Whitcomb: Brief Joys of Snow; Locals vs. the Chains; History Building; Putin’s Congressional Friends

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

View Larger +

Robert Whitcomb, columnist

 

“At four o’clock it’s dark.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Today, looking out through dusk

at three gray women in stretch slacks

chatting in front of the post office….”

-- From “In Winter,’’ by Michael Ryan (1946), American poet

To read the whole poem, please hit this link:

 

 

‘“The refugee’s run
across the desert borderlands
carved wings of fright
into his forehead….”

From “Mi Vida: Wings of Fright,’’ by Martin Espada (born 1957), Puerto Rico-born poet and professor

To read the whole poem, please hit this link:


 

 

“We all have names we don’t know about.’’

-- Martin Amis (1949-2023), English novelist

 

 

xxx

 

 

Kids get excited by the year’s first snow, as it covers the boring brown earth of what is now apparently called “Stick Season” in northern New England – after the leaves have fallen but before what the media insist on calling “the white stuff’’’ arrives. I never heard of  “Stick Season” when I lived up there in the late ’60s. Here’s a song about it:

 

 

But for many adults, a snowstorm is a downer, reminding us of slippery and clogged roads, snow shoveling, perhaps accompanied by heart attacks, delayed deliveries and maybe even a  few roof collapses. Still, let’s feign enthusiasm for the beauty of the white blanket. The children will soon enough understand its inconveniences.

 

Or you could empty your bank account and head north with them to the ski areas, where a few days on the slopes can cost more than a European vacation.

 

Oh, yes, on a  clear, still but not too cold day (say about 30), the look of the sun on fresh snow blurring edges can be quite heartening, for a little while.

 

 

xxx

 

 

View Larger +

Henderson Bridge IMAGE: RIDOT

I know that highway engineering can be difficult, especially in densely populated areas, but surely the Rhode Island Department of Transportation can make it easier to navigate the new rotary on the east side of the always-being-rebuilt Henderson Bridge between Providence’s East Side and that speed-trap center called East Providence. The current signage sends many people in circles or facing the peril of a head-on collision, especially at night and during rush hours.

 

Rotaries (aka “roundabouts”), by smoothing and calming traffic, can reduce accidents, and they cut pollution from the idling of gasoline-fueled vehicles and can eliminate the need for expensive traffic lights. But the signage must be very clear – especially at night.

 

Better study the bridge project carefully before entering it.

 

And now there’s the inevitable flap over a proposed rotary in Portsmouth, R.I.  Drivers, like most people, fear change.
 

Hit this link:

 


 

xxx

 

 

Meanwhile, my friend Lisette Prince, who lives in Newport, reminded me that planting ground cover instead of grass on median strips and otherwise along the roads reduces pollution caused by gasoline-powered lawnmowers, virtually eliminates erosion and can stay green without watering for much longer than grass.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Revolution Wind’s proposed wind turbines that might be installed 15 miles off Newport would not hurt that city’s tourism and other sectors, and quality of life, any more than the wind turbines 3.8 miles off Block Island have hurt that place’s summer-home, tourism and day-tripper sectors, and quality of life, since the turbines went up, in 2016.

 

 

Obligations of History

 

"The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present."


-- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English writer

 

A proposed  Rhode Island state archives and history museum building across the street from the State House could be an entertaining source of much needed education, including in civics, for Rhode Islanders. Many,  after all, like Americans in general, are woefully ignorant of any history and have little idea how our governments work. And the building could draw tourists, given how colorful the state’s history is.

 

But I wonder if the $100 million or so the building would cost would be better spent on directly boosting history and civics education in the schools, such as by hiring more teachers and buying more history and civics textbooks.

 

One of the reasons that our politics and much of our civic life in general are so often crazy is ignorance of history, especially the history that spawned our government and other civic organizations.

 

 

View Larger +

Asthenis Pharmacy in Providence - Independently owned and operated PHOTO: GoLocal

Local Stores

A 1963 law in North Dakota requires that a state-licensed pharmacist own at least 51 percent of a pharmacy in that state, thus keeping most drugstores in the state locally owned, locking out such large national chains as Walgreens and Walmart. CVS, however, escapes the rule because it’s grandfathered in the Peace Garden State via its purchase of a drugstore chain in the state before the law went into effect.

 

North Dakota, while run by right-wing Republicans, has some surprisingly socialistic aspects, going back to the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century. Consider the Bank of North Dakota (BND), a state-owned, state-run financial institution, based in Bismarck, the capital. It’s the only government-owned general-service bank in the United States.  It is the legal depository for all state funds in North Dakota, and uses these deposits to finance development, farming and small businesses. Hmm….An escape from those Wall Street sharks?

