Whitcomb: Fall Fish; Lunching With the Prince; Autumn Assault; Classics

Sunday, September 24, 2023

 

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Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

“But that morning
I made him proud,
couldn't have done better,
unless, perhaps,
one of the girls
had slept over
and answered the door….’’

- From “The Day I Made My Father Proud,’’ by Michael Moran (born 1947), Kentucky-based poet and retired psychiatrist

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To read the whole poem, hit this link:

 

 

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.’’

- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Greek philosopher and polymath

 

 

“Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.’’

- Jules Feiffer (born 1929), American cartoonist and satirist

 

 

September and October remind me of smelt fishing with a bamboo pole and two hooks on a spreader on a dock in the harbor down the wooded hill from our house. The sky always seemed to be clear, and the cool wind from the east included a whiff of the marsh along the channel to the harbor.

 

It was an exhilarating early fall ritual coming as the maples started to turn bright colors and the apples were at their peak.

 

Smelts are delicious fried with a little cornmeal,  lemon, and butter.

 

 

Now that the college kids are back in Providence in throngs, we’re seeing many of them strolling across streets in traffic while staring down at their cell phones, on which they apparently see things more engaging or addictive than the “real,’’ multi-sensory life on the street. Every once in a while, a driver hits one of these self-absorbed – and in a sense selfish -- students through no fault of the driver.

 

Many of these same students had probably studied with anxious interest the college rankings (the latest are just out) that U.S. News & World Report, et al., have inflicted on higher education for decades, and which making extreme false equivalences/comparing apples and oranges are the system. But people love rankings that smooth away the true complexity of institutions and places. Bogus clarity.

 

Best place to retire, best place to die….

 

In any event, generally, the richer the (nonpublic) college, the higher the ranking.
 

 

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PHOTO: J.W. Watson Funeral Home

The death last Sunday at 75 of Gennaro Castellano, former captain of downtown Providence’s well-known Capriccio restaurant, brought back cinematic memories of a few lunches I had there with Vincent “Buddy” Cianci in his heyday as mayor and “Prince of Providence’’  in the ’90’s. The lunches were very long, and he wasn’t averse to drinking stuff stronger than water during them. Considering that Cianci allegedly had a good-sized city to run, he seemed in no hurry to get back to work even as we approached 3 p.m. Indeed, it was I who became increasingly anxious to get back to my job running The Providence Journal’s commentary pages, with its not very forgiving deadlines.

 

Buddy would say as I kept looking at my watch: “Relax! Nice place, eh?”

 

The waiters were very able, if obsequious, as if they feared the mayor, with his semi-mobster persona. They probably had good reason to.

 

 

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PHOTO: GoLocal

Loud but Poisonous

 

Fall is here. Cover your head and stay in the basement.

 

More and more data have been accumulating in the last several years that show just how awful gasoline-powered leaf blowers are for our health and the environment.  In early and mid-autumn, which before leaf blowers often comprised the loveliest time of the year around here, we have ample opportunity to have our air poisoned and our hearing damaged by ubiquitous “landscaping” companies and individuals wielding these devices on fallen leaves and dirt.

 

Apparently, it’s now considered too laborious to use a rake.

 

According to recent studies, one single leaf blower spews as much pollution in one hour as one car driven from New York to Washington.

 

The proliferation of even middle-class people willing to pay “landscaping” companies to do yard work that the homeowners could do themselves (or hire a teenager to do) in a relatively short time says something about America’s decaying self-reliance. I also think some of this is keeping up with the Joneses – look at me, I’m rich enough to have a grounds crew!

 

Victims should speak up, and they should boycott “landscaping” companies that use them. For that matter, these machines should have been banned everywhere long ago, and not just in some localities.

 

Here’s just one company around Providence that  assaults our lungs and ears with its leaf blowers:

 

City & Estate Gardener (I love the pomposity of “Estate”).

 

Here’s more:

 

https://www.quietcleanpdx.org/leaf-blowers-dangers-pollution/

https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/dangers-leaf-blowers-18019073.php

 

These articles by James Fallow tells how a group of citizens successfully fought the leaf-blower assault:

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/james-fallows-leaf-blower-ban/583210/

 

https://fallows.substack.com/p/its-about-your-leaf-blower

 

 

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Speaking of air pollution (and global warming), wouldn’t it be nice if fewer people unnecessarily left their cars and trucks idling for such long periods?

 

 

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In happier enviro news, the Chinese online food platform Ele.me, similar to UberEats or DoorDash, is now encouraging consumers on the Ele.me app to use their own, permanent cutlery instead of the disposable plastic knives, spoons,  chopsticks, and forks (which are made from oil) that have usually come in delivery bags and that end up in landfills and elsewhere in the environment. Customers can still get the plastic stuff with their orders if they want.

 

 

The Washington Post reported that “no-cutlery orders increased ‘significantly’— 648 percent — after the app change. The ‘nudges’ didn’t harm business performance or the total number of orders.’’

See:

 

 

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IMAGE: File

Demographers at the United Nations predict that the world’s population will hit about 10 billion by 2057 (up from about 8 billion now). After that, some experts see a steady decline as more and more couples have fewer than two children. A decline would be very good news, given that it would put less pressure on the environment and on social, economic and political structures, and so tend to reduce the pressure on poor people in Third World countries to migrate to safer, richer, and cooler places as global warming continues indefinitely.


