Whitcomb: Buried Buses & 24 Hour Fun in Prov; Building Higher Along the Water; Posting Pet Loss

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

“The children go forward with their little satchels.

And all morning the mothers have labored

to gather the late apples, red and gold,

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like words of another language.’’

-- From “The School Children,’’ by Louise Gluck, a former U.S. poet laureate who lives in Cambridge, Mass.

 

“To many he is meager and insignificant; yet he holds sixty-five million Germans, a fair share of whom adore him, in a thralldom compounded of love, fear, and nationalist ecstasy….He is a mountebank, a demagogue, a frustrated hysteric, a lucky misfit….He reads almost nothing.’’

From the article “Hitler,’’ by John Gunther, in the January 1936 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

 

Wonderful soft air around here at this time of year.
 

 

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Kennedy Plaza

Busmania

Rhode Island officials propose to have a tunnel for buses built under Kennedy Plaza, in downtown Providence, to reduce vehicular (and human?) density in the plaza area and better connect it with Burnside Park. We need to study the engineering plans for this but it seems that it would be very expensive to construct such a tunnel in such an area, which is virtually at sea level.

 

To take some of the vehicular pressure off the plaza why not create a secondary bus hub in the Route 195 relocation area? This would be within walking distance of Kennedy Plaza, and perhaps small buses could be used in a shuttle service between the hubs, or perhaps electric trolleys.

 

Kennedy Plaza has the bones to be one of America’s most beautiful squares – not quite up to the glory of Boston’s Copley Square, but impressive. Creating a nearby transit hub would makes its improvement easier to achieve, and would be a lot cheaper than a tunnel.

 

Having said that, I’d add that while police activity could be stepped up to stop rowdy and worse behavior among a few of those using buses at Kennedy Plaza, the environment is not as problematical as has been presented. And there is a police station there.

 

 

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Proposed 24 drinking zone

Conley's Concept

Dylan Conley, chairman of the Providence Board of Licenses, has suggested creating a 24/7 entertainment district in the form of a strip of bars and nightclubs on gritty Allens Avenue. The idea is to draw away and concentrate some of the establishments now dispersed around downtown Providence. Their sometimes raffish activities can antagonize neighbors, scare tourists, lure some folks looking for trouble, and distress citizens worried about the reputation of Rhode Island’s capital.

 

A hoped-for benefit of Mr. Conley’s idea would be creating a larger source of sales- and property-tax revenue from this sector by promoting the new district as a sort of Bourbon Street, New Orleans, attraction. However, by intensifying Providence’s (exaggerated) reputation as a sleazy and unsafe place, such a district might have the opposite effect in the long term by scaring away more respectable and conventional -- and affluent -- businesses and individuals. As for New Orleans as a model: It’s infamous for the high crime rate in its entertainment strips.

 

And you can imagine the number of drunk drivers that such an Allens Avenue entertainment district would put on Route 95. Few customers there would want to just drink one glass of heart-healthy red wine….
 

 Is this really the sort of industry Providence wants to expand? And Allens Avenue, for all its grittiness, is along the water. Surely there are classier ways to take better advantage of that than creating what would probably become a new Mecca for many dubious people. Before, of course, global warming puts Allens Avenue underwater.

 

Portland, Maine's Big Idea

Speaking of underwater, city planners in Portland, Maine, have come up with some interesting ideas for adapting that city’s waterfront, much of it a real “working waterfront’’ (fishing boats, etc.), to rising seas. Their proposed Coastal Resiliency Overlay Zone would, The Portland Press Herald reports, let developers “build taller buildings in those {flood-prone} areas if they prove the additional height is being used to prepare for sea-level rise and storm surges associated with a changing climate.’’

 

Design of such buildings would include “the elevation of the first floor above highest adjacent grade {and} building design that allows for future modification of the ground elevation.’’  And in some cases, “the new rules would allow developers to build an extra floor.’’

 

Of course, some people whose view of the water might be limited by higher buildings would complain, but Portland’s planners are just being realistic. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projects that some now low-lying areas of Portland might be under a under a foot of water at normal high tide in 2100, but 6 to 10 feet underwater when high tide and storm surge combine, probably during a Nor’easter.

