Whitcomb: Drinking Into the New Year;  Holiday-Card History Lessons; Revive Counties?

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

“Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real xxxxhole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.’’

--  From “Good Bones,’’ by Maggie Smith (born 1977), American poet, freelance writer and editor

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Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“You ask me what life is. That’s like asking what a carrot is.  A carrot is a carrot, and there’s nothing more to know.’’

-- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian playwright, short-story writer and physician

 

 

“Since I went on the wagon
I'm certain drink is a major crime
For when you lay off the liquor
You feel so much slicker….”

--- From “Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please,’’ by Cole Porter

 

Here’s the whole song:

 

 

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Cocktail PHOTO: GoLocal

Most of us seek structure, including by dividing up time in arbitrary ways, such as by years. It’s a way of reducing the anxiety of knowing that we’re floating, nearly powerless, down a murky river of time. So we mark the passing of another year tonight, though it really doesn’t mean all that much.

 

New Year’s Eve has, of course, long been linked with drinking. While the immediate effects --- fading inhibition and even brief euphoria – may be alluring, it’s wise to remember that booze is a neurotoxin. It disrupts the functions of brain cells and can cause permanent brain damage. Along the way, driving drunk can obviously kill, and drunken fights are far from unknown.  The effects on other parts of the body are well known and can be fatal – cirrhosis, cancers, etc.

 

Many people shouldn’t drink at all.

 

And yet, when used in moderation, alcohol in many people can increase a gentle sociability, and even spur new friendships and romances, and wine and beer can boost one’s appetite for food. It’s said to help limit heart disease in some people, though those good effects can be more healthily obtained through diet and exercise.

 

Each person responds to drinking in her or his own way, so it can be difficult to generalize about its perils. In any case, it’s such an ancient and entrenched part of Western culture it won’t go away.

 

There’s probably less New Year’s Eve drinking now than there used to be only a few decades ago. The amount of drinking (most of it via hard liquor, in cocktails or straight)  on Dec. 31-Jan. 1 was often horrendous when I was young, in the ‘50’s and 60’s, along with idiotic images of drunks dancing around with lampshades on their heads at holiday parties. New Year’s Eve intoxications were a topic of innumerable anecdotes, as were the headaches the next morning.

 

Some things are better now.

 

xxx

 

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PHOTO: GoLocal

As I reviewed the real-life (on paper!) holiday cards we received this year,  it struck me how little the motifs of the custom-made ones change. Above all, there are pictures of children and grandchildren, often with a dog thrown in. I wonder about the emotional reaction of most people who don’t have offspring. Sadness? Envy? Relief?
 

It's a bit eerie to see how the images change over the years, as people move in and move out (divorce, grim reaper, etc.), develop wrinkles and paunches and so on. Indeed, an amateur historian or sociologist could craft some interesting historical narratives out of several decades of cards from the same senders. But most of us throw the cards into the trash with the wrapping paper.

 

In any case, I’m convinced that most people much prefer cards on paper to those sent online, whatever the latter’s ingenious electronic blinking,  grimacing and sounds. The best paper cards are those that the senders write on, if only their signatures. We appreciate the effort.

 

 

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MAP: File

Bring Back Some County Stuff?

County governments with substantial powers are mostly long gone from New England. That’s for a variety of practical and political reasons. Among them are that towns and cities were incorporated here earlier than in the rest of America, and there has long been little unincorporated land (except in Maine). Still, many of the region’s counties used to have real powers (most of which were taken away in the past half century). But town and city officials have tended to want to grab those powers, and voters were  increasingly convinced that counties were dinosaurs.

 

And yet some things are best handled regionally, including such matters as open-space protection, water supplies and, increasingly, encouraging the provision of that somewhat ill-defined thing called “affordable housing.’’ Certainly, there can be more regionalization of public-safety services and education, especially in suburban and exurban areas. This could save money (by reducing service duplication) and improve service quality.

 

I was impressed when I  briefly worked in Delaware, in the ‘70’s, by the generally high quality of the services and infrastructure of New Castle County, which includes the city of Wilmington as well as suburban and exurban land. It’s one of three counties in The First State, which is the second smallest state in the Union by area.  New Castle County has an elected county council and county executive. Rhode Island, especially, would do well to study it. As has been asked many times before, does the tiny Ocean State really need 39 municipalities and 36 school districts (32 municipal and 4 regional) school districts? But maybe the desire for very local control trumps efficiency?

 

Speaking of Delaware, Joe Biden, whom I met a few times way back then, when he was a new U.S. senator, has never been very popular nationally and mostly won the presidency in 2020 because his main opponent was a fascist gangster (who still got tens of millions of votes from people who admire such creatures). But maybe mostly because Delaware is so small and intimate, Biden’s chummy, old-fashioned Irish political style went down well. He sure remembered names.

 

xxx

 

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Nikki Haley, News Nation GOP Debate

South Carolinian Nikki Haley is a well-disciplined, well-spoken, slick  and sometimes amoral Republican presidential candidate who usually carefully crafts her messages for her main audiences. Thus, knowing that the core of the national GOP/QAnon Party is white people, especially in the old Slave States, the Indian-American refused to say that slavery was a or the cause of the Civil War when asked, at a campaign event, what caused the conflict. (The event was in Berlin, N.H., in the most Trumpian part of the Granite State – “North of the Notches.’’)

