile partner of Ralph Adams Cram, Goodhuewas a native of Pomfret, Conn.
Significant scholarly books, such as Professor Meister’s, were also once all-important, but serious architectural history has all but disappeared in the current era of idiocracy and illiteracy. Thus, university presses, such as Yale, are the keepers of the flame, champions of deserving treatises that might not be “monetizable”.
Providence-based architectural historian William Morgan is the author of, among other books, The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan (MIT) and Academia: Collegiate Gothic Architecture in the United States (Abbeville).
‘Physicality and emotional resonance’
“Gathering #11: An Open Book’’ (horse chestnut leaf stems and waxed linen thread, woven), by Ann Wessmann, in her show “Twig Leaf Husk Thorn,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, through April 26.
The artist says:
“In my studio practice, I explore themes relating to time, memory, beauty and the ephemeral, with a focus on the strength and fragility of human beings and the natural world. With a background in fiber and textile processes, I develop objects and installations through repetition and the accumulation of a variety of materials. Over the years materials have been chosen for their expressive potential; translucent vellum, various personal mementos such as locks of hair from family members, texts from family journals and letters, or collections of natural materials such as plants, shells, stones, or bones. The works have a strong relationship to text and textiles, pattern, transformation, order and chaos, landscape and the body.
“I hope to engage the viewer through the physicality and often the emotional resonance of materials, and through the use of scale. Viewers often confront works which mirror the human body. Larger scale installations may surround the viewer. In some cases small pieces are made requiring the viewer to look from a very close perspective.’’
‘Yes, the tunnel is safe’
Storrow Drive at approach to its tunnel
Solarapex photo
From The Boston Guardian, article by Jules Roscoe
(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian)
The Storrow Drive Tunnel will begin undergoing regular construction in April to strengthen and repair the roof, as part of a $10 million project to extend the tunnel’s life until it can be fully rehabilitated.
“Closures of Storrow Drive eastbound and Soldiers Field Road eastbound will be implemented nightly beginning the first week of April, Sunday night through Thursday night, from 8 pm to 5 am. the following morning,” MassDOT spokesperson John Goggin said.
These closures begin April 5. There will be posted detours in place. The department will also send out official traffic advisories before work begins and is working on a website to host information and updates about the project. “MassDOT and DCR have been meeting with legislators, neighbors and other stakeholders, and will continue to communicate all closures and any modifications to work schedules in advance,” Goggin said.
These interim repairs will focus on the concrete of the internal ceiling of the tunnel. The last major repair project took place in 2008, and there have been piecemeal repairs like this one since then. Goggin said that future repairs would include “structural mitigation measures.”
“This is phase one,” said State Rep. Jay Livingstone, who serves the Back Bay and Beacon Hill where Storrow Drive is located. Livingstone attended a briefing on the project for officials and community members on March 26.
“There’s a potential phase two in September, depending on if they find additional issues in this phase. They’ve done some preliminary work over the last few weeks.”
The tunnel was originally constructed in the early 1950s, and it requires constant maintenance to keep the infrastructure safe for the public. Two weeks ago, Livingstone noticed a series of lane closures in the tunnel, and asked Kendra Amaral, the deputy commissioner of policy for the state’s conservation department, if it was safe to use.
“I was first told 13 years [ago] that the tunnel needed to be replaced in the near term,” Livingstone wrote in the message. “It seems like it has been a priority to replace at times over my tenure of representative, but nothing has happened.”
“Yes, the tunnel is safe,” Amaral wrote in response. “DCR [the conservation department] and MassDOT are working on a $10 million project to make repairs and improvements to the Storrow Drive Tunnel to extend its useful life until a major tunnel rehabilitation/ replacement project can be implemented, which likely could be up to 10 to 15 years in the future. The last major Interim Repair Project in 2008 was completed for $15 million, and there have been no significant repairs since.”
Livingstone said after the community official briefing last Thursday that the repairs planned this year would extend the life of the tunnel by about eight to 10 years, and that the repairs from the Interim Repair Project in 2008 were holding well.
