Retreating looks wiser than rebuilding on the coast

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

There’s intensifying debate in  many coastal and other  areas that are  increasingly flood- and erosion-prone in our warming climate on whether we should repeatedly repair or replace flood-damaged structures; have taxpayers pay some or all of the cost to move them to higher ground, and what to put in their place. I think the obvious answer in many places is to retreat and create flood-mitigating parks with (new?) marshes and thick vegetation and other water-absorbing materials that can reduce damage to the higher-elevation properties nearby. Of course, in such densely built urban areas as Newport’s Point neighborhood and Boston’s Seaport District that’s tricky.

I thought about this the other day when reading about the debate in Newport over whether to abandon the idea of rebuilding  storm-damaged facilities at Easton’s Beach  and stage a retreat. It seems clear to me that given projections of continued global warming and associated sea-level rise, that spending money to rebuild the Easton’s Beach amenities would soon be seen as a waste of money. Replenishing the sand that storms have washed away is expensive enough, though needed to keep the beach as a major attraction for locals and tourists alike.

Forecasts for the 2024 hurricane season are starting to come out. It looks, er, exciting.

Measuring CO2 in the Ocean

Edited from Wikipedia caption: “This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon among land, atmosphere and oceans. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, and red are human contributions in gigatons of carbon per year. White numbers indicate stored carbon.’’

Thank you, Paul Salem, for giving the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution  (WHOI) $25 million for ocean research in general and, in particular, to study the oceans’ capacity for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, into which we’ve  been putting vast quantities of climate-warming CO2 by burning fossil fuels, clear-cutting forests, degrading wetlands and engaging in industrial agricultural practices (especially large-scale livestock production). The heating of our climate is accelerating, and more than 70 percent of the world’s surface is ocean.

Note that this excess carbon dioxide is also acidifying the water,  harming sea life.

Mr. Salem, a billionaire, was a partner in Providence Equity Partners, and in 2022, he became chairman of WHOI’s board.

WHOI president Peter de Menocal said: “There is a tidal wave of ‘blue carbon’ solutions to climate change on the horizon, some proven, but most completely novel and in need of testing to investigate their safety and effectiveness. The ocean can help us avert a climate crisis, but we need to also ensure the long-term health of marine ecosystems and the communities that rely on ocean resources. This far-sighted gift  {by Mr. Salem} will help us stay ahead of what is already a billion-dollar industry and inject some much-needed reality into the carbon market.” 

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I have always had a soft spot for Woods Hole,  because this windswept village, basically a kind of college town within Falmouth, is so beautiful and dramatic; because  of WHOI and other marine-related institutions based there,  and their smart and interesting people, and because an important part of my father’s family lived in and around it. Some moved there in the 17th Century when, as Quakers, they fled Puritan persecution in and around Boston, and others came down from the Boston area as summer people when trains were extended to Cape Cod in the 1870’s. There were more than enough eccentrics among them; some had weird whirligigs on their roofs and some were recluses.

View of downtown Woods Hole, including Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution buildings.

Offshore wind-power battles keep coming

“50 m” means mean wind speed at 50 meters above the ground or water.

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

As usual, whatever the huge environmental and economic benefits of green-energy projects, some people try to block them, especially affluent folks who don’t want to look at them or even if they can’t see them hate the very idea of being anywhere near them. Sometimes the blocking attempts are on their own, and sometimes  they get the help of  the  fossil-fuel industry. (Hey, who wants competition?!) Consider that a far-right (euphemism – ‘’libertarian”) Trump-connected outfit called the Caesar Rodney Institute, with ties to the oil industry, is one of the groups fighting offshore wind projects.

The latest example in these parts is a bunch of people in the Cape Cod town of Barnstable trying to stop electrical cables from the offshore wind farms of Commonwealth Wind and Park City Wind from being laid 50 feet under beaches.