 

To read the Press Herald story, please hit this link:

To look at NOAA’s “Sea Level Rise Viewer’’ please hit this link:

 

 

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Vin Mor, Brown University

Providence as a Center for Alzheimer’s Care Study

With the aging of the U.S. population (and far too many policymakers and others sticking their heads in the sand about its vast social, economic and political implications) it was happy news, especially for our region, that the National Institute on Aging has awarded Brown University and Boston-based Hebrew SeniorLife a $53.4 million grant as part of an effort to improve the health care and quality of life for those living with Alzheimer’s Disease, which affects millions of people.  The official count of those Americans suffering from the disease is about 5.8 million (with about 5.6 million 65 or older) but I suspect that’s a big undercount because many victims and their families cover up cases. (And let’s not forget that there are other forms of usually age-related dementias too, such as Frontal-Lobe Dementia and Lewy Body Dementia.)

 

The award is Brown’s biggest federal grant so far and will further amplify its reputation for advanced work in neuroscience-related matters.

 

Vincent Mor, a nationally known expert on aging and a Brown professor of health services and policy, told GoLocal:

 

“This grant will revolutionize the national infrastructure for research into how care is delivered to people living with dementia and their caregivers. The key is figuring out how to take an idea that worked in an ideal situation and adapt it so it can be piloted in the messy real-world system of care providers that exists across the U.S.’’

 

I hope that the news will lure more researchers to Brown to work on the scary challenges associated with aging.

 

By the way, there are plenty of local samples available. Rhode Island has the 11th oldest population in America, with 15.84 percent of the population 65 or over. Massachusetts is 25th, with 15.06 percent in that cohort, which may say a little bit about why the Bay State is more economically dynamic than the Ocean State.

 

To read the GoLocal article, please hit this link:

To see an exciting movie on using art to treat Alzheimer’s victims, please hit this link:

 

 

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Correia, now twice indicted by the feds

Getting High on Corruption

Massachusetts’s system of local control over marijuana businesses that apparently often gives a single municipal official, such as  Fall River’s brazen, sleazoid and perhaps crazy mayor, Jasiel Correia II, the power to authorize a pot business to open is, of course, a wide-open door for corruption. In the latest scandal involving the 27-year-old statesman, he’s been arrested on charges that he extorted cannabis companies for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Corriea has long displayed a love of a fancy, glitzy lifestyle; his wants seem to far exceed his needs.

So it was good to hear Gov. Charlie Baker tell The Boston Globe last week:

“Maybe the state needs to put something in place that says, ‘It needs to actually be a governing entity, not a single person’ because that’s a legit concern.” Yes, a “governing entity’’ acting with transparency.

As disturbing as Mayor Correia is, much blame also goes to those citizens of Fall River who voted for him despite impressive intimations of his greed, immaturity and megalomania and to those who didn’t vote at all in the elections that put him in and kept him in office. Not voting has the effect of a vote – usually for someone you don’t like. Corrupt politicians often reflect a corrupt and/or lazy electorate. Or maybe just depressed….

 

 

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Twin Towers

Looking back at 9/11

18 years after 9/11, America is a weaker, more corrupt and more anxious country, in part because of how the G.W. Bush administration responded to it with two wars paid for with borrowed money even as it weakened regulations and spawned a speculative boom that ended in a crash and the Great Recession. That helped lead to the sociopathTrump, who’s hard at work destroying the Western Alliance that helped protect us for so long.  And we’re still in Afghanistan, where the Taliban, enablers of 9/11, know they can wait us out. What a horrible waste of blood and treasure there! We should have pulled out our troops after we killed Osama bin Laden, while keeping enough of a special-operations capacity nearby to be able to deter the next bin Laden.

 

About the only thing that’s better now is we have more domestic security in some sectors. However, that’s at the cost of considerable loss of privacy, much more surveillance and less mobility in such places as airports. Now the biggest domestic terrorist threat seems to be angry, frustrated, right-wing young men with assault rifles.

 

 

Look Abroad for Health-Care Ideas

The United States has the worst health-care “system’’ in the West, though one that is hugely profitable for many providers, drug companies and insurers.

 

There are even spots in developing countries where the care is better. Consider Narayana Health, in India, a private for-profit hospital system. Fortune magazine took a look at it and reported:

 

‘’{Some} privately-owned Indian health care systems are providing services that rival the quality of care found at the best U.S. hospitals—and for a fraction of the cost.’’

“While it would cost a patient anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 in a U.S. research hospital, Narayana performs heart surgeries for around $2,100. And its outcomes are excellent, even by U.S. standards. They do it by lowering costs throughout their system. They use generic drugs. They practice telemedicine. They manufacture their own supplies. They train patients’ family members to deliver post-op care. They sterilize and reuse medical devices (like the steel clamp used to hold the heart in place during open-heart surgery).