There’s no clear end timeline for this next slew of repairs, but both Goggin and Amaral wrote that the department would take the number of celebrations in Boston this summer, and likely the tourism they bring with them, into account. Amaral said the work would be conducted “ahead of Massachusetts’ big spring and summer of events.”
“Work restrictions will be implemented as necessary to minimize impacts during significant local events, such as concerts and events at Fenway, TD Garden, as well as during the FIFA World Cup and MA250 celebrations,” Goggin said.
Making good neighbors?
“Fence” (oil on canvas), by Francis Colburn, in the group show “Leaning Into Summer,’’ at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester May 19-July 19
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
— “Mending Wall,’’ by Robert Frost
Our wheel of the seasons
“Nowhere in the United States of America does the wheel of the seasons turn more brilliantly than in New England. Winter’s blankets of white, the long-awaited buds of spring accompanied by the run of maple sap, summer’s bouquets, and the magnificent palette of autumn: all are feasts for the senses, and lead to the characteristic New England feeling of existing in tandem with, and often at mercy of the great mercy of, the great forces of nature.’’
— Tom Shachtman, in The Most Beautiful Villages of New England (1997)
Chris Powell: Lamont and Sharpton
Al Sharpton, still pal of Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Twenty years ago Ned Lamont accomplished what may have been the neatest trick in Connecticut political history. He won the primary for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator, defeating the incumbent, Joe Lieberman, and lost the election on the same night.
How did it happen?
While being a good liberal Democrat in most respects, Lieberman was in trouble with many Democrats for supporting the war in Iraq that was being waged by the administration of President George W. Bush, a Republican, in pursuit of imaginary "weapons of mass destruction." Lamont mobilized anti-war Democrats and narrowly won the primary, 52-48 percent.
But as he claimed victory on live television, Lamont was standing next to a supporter from New York, Al Sharpton, who back then was known less for being a "civil rights leader" than a race hustler, a perpetrator of the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, an income-tax evader, a violator of federal campaign-finance law, a defaulter on a libel judgment arising from the hoax, and an all-around grifter. In a general election Sharpton was the kiss of political death and so, standing next to him that night, Lamont kissed the moderate vote goodbye. Running as an independent Lieberman easily defeated Lamont and a token Republican nominee, drawing both Democratic and Republican votes.
Now governor and seeking re-election to a third term, Lamont is somewhat in the position that Lieberman was in 20 years ago: He is the moderate or somewhat less liberal candidate in what likely will be a Democratic primary with far-left Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott. So the other day Lamont seemed to see political benefit in paling around with Sharpton in the governor's office at the state Capitol. Sharpton and civil rights lawyer Ben Crump had just spoken at the funeral of a mentally ill Black man who had been fatally shot by police during a psychotic episode in Hartford. They were there to racialize the incident.
For as Lenin and other totalitarians are supposed to have said: If you label something well enough, you don't have to argue with it. No matter how unsubstantiated, accusations of racism still put people on the defensive in Connecticut.
The governor may have been confident that he wouldn't have to worry about being tarnished by Sharpton's misconduct, since most of it happened long ago and Connecticut's politically correct journalists would never bring it up even if they knew about it.
Instead the journalists reported that the governor and Sharpton agreed that police need more training in handling mentally ill people who are threatening others. The journalists did not report that while Hartford two years ago created a special squad of social workers to respond to such troubled people, city government lately has much reduced the squad's funding and has been relying more on intervention by the police to handle the dozens of psychotic episodes that occur in the city every week.
Sharpton didn't bring that up either. Of course he probably didn't know about it, nor about the $70 million deficit being run by Hartford's school system, nor about the system's incompetence in the face of the enduring poverty and neglect at home of its heavily minority student population.
But then why bother? Everyone was having such a good time in Lamont's office, with Sharpton sitting in the governor's chair and remarking, "He's one of the best governors in the country."
Polls suggest that Connecticut well may concur in November, since most people have concluded that nothing can be done about the poverty of the cities except to increase their residents' dependence on welfare and keep raising city government salaries.