The foes like to cite alleged  health risks from electromagnetic fields and fires. But in fact putting these cables deep underground is the safest way to go. How many of these opponents have complained about the risks from overhead lines, which produce  -- obviously! --far, far more human exposure to electromagnetic fields than can underground cables,   require cutting down wide swaths of woods and otherwise disturbing the environment to make space for them and can (albeit rarely) cause fires, of which California is the most dramatic example.

There have long been underground cables all over America that carry the same voltages that would come from these offshore wind projects. And cables from offshore wind farms in Europe have been put under beaches without incident, but it’s a lot easier to do such projects there than here.

Hypocrisy makes the world go round.

And now some powerful folks in Newport seek to block wind turbines in the water far off that city. One foe is self-described “Trumpette’’ Dee Gordon, whose properties, with her husband, include a place on Ocean Drive.

Of course plenty of people, Trumpette or otherwise, don’t want wind turbines near them.

Hit this link, this one and this one. And this one.

And this one. And, finally, this one.

I hope that Massachusetts officials will favor the broad public interest and not let local opposition block what would be an environmental and economic boon for our region. But lots of people still seem to prefer burning  oil, gas and coal  from outside our region rather than putting up with nonpolluting, locally produced energy.

Newport and China

At “The Celestial City: Newport and China” show at Rosecliff mansion, Newport through Feb. 11, except Nov. 16-Dec. 3.

The Preservation Society of Newport County (whose show it is), explains that the show:

“{E} explores China’s deep influence on Newport from the 18th century through the Gilded Age, when the city emerged as America’s premier summer playground and the fall of China’s last imperial dynasty transformed the ancient nation. The extraordinary objects displayed include more than 100 works in a range of media, from paintings, ceramics, and photographs to fashion, lacquerwares, and lanterns. Contemporary artworks by Yu-Wen Wu and Jennifer Ling Datchuk illuminate Chinese contributions to Newport as well as hidden connections between the Newport mansions and the Chinese-American experience.’’

Smart refugees at Newport aquarium

A Common Octopus, the kind that shows up in southern New England’s coastal waters. Octopuses are smart!

See how “Gulf Stream orphans’’ find a refuge in Save The Bay’s Newport, R.I., aquarium.

We must fight back

Miantonomi monument in Newport

Below is speech by the Narragansett Tribe sachem Miantonomi (1600 (circa)-1663) in 1640 in response to the relentless land grabs by English settlers. There are various spellings of the sachem’s name.

Brethren and friends, for so are we all Indians as the English are, and say brother to one another; so we must be one as they are, otherwise we shall be all gone shortly, for you know our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, and of turkies, and our coves full of fish and fowl. But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved; therefore it is best for you to do as we, for we are all the Sachems frome east to west, both Moquakues and Mohauks join with us, and we are all resolved to fall upon them all, at one appointed day.

An 1874 illustration of Uncas killing Miantonomi in 1643

Blue but happy

“Happy Dance” (encaustic and ink painting), by Nancy Whitcomb, in the “Out of the Blue” group show, at Spring Bull Gallery, Newport, R.I., through Oct. 29

Kevin Gilmore, the show’s juror, says:

“A word on ‘Out of the Blue’. The color blue is the first ‘clue’ in the prompt for this exhibition. Not surprisingly, for a gallery located on Aquidneck Island, surrounded by the beautiful shorelines and waters of Narragansett Bay, the color blue dominated the group of submissions.’'

Friendship

“Combinatti #3 (bronze), by J.T. Gibson, in the group show “Lean on Me,’’ at Atelier gallery, in Newport (R.I.), through Oct. 16

The gallery says:

“The show highlights our appreciation for blacksmithing, forged steel, woodworking and cast bronze work both in Newport and in Santa Fe, N.M. Metal casting is a process in which hot liquid metal is poured into a mold to solidify — an art developed over 7,000 years ago during the Bronze Age.’’