 

Hit this link:

 

 

Politicians from substantially rural states such as North Dakota have often spouted lies about how self-reliant their (overwhelmingly Red) states are, unlike those lefty more urban states. But in many ways they’re more reliant on public money than the latter, and not just in huge federal payments to their agribusinesses.

 

Hypocrisy makes the world go round….

 

 

Anyway, read  The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is and Isn’t to get some more understanding of the likes of North Dakota.
 

Hit this link:

 

Ah, locally owned stores where more of the staffs are more apt to know you, and to be involved in the community, than they are in big chain outlets, though of course locals work in chain stores, too. There is debate over how price-competitive locally-owned drugstores are, and small locally-owned stores are less likely to carry the range of stuff you’d find in a chain outlet.

 

There’s an emotional draw to locally owned stores. In the little town I lived in during the ‘50’s, Cohasset, Mass., there was one real grocery store, called Central Market, in the village center. It was fragrant with coffee being ground and sawdust on the floor of the butcher shop at the back. The owners, who at least feigned good humor, seemed familiar with just about everybody who entered and their preferences. And locally caught fish would be trucked down the street from the harbor.

 

It was a community center.

 

And the profits stayed in town, rather than being sent to corporate headquarters to be paid to shareholders, including the chains’ astronomically compensated  senior executives

 

But then a big supermarket, part of the once huge but now dead A&P chain, opened along the town’s major road, which led to Boston, with that all-important element of American commerce -- a big parking lot.  And the store could offer far more products than could Central Market, and its economies of scale let it generally charge lower prices.

 

And so Central Market eventually closed, perhaps more of an emotional loss than an economic one to the village center –an erosion of a sense of community. Still, I’d guess that most people prefer the size and standardization of the chains. And anonymity while shopping has its charms.

 

 

xxx

 

 

View Larger +

LOGO: CVS

CVS and other drugstore chains say they will be making drug pricing, infamous for its complexity and opaqueness in America, more transparent. About time.

 

The new approach will use a formula based on a drug’s cost, a fee reflecting certain pharmacy costs and a fixed markup. But don’t expect that American health care, including its pharmaceuticals,  will not remain the world’s most expensive. We have to pay for all that TV marketing of new, patent-protected drugs, some of which actually work as advertised.

 

 

The Loom of Life

It should be obvious that all species of plants and animals are connected. Thus extinctions of individual species, which are mostly caused by people through pollution, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, overexploitation, and, increasingly, global warming, affect the other species, of which we’re one. But rich far-right business groups in bed with the GOP/QAnon party, seek to kill or gut the Endangered Species Act, which President Nixon signed into law in 1973.

 

These groups include mining, fossil-fuel and some big agribusiness interests that resent all  environmental regulations as limiting their vast profitability. Avarice has no limit.

 

Humanity has destroyed innumerable species, and only in recent decades have many people come to realize how much we, too, need biodiversity on our little, fragile planet. Indeed, its decline threatens human life.

 

 

xxx

 

 

View Larger +

Former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung and his wife, Rep. Barbara-Ann Fenton Fung PHOTO: GoLocal

I feel sorry for reasonable, old-fashioned Republicans such as Rhode Island state Rep. Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung and her husband, the former, and successful, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, having to try to co-exist with the fascists, con artists, ignoramuses, nihilists and terrorists/traitors who have come to dominate so much of the national party and who pay obeisance to a vicious man of seemingly bottomless corruption who admires Vladimir Putin.

 

We need a new, thoughtful, responsible right-of-center party as a new home for Representative Fenton-Fung, who is running for mayor, and her husband and millions of other people who consider themselves moderate “conservatives.’’

 

(Of course, political campaigns are complicated and unpredictable, but my hunch is that Mr. Fung’s  being photographed with the soon-to-be-briefly U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during that fellow’s visit to Rhode Island to pump up the Fung candidacy did the Cranstonian no good.)

 

Hit this link on the ruthless Trump machinations in one state to try to steal the 2020 election.

 

 

xxx

 

 

The following article, by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, is a superb explanation of why it’s in America’s national security interest to help Ukraine defeat the Russian invasion. He knows Putin well. READ HERE

 

 

Now, it appears that  GOP/QAnon members of Congress may kill American aid to Ukraine. These short-sighted pols may soon be embarrassed if Putin displays a tyrant’s urge  to attack the Baltic States, Poland and other eastern European countries that belong to NATO after he subdues Ukraine.

 

 

xxx

 

 

How many civilians (as opposed to Hamas fighters) have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s attacks? Thousands, obviously, in no small part because Hamas uses civilians as human shields. But be skeptical of figures put out by Hamas, a dictatorship that, like all such regimes, promotes 24/7 propaganda.

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal,  and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.


 

Related Articles

 

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

 
 

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast

I want to follow on Twitter

I want to Like on Facebook