Indeed, poverty is big business for many people now, including Sharpton himself, whose non-profit "civil rights organization," the National Action Network, pays him annual salaries of between $600,000 and $1 million, money drawn in part from donations made by corporations afraid of being targeted by boycotts staged by the group. Such extortion may be what the group means by its slogan: "No justice, no peace."
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
‘Preserving the emotional temperature’
Work by Michael Guinane in his show “That Feeling of a Place and Time,’’ at Lily Pad East gallery, Westerly, R.I., through April 1
The gallery says:
“Michael Guinane transforms past and current observation into art. His paintings don't merely depict scenes—they preserve the emotional temperature of specific moments in time. His work depicts figures caught in contemplation and action, and the collective energy of crowds set in often historical settings. These works ask us to remember a place long out of time, creating an intimate dialogue between the artist's memory and our own.The emotional capture of a single moment in time is what motivates Michael Guinane to paint. Michael creates an atmosphere for the viewer to feel. Whether it be a moment in history, the artist's personal experience, a lake scene, a trip to Cuba, or a busy city street, these works capture the feeling and mood of being present in a certain place or time.Everyone experiences the world uniquely. Michael's work creates the opening to read a scene in our own way and see and connect with the characters and places caught in a moment of suspension, sparking the imagination of what has happened and what is to come next.’’
Bare heads would be tacky
Boston Episcopalians on their Easter Parade on March 24, 1940, after leaving services at Trinity Church, on Copley Square.
And no need to feed
“Little Rabbit” (pastel), by Jonathan Rose, in the group exhibition “Show 72,’’ at The Front Gallery, Montpelier, Vt., through April 26.
North shore light show
“Moonlight Over Marblehead, Massachusetts” (oil on canvas, 1914), by Richard Hayley Levereran, at the Westerly (R.I.) Museum of American Impressionism.
Ezgi Canpolat: Renewable energy in war-torn Mideast
From The Conversation, except for image above
Ezgi Canpolat is a visiting post-doctoral scholar at theCenter for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
She received funding from The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University for the research referenced in this article. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are entirely those of the author and should not be attributed to any institution with which the author is or has been affiliated.
The oil-dependent world is in crisis. Ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz – through which more than a quarter of global seaborne oil trade and a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas flow – is at a virtual standstill. Oil prices have climbed, briefly topping US$119 a barrel.
The largest release of oil from countries’ strategic reserves in history is under way, in an effort to ease prices. But even so, billions of people are dealing with surging energy prices and spiking food and fertilizer costs. Governments are scrambling for alternatives, too. To reduce energy demand, Sri Lanka has declared every Wednesday a holiday for public officials, Myanmar is limiting private vehicle use to every other day, and Bangladeshi colleges have canceled classes.
Leaders of South Korea and the European Commission have used the current energy crisis to call for accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels and toward homegrown renewable sources. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres put it plainly in a March 10, 2026, social media post: “There are no price spikes for sunlight and no embargoes on the wind.”
I grew up in a coal-mining town in Turkey. I now study energy transitions across the Middle East and North Africa in a research project I co-lead at Harvard University. I have seen that a country’s desire to increase renewable energy is not the same as a plan to do so.
The very region embroiled in this war reveals that there is not a linear shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources. Rather, there are distinct trajectories, driven by energy dependence, fiscal pressures, governance and stability. Disruption at the Strait of Hormuz does not mean the same thing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as it does in Ankara, Turkey, or Baghdad, Iraq.
The petrostates hedging both sides
For Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, this crisis is a warning dressed as a windfall.
Oil prices have surged, which in theory means higher revenues. But the very infrastructure that produces and delivers that wealth is under direct attack. Iran has targeted oil refineries and shipment centers across the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz closure is simultaneously choking off their ability to get product to market, exposing how vulnerable the infrastructure of fossil fuel wealth can be.
All three countries have also committed to boostingrenewable energyproduction. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the government aims for renewable energy sources to account for 50% of electricity generation by 2030, up from just 3% at the end of 2023.
Saudi Arabia’s biggest group of clean energy companies has pledged to spend $17 billion on solar and wind – across all their projects, spread out over several years.