 

“Narayana Health even provides free or subsidized care to 55 percent of its patients—and still makes a profit. It might seem that the more subsidized patients the hospital treats, the more money the hospital would be expected to lose. Narayana’s mission to serve the underserved drives cost innovations to high levels, and the resulting ultra-low-cost position boosts profit margins on the paying patients. Consequently, the hospital is financially sustainable despite the charitable care.’’

 

Very impressive, though I wonder if the fact that Indian health-care professionals, especially physicians, don’t demand and get the very high salaries that American ones get has something to do with their success.

 

So this paragraph in the article also got my attention:

 

…. “Boston-based Iora Health, a primary care provider, depends on a service model that co-founder and CEO Rushika Fernandopulle saw practiced in parts of Africa and the Caribbean. The company uses health coaches rather than doctors to handle the vast majority of patient observation and care, and the highly-trained coaches cost much less than doctors. Iora reports that their primary care focused model has reduced patients’ hospitalization by 40 percent, and emergency room visits by 20 percent.’’

Americans are used to hearing from the folks who have enriched themselves on U.S. health care that we have the best health care in the world. Far from it, though we have some large islands of excellence.

 

Sprawling Away From Congestion

With what often seem increasingly nightmarish commutes in Greater Boston, it’s surprising that U.S. Census data show that average travel time to work in the area rose only 2.3 minutes, to 29.8 minutes, in 2017 (in an economic boom) from 27.5 minutes in 2007 (as the Great Recession loomed). That’s particularly interesting since Greater Boston has been ranked as having the worst highway congestion in America, according to the transportation analytics firm INRIX.

The apparent explanation: suburban/exurban sprawl. People move further out from the city, say to the Route 495 area from Route 128, in search for cheaper and more space and less traffic congestion. Businesses and their jobs follow them out. Of course, the further out they go the more dependent they are on cars.

 

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GOP and DEMS, Flickr

Two Nations

The narrow, two-point victory last Tuesday of the Republican candidate, Dan Bishop, over Democrat Dan McCready in a North Carolina congressional district that Trump won by 12 points in 2016 suggests his declining overall popularity, even in such GOP districts, but a breakdown of the vote  also shows the solidity of his backing in rural and exurban areas, especially those where  the only part of the U.S. Constitution many voters recognize is their version of the Second Amendment.

A recession would probably change the allegiance of quite a few. Meanwhile, America is increasingly two nations.

 

Preferring a Face at Checkout

Oregon is considering limiting to two the number of automated checkout lanes in a store. I’m sympathetic to the proposal because checkout jobs provide income to people who might not otherwise be able to get one and these jobs can be the first rungs on their economic-mobility ladders.

But regulating checkout-lane staffing is the sort of clumsy outside micro-management of businesses that gets in managers’ way as they work to respond to the ever-changing marketplace. It goes too far.

Because of my desire to help protect jobs, I always avoid automated checkout lanes. If a lot of people have the same idea, and I think they do, then wise businesses will keep an adequate number of humans in these jobs and that will be good for business. Automated checkout lanes may be attractive to some patrons while a real turnoff for others. But it’s the business managers’ right to decide the mix.

On the East Side of Providence, there’s a self-service gas station right next to an old-fashioned full-service one with a good garage and mechanics. I often buy gasoline at the latter to help in my tiny way to keep them in business. I usually deal with a fine fellow called Roger; he’s helped me deal with a range of automotive irritations. There’s no telling when the personal relationship I have with the folks there might come in handy. You can’t automate all customer service. Even with self-service lanes, humans must frequently be called over to fix scanning or other problems.

 

Vinyl Victory

Sales of vinyl records continue to climb this year as sales of compact disks slide. I think that this has a lot do with the wide space for art and notes provided by the record covers, that they’re harder to lose than CDs and that they last longer. Also, they’re just more romantic, even with (or particularly with) scratches.

 

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The Art of Posting Pet Loss

In our neighborhood it sometimes seems that every other utility pole has a notice of a lost animal, usually a cat or a dog, on it, though I’ve seen desperate pleas to help find ferrets. If they love their pets so much, why are so many people so lazy about making sure their animals don’t get out of the house without their owners, where they’re apt to get squashed by a car or truck as the animals chase something. The biggest problem comes in late spring, when some heartless departing college students abandon their pets. The loose cats bother me the most because they are such bird-killing machines.

 

Anyway, I highly recommend Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters From Around the World, by Ian Phillips. There’s some impressive pathos and creativity, and even a bit of (mostly inadvertent) humor, in the book. You might get some ideas of what to write and draw if your pet escapes.

 

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