Save The Bay Exploration Center and Aquarium, in Newport

—Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel

Relishing ruins

At “The Bells,’’ in Newport

— Photo by GoLocalProv.com

The amphitheater, artificial ruins in Maria Enzersdorf, Austria, built in 1810/11

— Photo byu C.Stadler/Bwag

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

The state-owned, graffiti-rich carriage house and stables of a once stately Newport mansion, which was built in 1876 and called “The Bells’’ and torn down in the ‘60s, will finally be demolished. That’s after four young people who were playing there were injured when part of the roof collapsed. The structures probably should have been demolished years ago.

Newport has its fair share of residential monuments from the first Gilded Age (semi-officially roughly 1870-1900, though some extend it through The Twenties), but I’d guess that few if any, others are in such a mess as “The Bells.’’ The current Gilded Age, still going strong, began in the 1980s, when, under the Reagan administration, taxes were slashed for the very rich.

Places like “The Bells’’ lure young “explorers,” especially boys, intent on mischief or innocent fun. I well remember as a kid entering (i.e., trespassing) such decayed mansions along the Massachusetts Bay shoreline near our house. Most were, or had been, summer places.  Perhaps some were abandoned, or just started to be neglected, when the owners ran out of money in The Depression. Most were gray-shingle houses that started to be put up after the Civil War. But some of the newer ones had Spanish Mission-style stucco walls, fountains and statuary, which were popular in The Roaring Twenties. Newly (if only briefly) rich people liked what they saw of these houses on Florida’s Gold Coast and in Los Angeles.

Kids would smoke in them (raising the danger of fire) or engage in such idiotic behavior as BB gun fights.

In the 18th Century and early 19th centuries in Europe,  especially in England, there was a mania for building fake ruins; some draw tourists to this day. Maybe some falling-down  Newport mansions can someday serve a similar purpose. Crumbling old houses covered with vines can look romantic, and are spawning grounds for entertaining ghost stories. Just kidding. The building inspectors probably wouldn’t allow it.

Certain kinds of intensity

Left, “Spring Commuter’’ (oil on canvas), by J.C. Leyendecker (1870-1951), for the May 6, 1916 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Right, “Threading the Needle” (oil on canvas), by Norman Rockwell, for the April 8, 1922 cover of the same magazine. Both at the National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, R.I.

The western facade of the mansion Vernon Court, at 492 Bellevue Ave., Newport R.I., home of the National Museum of American Illustration. It was built in 1900.

— Photo by Erikb02809

Liability Lane

A noncollapsed part of Newport’s Cliff Walk.

— Photo by Giorgio Galeotti

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

Will they soon have to patch and fill along and on Newport’s famous Cliff Walk every few months, what with rising seas and more intense storms? The latest drama came in a Dec. 23 tempest in which part of the walk’s embankment collapsed. A section of the walk itself collapsed last March in a storm.

Maybe they should change the name of this tourist attraction to Liability Lane.

But the big thing to watch in The City by the Sea is the redevelopment and, we hope, beautification, of the ugly North End.

Speaking of the tourist mecca of Newport, the country, including New England, will likely go into a recession this year, and unlike in the pandemic recession, the Feds can’t be expected to bail out the states. So the states better pump up their rainy-day funds. Rhode Island, for its part, should intensify its promotion of warm-weather tourism, especially in such nearby areas as Greater New York City, to get more sales tax revenue to help offset the decline in other tax revenue.

Tax challenges in a resort town

Colonial era buildings in a Newport historic district.

— Photo by Daniel Case

Newport Tax Change

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

Newport has adopted a new two-tier residential tax system that may cut taxes for many homeowners. The people who would get the break include owners of single-family homes who prove that they’re residents of the City by the Sea for more than seven months a year as well as owners of residential rental properties of three or fewer  units whose renters’ leases run for at least a year.

The tax rate will remain higher for non-owner-occupied housing.