But those efforts sit alongside vastly larger investments in fossil fuel production. In 2025 alone, the country’s nationally owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, spent $52.2 billion building new oil and gas infrastructure.
This is not a contradiction. It is a strategy built on the assumption that the world will keep buying fossil fuels for decades to come. The current crisis reinforces that assumption, but it also exposes its vulnerability: As war drives up oil prices, every oil-importing country is feeling the cost of continuing oil dependence. And every stranded export proves the energy transition can’t wait.
Renewable energy helps drive this farm in Turkey. Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu via Getty Images
Price shock and necessity
Energy-importing countries such as Jordan, Morocco and Turkey are investing in renewable energy for a different reason: Fossil fuel dependence is bankrupting them.
Turkey imports over 70% of its fossil fuels, including virtually all of its natural gas, 17% of which comes from Iran. Natural gas accounts for less than a fifth of electricity generation, but it is the backbone of the country’s heating and industrial sectors and a major concern if supply falters. Turkey’s energy import bill is climbing at a time when the economy is already under strain from rising borrowing costs and weakening currency value.
Jordan, which historically has imported over 90% of its energy, faces similar pressure.
But these countries would be in far worse positions had they not already been investing in alternatives.
More than half of Turkey’s installed electricity capacity now comes from renewable energy sources. Morocco built one of the world’s largest concentrated solar facilities, and renewable sources now supply 25% of the country’s electricity. Similarly, Jordan has gone from virtually no renewable electricity to renewable sources providing more than a quarter of its power in roughly a decade.
The current war has vindicated their investments in renewable energy – though the vindication has limits. The same crisis that proves the value of renewable energy investment also raises inflation, tightens credit and strains the very public finances these countries need to keep building.
Every kilowatt-hour generated by a Turkish wind turbine or a Moroccan solar panel is one that does not depend on a tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz. But the financial pressure means building the next renewable generating project just got harder.
Crisis upon crisis
Then there are countries where this war lands on top of existing emergencies.
Iraq, the second-largest oil producer in the region and in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, depends on Iranian gas imports to generate much of its electricity – a supply line now directly threatened by the war. Oil exports through the southern port of Basra, on the Persian Gulf, fund roughly 90% of Iraq’s government revenue. If those revenues are disrupted, the government may be unable to function. Iraq already suffers chronic electricity shortages and has virtually no renewable energy capacity to fall back on.
In Yemen, Libya and Syria, energy infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by years of conflict. These countries import fuel at global prices to run generators and keep hospitals lit. Every dollar added to the price of oil makes that harder. For them, this war is not pointing out reasons to shift to renewable sources: It is threatening energy access itself.
In war-torn Syria, renewable energy is a lifeline. Ed Ram/Getty Images
An international challenge
In November 2026, the U.N.’s annual climate summit comes to the region at the center of this crisis, with Turkey as host.
The war in the Middle East has made a powerful case for the economic, political and humanitarian benefits of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. But it has also exposed something the global conversation consistently misses: Different countries are heading in different directions, based on their own circumstances, many of which predate this war.
Understanding those paths matters because it reveals what countries’ promises cannot: where the real barriers are, where the incentives already exist, and where support would make a difference – before the next disruption hits. In my view, this war has helped win the argument about whether to shift to renewable energy, but it has also highlighted a harder question: What does it actually take to build those sources, country by country?
Nature and us
From the show “Birds, Bees, Flowers, and Trees: Images of Nature’s Past and Present,’’ at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., May 22-Sept. 20.
The museum says the show “pairs historical illustrations from the age of scientific inquiry with contemporary artists’ books featuring similar themes. From delicate wildflowers to high-tech dragonfly drones, this installation explores our ever-evolving relationship with the natural world.’’
They should Bear examination
Burning of heretics in the Spanish Inquistion
“We think ourselves possessed, or at least we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact. There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny, or to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself, it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not much better; even in our Massachusetts, which, I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemies upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any arguments for investigation into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Volney's Recherches Nouvelles? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws... but as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed.’’