 

That’s my guess on why she reacted as she did.

 

Or could it really be that, like so many Americans, she doesn’t know American history? That’s scary, too.

 

Before later backing and filling, she responded with this evasive and cowardly murk:

 

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was or argument?”
 

Eh?

 

Perhaps Ms. Haley might want to consult Lincoln’s greatest (to me) speech – The Second Inaugural – written shortly before he was murdered by someone who would have been a devoted Trump voter today. Hit this link:

 

 

But, hey, at least Ms. Haley isn’t a psychopath! And she may well win the New Hampshire primary.

 

 

xxx

 

Has Biden or Trump been tougher on migrants illegally entering the United States? Well, at least sometimes, the former. The Cato Institute has looked at some numbers that will surprise those credulous enough to believe Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric:

 

Whatever we do, the migrants will keep coming to Western nations, driven by poverty, tyranny and, increasingly, the effects of global warming. But we could slow the flow a bit by such measures as, say, more economic aid to Central America (even though some would be stolen) and cutting back on our poverty-swelling sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba.

 

 

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Deepwater Wind Farm PHOTO: Company

Wind Towers in Tempests

Those fighting the installation of wind turbines off southern New England, especially affluent people in summer-resort towns and oil and gas interests,  like to assert that the offshore wind farms wouldn’t hold up in hurricane-force winds. In fact, big wind farms have held up for decades in the North and Baltic seas, where hurricane-force winds and huge waves are common.
 

Generally, the richer the coastal town, the more opposition.  Consider Little Compton. Various reasons are given, but it mostly boils down to the fact that some affluent (and therefore politically powerful) people don’t want to see the wind turbines miles away on the horizon (a view that’s not even possible on those many days when it’s hazy, foggy, rainy or snowing) or closer up on their recreational boats during the summer.

 

Offshore wind farms were a boon in helping Europe to start weaning itself off Russian natural gas after Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago. And they could help New England be considerably more energy-independent than it already is.

 

I guess that offshore-wind-farm foes would prefer more fracking for oil and gas, more oil refineries,  more gas and oil tankers, of course not near their summer places and yacht clubs….And even toastier summers.

 

 

Wrong Member

Hungary, ruled by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, can and should be kicked out of  NATO, which has 31 member nations. Hungary has become a major security risk for the West. But it would be much more difficult to kick the now fascist-ruled country out of the 27-member European Union because of how the E.U. is set up. Orban, a Putin and Trump admirer, is  the corrupt tyrant of a country that has been heavily subsidized by the E.U. This must stop. Such regimes must be punished, especially given the threat posed to Europe by a ruthlessly expansionist fascist Russia.

 

And the European Union is supposed to be made up of full democracies!

 

When an organization has as many members as the E.U. and NATO,  it’s almost inevitable that at least one will often seek to undermine its mission – e.g., Hungary in the E.U. and NATO and Turkey in NATO.

 

 

Going After Information Thieves

Kudos to The New York Times for suing OpenAI and Microsoft for stealing its copyrighted materials. Let‘s hope that many other news organizations join the suit. For far too long, tech companies, especially those hosting social-media and now artificial-intelligence platforms, have been swiping vast quantities of journalistic material, ravaging the business model of companies whose reporting is essential to maintaining democracy and a healthy civic culture. Local journalism has been particularly hard hit.

 

 

Advance Their Feeling of Agency

Reading Philip K. Howard’s new book, Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society would be a good way to start the year, especially an election year.

 

In it, Mr. Howard, a lawyer and civic leader who’s chairman of Common Good (commongood.org), the reform group, cogently (and sometimes with dark humor) argues that mostly well-intentioned efforts since the 1960s to craft laws and regulations to fit every situation are doomed to failure.

 

That’s because individuals, organizations and society are far too complicated for such precision – there are obviously too many variables. The rigid hyper-legalistic approach has often paralyzed decision-making by making people in authority too scared to exercise their common-sense-and-experience-based judgment to fit the unique circumstances of each situation. More broadly, it has created an atmosphere of frustration and alienation – with a sense in too many settings that attempts to make thing better are futile.

 

All this comes on top of America’s famous litigiousness.

 

So whether it’s teachers afraid to run classrooms fully conducive to learning, or crucial public works and energy projects delayed for decades because of miles-deep regulations,  or incompetent employees who can’t be fired, our once can-do nation has become all too often a can’t-do place. Reading this book, which is rich with observations by a wide range of experts, might wake up people to how American life can be made considerably more humane, fairer and more prosperous by loosening the bonds of rigid rules and letting people, especially those in authority, exercise their judgment within broad, common-sensical parameters.

 

xxx

 

RIP: James K. Sunshine has died at 99. A great editor at The Providence Journal and a loyal and engaging friend to many.  He was a man with very wide knowledge and many interests. And he always looked ahead.

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.


 

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