Earlier this year, Rhode Island state Sen. Dawn Euer said of the state legislation authorizing the change:

“As we know, our whole state and Newport especially are deep in an affordable housing crisis, and residential property tax relief is one tool to help address affordability…. Vacation rentals and short-term rentals take away from year-round housing, and while they do provide revenue, they contribute to  our city’s housing crisis. Making a distinction between them will give residents the tax relief they need, and encourage property owners to create and maintain the permanent housing we desperately need.”

This arrangement should help stabilize housing in the city, which has long been destabilized by the high number of  financially alluring (for property owners) expensive short-term warm-weather or even weekend rentals. But it’s hard to know what the effect on total property-tax revenue for the city might be. It will probably take a year to find out.

In any event, some lessons for other communities will come out of the Newport program, especially those in coastal resort areas.

N.E. clean-energy update

2007 U.S. Department of Energy wind resource map of Rhode Island

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

I wonder how Newporters and tourists will respond to the sight on the horizon of 100 offshore wind turbines to be put up by Revolution Wind about 15 miles south of Little Compton. And there are other big offshore “wind farms’’ in the works south of New England. The Revolution Wind turbines will be the closest to Rhode Island.

There will be complaints from some folks who don’t want to look at them, even from a distance, but most people will get used to them fast, as they generally do with big new infrastructure. And many think that the giant turbines, of the sort that have long been spinning along the coasts of Europe, are beautiful. (Thank God the Europeans have been much more decisive than us in putting up wind farms, thus reducing their reliance on Russian fossil fuel, which is used to finance Putin’s mass murder and torture in Ukraine.)

Some yachtsmen will complain about the wind farms, saying that they’ll cramp their summer racing and cruising, as will some fishermen. But many of the latter may come to appreciate that wind-turbine supports act as reefs that attract fish.

In any event, I’m sure that some boat-owning entrepreneurial types will sell tickets to take tourists from Newport to see these things close up, with blades rotating to a height of 873 feet as they cleanly, if eerily,  generate electricity.

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Connecticut has opened its first electric-car-charging operation on its stretch of Route 95 (aka the Connecticut Turnpike), at its Madison service plaza. And more are coming. 

Hit this link.

“Seaglider’’

— Regent picture

Finally, the folks at Regent tell me that its electric “seaglider” achieved its first series of flights on Aug. 14 on Narragansett Bay, “proving its full ‘float, foil, fly’ mission—making it the first craft to take off from a controlled hydrofoil to wing-borne flight.’’

The demonstrator is a quarter-scale prototype for its 12-passenger seaglider, Viceroy.

The company calls the seaglider “a new category of electric vehicle that operates exclusively over the water, is the first-ever vehicle to successfully use three modes of maritime operation—floating, foiling and flying—marking a major step forward in maritime transportation.’’

Regent is now focusing on developing its “full-scale, 65-foot wingspan prototype, with human-carrying sea trials expected to begin in 2024.’’

Hit this link for a video. (No, Regent doesn’t pay me.)

War in Newport

The National Museum of American Illustration, in Newport, has many famous World War I posters. This is one of those it’s using in its battle against Salve Regina University’s plan to add dormitory space for more than 400 students, with accompanying parking, in the museum’s neighborhood.

Summertime, and the living is easy?

— Photo by Robert Jack

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

I suspect that many year-round residents of, say, Newport and Cape Cod are already impatiently counting the days until the  summer residents and vacationers leave, despite all the money they bring in (along with resort area gridlock).

Despite some brief thunderstorm-spawned downpours, much of New England is in a  moderate drought. But there can be a good side to this:  Fruits such as apples, grapes (ask wine makers) and peaches are a little smaller than usual but tastier in dry (but not too dry) summers.

Meanwhile, New Englanders should be thankful that its big sources of publicly owned fresh  water, such as the Quabbin and Scituate reservoirs, are in no danger of drying up, unlike the water disaster Out West, which may well  eventually lead to massive migration to wetter and cooler places.