— Letter in 1823 from Founding Father John Adams to Founding Father Thomas Jefferson
Water view
Work by Stephanie Kolpy, at the Glimpse Gallery, Concord, N.H.
She says:
“My current work is realized through multiple layers of monoprinting, drypoint, and hand-painted high-density watercolor ink. A symbolist in my approach, I’m interested in visual and thematic parallels between apocalyptic mythos and the Holocene extinction, our present and ongoing sixth great extinction event, where ancient species are dying off en masse due to climate change. The theme of apocalypse—from the Greek word apokalypsis, meaning ‘to reveal’ —has driven me to articulate what the future might ‘reveal’ regarding the natural world. As our ecological crisis intensifies, humanity’s struggle with itself also intensifies through social unrest, toxic polarization, global pandemics, violence, and war. In my work, this conflict and unrest are exacerbated by modern-day conspiracy theories and harmful, science-denying myths, and I interrogate such narratives within a broader history of mythology and religion.’’
‘Don’t join the book burners’
President Eisenhower and Dartmouth President John Dickey
Remarks by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 16, 1953, at Dartmouth College (in Hanover, N.H.) commencement, during the Red Scare led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy(R.-Wis.)
President Dickey, Secretary Pearson, members of Dartmouth's family and their friends:
(John Dickey, president of Dartmouth College, and Lester B. Pearson, secretary of state for external affairs of Canada.)
Your president possesses a brash bravery approaching foolhardiness when he gives to me this platform in front of such an audience, with no other admonition except to speak informally, and giving me no limits of any other kind.
He has forgotten, I think, that old soldiers love to reminisce, and that they are, in addition, notoriously garrulous. But I have certain limitations of my own I learned throughout these many years, and I think they will serve to keep me from offending too deeply. But even if I do offend, I beg, in advance, the pardon of those families and friends, sweethearts that are waiting to greet these new graduates with a chaste handshake of congratulations, and assure you that any overstaying of my time was unintentional and just merely a product of my past upbringing.
First, I could not pass this occasion without the traditional congratulations to this Class, the completion of 4 years of arduous work at a college of such standing as Dartmouth, and of which there is no higher.
Next, I think I may be pardoned if I congratulate you on the quality of the addresses you have heard today up to this moment. I think that your commencement address and the two valedictory addresses established a standard that could well be one to be emulated even here in the future.
Now, with your permission, I want to talk about two points-two qualities--today that are purely personal. I am not going to be an exhorter, as Secretary Pearson has said. I want to talk about these two things and merely suggest to you certain ideas concerning them.
I am going to talk about fun--joy--happiness, just fun in life. I am going to talk a little about courage.
Now, as to fun: to get myself straight at once, for fear that in my garrulous way I might stray from my point, I shall say this: unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss. It is un-Christian and wicked, in my opinion, to allow such a thing to occur.
Now, there are many, many different things and thoughts and ideas that will contribute--any acts of your own--that will contribute to the fun you have out of life. You can go along the bank of a stream in the tropics, and there is a crocodile lying in the sun. He looks the picture of contentment. They tell me that often they live to be a great age--a hundred years or more-and still lying in the sun and that is all they do.
Now, by going to Dartmouth, by coming this far along the road, you have achieved certain standards. One of those standards is: it is no longer so easy for you to have fun, and you can't be like a crocodile and sleep away your life and be satisfied. You must do something, and normally it must involve others, something you do for them. The satisfaction--it's trite but it's true-the satisfaction of a clear conscience, no matter what happens.
You can get a lot of fun out of shooting a good game of golf. But you wouldn't have the slightest fun out of it if you knew to achieve that first 79--you broke 80 today--if you did it by teeing up in the rough or taking the slightest advantage anywhere, and no one else in the world but you knew it. That game would never be a 79 to you, and so it was not worth while because you had no fun doing it.
Whatever you do--a little help to someone along the road-something you have achieved because you worked hard for it, like your graduation diploma today, those things have become worth while, and in your own estimation will contribute to your happiness. They will measure up to your standards because your standards have become those that only you know, but they have become very high. And if you do those things, they are the kind of things that will satisfy you and make life something that is joyous, that will cause your face to spread out a little, instead of going this way [indicating a long face]. There's too much of that in the world, anyway.
You are leaders. You are bound to be leaders because you have had advantages that make you leader to someone, whether you know it or not. There will be tough problems to solve. You have heard about them. You can't solve them with long faces-they don't solve problems, not when they deal with humans. Humans have to have confidence. You have got to help give it to them.
This brings me up to my second little topic, which is courage. I forget the author, but one many years ago, you know, uttered that famous saying, "The coward dies a thousand deaths, but the brave man dies but once." In other words, you can live happily if you have courage, because you are not fearing something that you can't help.
You must have courage to look at all about you with honest eyes--above all, yourself. And we go back to our standards. Have you actually measured up? If you have, it is that courage to look at yourself and say, well, I failed miserably there, I hurt someone's feelings needlessly, I lost my temper--which you must never do except deliberately. You did not measure up to your own standards.
Now, if you have the courage to look at yourself, soon you begin to achieve a code or a pattern that is closer to your own standards. By the same token, look at all that is dear to you: your own family. Of course, your children are going to be the greatest, the most extraordinary that ever lived. But, also, look at them as they are, occasionally.
Look at your country. Here is a country of which we are proud, as you are proud of Dartmouth and all about you, and the families to which you belong. But this country is a long way from perfection--a long way. We have the disgrace of racial discrimination, or we have prejudice against people because of their religion. We have crime on the docks. We have not had the courage to uproot these things, although we know they are wrong. And we with our standards, the standards given us at places like Dartmouth, we know they are wrong.
Now, that courage is not going to be satisfied--your sense of satisfaction is not going to be satisfied, if you haven't the courage to look at these things and do your best to help correct them, because that is the contribution you shall make to this beloved country in your time. Each of us, as he passes along, should strive to add something.
It is not enough merely to say I love America, and to salute the flag and take off your hat as it goes by, and to help sing “The Star Spangled Banner’’. Wonderful! We love to do them, and our hearts swell with pride, because those who went before you worked to give to us today, standing here, this pride.
And this is a pride in an institution that we think has brought great happiness, and we know has brought great contentment and freedom of soul to many people. But it is not yet done. You must add to it.
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.
How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, and what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It is almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions.
And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn't America.
I fear I have already violated my promise not to stay too long and not to exhort. I could not, though, go back to that chair without saying that my sense of distinction in Dartmouth's honorary doctorate, in the overgenerous--extravagantly overgenerous remarks of your president in awarding me that doctorate, in the present of the cane from the young men of the graduating class-all of these things are very precious to me.
I have been fortunate in that my life has been spent with America's young men, probably one of the finest things that has happened to me in a very long life.
I thank you again for this.
Northeastern’s new athletics complex will be huge
Edited from a report by the New England Council
Northeastern University has begun demolishing the historic Matthews Arena to make way for a new 310,000-square-foot multi-purpose athletics complex on its Boston campus projected to open by the fall of 2028.
The new arena will seat 4,050 for ice hockey and 5,300 for basketball, among other events.
‘Hermits and seekers’
“Heartwood” (bronze heart, acorn caps, a clan of Oakborn figures, and a council of crows), by Linda Hoffman, at Boston Sculptors Gallery April 2-May 3.
The gallery says:
“Embedded in the natural world physically as well as metaphorically, Hoffman’s sculptures are often found in the woods, along trails, beside a pond, or hidden among rocks.
“In ‘Heartwood,’ the Oakborn folk gather within the heart’s hidden caves and dwellings — hermits and seekers, they are at once emissaries and a source of inspiration, bound to one another by their roots. One climbs, or perhaps descends, the rungs of a twig ladder, while another receives wisdom from the elders. Nearby, the Council of Crows speaks from its ancient knowing, coaxing us to see more deeply into our own spacious hearts.’’
In 2001, Hoffman and her three children moved into an old farmhouse with an abandoned orchard, Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard, Mass. Hoffman restored the orchard and it became the first organic pick-your-own orchard in Massachusetts.