And now the lilies are wilting along the roads. While global warming is extending our summers, if you’re over a certain age they still seem to go by a bit faster every year.

With New England’s hurricane season coming (mostly August and September), people in such low-lying places as Barrington and Warren, R.I. and the head of Buzzards Bay might want to consult a book I’ve mentioned here before that tells of how some of us  will have to learn  how to live not only along the water but over the water as seas continue to rise with global warming. The book, again, is More Water Less Land New Architecture: Sea Level Rise and the Future of Coastal Urbanism, by architect Weston Wright.

The beautiful Quabbin Reservoir, in central Massachusetts. Copious fresh water is more valuable than copious petroleum.

— Photo by Solarapex

Newport, ‘even in November’

President John. F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis watch the 1962 America's Cup races off Newport.

“Some say Newport’s loveliest months are September and October, others are loyal to May and June before the high-summer crowds invade. But even in November when the bay turns gray black and the chill wind hustles off the the Atlantic, Newport keeps its spell — of a kind that has made lively entrepreneurs and tired wanderers alike exclaim on coming to it, ‘This is the place. Let’s stay here.’’’

— Joseph Brennan, in Arthur Griffin’s New England: The Four Seasons

Washington Square, Newport, in 1818, by an unknown painter

Fascinating, complicated and scandal-rich Newport

President Chester Arthur tips his hat while vacationing in Newport in 1884. The city has drawn many celebrities each year in the summer since the Civil War.

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

The drive to Newport from Providence via Fall River has some dramatic stretches. The Spindle City rises up, with its beautiful old stone mill buildings, looking a bit like an English provincial city and, if you carefully crane your neck on the Braga Bridge,  the view down Mt. Hope Bay is spectacular, as is, further south, the view from the Sakonnet River Bridge. If only they could clean up Middletown’s hideous West Main Road commercial strip, which mars the approach to Newport. More trees would help, as would some targeted demolitions. 

Then you get into Newport, one of the country’s most interesting cities – dense with class, ethnic, economic, cultural and architectural complexity. Rich, poor, Navy people, current and former spies, engineers, socialites, TV celebrities, etc., etc., and some of the best gossip in the world, enriched with scandals, present and past. Among the most famous:

The late Claus von Bulow’s alleged attempted murder of his late utility heiress wife, Martha “Sunny’’ von Bulow, which led to two sensational trials in the ’80’s (and the movie Reversal of Fortune, a sort of dark comedy) and the late tobacco heiress Doris Duke’s apparent murder (by driving into him at her Newport estate, Rough Point) of an assistant, Eduardo Tirella, in 1966. Some  Newporters connected to the city’s upper crust who knew these characters and those around them still talk about these cases, as I discovered last week at a lunch in the  City by the Sea.

Thames Street, on Newport’s waterfront. In high summer, the street is often mobbed with shop patrons, restaurant and bar goers and just plain tourist/gawkers. Some are sober.

New-museum magic

Samuel Slater

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

All hail the Samuel Slater Experience, an interactive museum in Webster, Mass., that spotlights the work of Samuel Slater (1768-1835), the English immigrant whose work in setting up manufacturing mills was a major element in the launch of the American Industrial Revolution. It also displays much of the history of Webster, an important early mill town. Slater may be best known for Slater Mill, on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, but he set up other mills, too, most notably in Webster, where he lived from 1812 and from which he ran his empire. (He also loved using child labor….)

It's a reminder of the tremendous dynamism and economic and technological creativity of New Englanders, right up to the present. This has helped keep the region one of the most prosperous places in the world.

One example seems particularly germane now as America tries to move away from our perilous reliance on global-warming fossil fuels sold by such vicious regimes as Russia and Saudi Arabia that we have funded far too long.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, based in Cambridge and Dever, Mass., is making progress in developing a safe form of nuclear energy that could ultimately replace all gas, oil, and coal now used to generate electricity, as well as the controlled fission nuclear plants that present spent-fuel-storage challenges.

Hit these links:

HERE

HERE 

OR HERE 

Then, there’s Cambridge-based Moderna, developer of what might well be the best COVID-19 vaccine.

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In other happy news, the stunning new Sailing Museum, in Newport, will open in May, in time for the City by the Sea’s main tourist season. It’s hard to think of a better place than Newport for such a museum. It’s not only associated with major local and international sailing races, from America’s Cup on, but with the full range of small-scale recreational sailing.

But there’s more! Construction is supposed to begin this summer on the National Coast Guard Museum, on the waterfront in New London, home of the Coast Guard Academy.

Video: 'Satanic mills' in two 'green and pleasant' lands

Arlington Mills, Lawrence, Mass., in 1907

A view of the Berkshires from near North Adams, Mass.

— Photo by jbcurio

Below is a local version of the weird, haunting English poem by William Blake called “Jerusalem,’’ written about 1804. It has long been best known as the hymn of the same name, with music written by Sir Hubert Parry, in 1916. (Remember the movie Chariots of Fire?)

Timmy May, of Newport, R.I., came up with the idea of inserting "New" before “England’’ in the three places where “England” appears in the original Blake poem.

The Industrial Revolution brought many, many “dark satanic mills,’’ first to England and then to its offspring.

Mr. May is on the left in the video below. The other musicians are Jamie Lawton, on violin, and Gregory Jonic, on uilleann pipes.

Hit this video link.

A very comfortable faith

The superyacht Azzam, which from 2013 to 2019 was the largest private yacht in the world.

For N.T.
The path to joy is faith in God,
The young man told his friend.
His joy was plain upon his face;
He hoped not to offend.
All night they talked, and on the morn,
When day dawned bright and hot,
He shook her hand and wished her well
And set out on his yacht.

By Felicia Nimue Ackerman, a poet and a Brown University philosophy professor. This poem is slightly revised from one that ran in Free Inquiry.

Harbour Court, the Newport, R.I. headquarters of the hyper-exclusive New York Yacht Club

Wave action at Rough Point

The Rough Point mansion from Newport’s Cliff Walk.

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

It’s nice when artists and others use New England’s innumerable beautiful outdoor spaces for exhibitions.

Thus it is with artist Melissa McGill’s coming show  “In the Waves’’ at Newport’s Rough Point (which we used to call Rough Trade), the estate of late and deeply eccentric, indeed creepy (but philanthropic!) billionairess Doris Duke.

Ms. McGill has put out a call for young people to participate in the show, set for next month and meant to focus attention on global warming-caused sea-level rise and other man-caused environmental issues. Dodie Kazanjian, the founder of Art & Newport, is the curator of the exhibition.

This spectacle involves Ms. McGill painting waves on fabric made out of recycled plastic pulled from the ocean; plastic pollution has become a huge menace to sea life. The young people participating in the spectacle will use handles at the ends of long fabric strips to  create motion to mimic that of waves.=

“I’m painting the waves in a very expressive way, with the different colors that reference the ocean at Rough Point,” Ms. McGill told the Newport Daily News’s Sean Flynn, in a fun article. “I have done studies and research so they really evoke the ocean there.” (Does the ocean at Rough Point really look that much different than the ocean anywhere?)=

For more information, please hit this link. 

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Coastal flooding in Marblehead, Mass., during Superstorm Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012

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As the seas rise, more and more people will have to move back from the shore and abandon their homes on land that’s increasingly vulnerable to flooding. That land will be left as a  buffer to mitigate damage from storms. How much of it can be turned into public open space,  as parks, bringing something good from the situation?

By the way, although it was published back in 1999, Cornelia Dean’s prescient book Against the Tide: The Battle for America’s Beaches, remains a dramatic, prescriptive (and often alarming) guide to  the issues around rising seas and coastal development. Ms. Dean, the former New York Times science editor, continues to study the not-very-slow-motion coastal crisis.