And a declining population could lessen the impoverishing impact of artificial intelligence destroying many millions of jobs.

 

But, to say the least, things look dicey for the next few decades.

Hit this link:

 

 

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PHOTO: File

Yep, Recession Is Always Inevitable

Leonard Lardaro, a veteran University of Rhode Island economist  -- and usually a glass-half-or-more-empty guy – has often, over the years, seen a recession as lurking close by or already here. Right now, he sees the state in a “statistical recession,’’ even though it has near-record low unemployment.

Hit this link:

 

It reminds me of the line from the great war movie Breaker Morant:

 

“Live every day as if it were going to be your last; for one day you're sure to be right.’’

 

Anyway, a recession may well come in the next year or so. That, along with the migrant influx, could well put the orange caudillo and his kleptocratic cabal back in power, in what could end democracy at the federal level. (The promise of such cities as Boston and New York to provide housing to all migrants who seek it is becoming politically and fiscally untenable.)

 

There are many historical reasons why Rhode Island tends to do economically worse than its most important neighbor, New England’s megastate, Massachusetts, and certainly will in the next recession, whenever it comes. Most importantly, it has nothing like the great wealth-creation machine of Greater Boston fueled by its powerful universities and colleges, most famously Harvard and MIT, which churn out technological advances and also promote the healthcare, financial-services and other lucrative sectors. That the state has long been a pioneer in public education is part of this package.

Generally, the more resources devoted to education, the richer the state.

 

And Greater Boston’s money and job creation are further pumped up by the fact that Boston is not only the capital of the Bay State but also the de-facto capital of New England, as it has been since its founding, in 1630.

 

Further, Rhode Island failed to move as strongly as Massachusetts did away from the mill culture as it became less competitive with the cheap-wage factories in the South and abroad starting after World War I.

 

At least Rhode Island gets some economic spillover from Massachusetts’s affluence.

 

Meanwhile, the Ocean State’s policymakers must watch carefully over the next few weeks when the Massachusetts legislature takes up a broad package of tax changes, such as cuts in the estate and short-term capital-gains levies, to compete with other states. It’s tricky because of the funds needed to provide for Massachusetts’s country-leading education, healthcare, and public-transportation services. Those services are crucial reasons why the state has long been ranked as among the two or three richest states on a per-capita basis. But the federal system encourages competitive races between states in sometimes desperate efforts for evermore “economic development.’’

 

Big shots on Smith Hill must be prepared to respond to what happens on Beacon Hill.

 

Hit this link:

 

 

Nihilist Performance Art

The far-right, nihilist members of the U.S. House who are trying to force a government shutdown are not interested in governing, which includes such hard work as drafting legislation. They’re just performing their anti-government vaudeville act for their fans on Fox “News’’ and back home, which include a mix of civically ill-educated people (most densely found in Red States) vulnerable to demagoguery and brazen lies and very rich political donors seeking more tax cuts for themselves and less regulation.

 

Federal shutdowns tend to hit poor people (also concentrated in Red States) the hardest and undermine U.S. allies’ trust in our government.

 

 

Assassinations Abroad

Did Indian agents murder Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader who was also a Canadian citizen, in Surrey, British Columbia? It smells that way. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a Hindu nationalist and semi-dictator, and of course, separatism can seem to pose an existential threat to a nation and its leaders.

 

Extraterritorial killings are a hallmark of such dictatorships as Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia. Any country in which they occur must retaliate to protect its citizens, the first obligation of government. Sikhs, by the way, comprise about 4 percent of Canada’s population.

 

Most of the world is ruled by dictators or semi-dictators. Americans should savor the fact that, at least until 2025, they aren’t, though many don’t care.

 

 

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There are several good reasons to avoid the cryptocurrency sector. One of them is that Orwellian North Korea steals from it to finance its nukes and missiles and brutally suppress its people.

 

 

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Police solidarity is admirable in the mourning of one of their own killed in the line of duty; we join their mourning.

 

But I worry when I see so many police cars lined up together to express officers’ sadness and outrage before, during and after a slain officer’s funeral. Are there enough police officers left elsewhere to protect the public?

 


Old Days

 

‘’Those who idealize the past tend not to understand it.’’

-- Robin Lane Fox

 

To brush up on the ancient history I read in school so many decades ago, and even a tiny bit of  Latin, which  I took for several years, I’ve been reading English historian Robin Lane Fox’s (born 1946) brilliant and amazingly ambitious The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome.  (His sidekick in his narration is the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138, A.D.), to whom  he often refers through the book.)

 

I’m on a small committee of the nonprofit educational organization American Agora Foundation (which publishes Lapham’s Quarterly) that will select the next winner of its annual Janus Prize, which goes to a distinguished historian. The 2024 prize is slated to go to a scholar of the Classical World.

 

Hit this link:

 

 

 

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PHOTO: GoLocal

This is more than esoteric. Western Civilization goes back to the Greeks and Romans and then evolved over the centuries,  especially with Christianity, which started out as a First Century Jewish sect in Roman Palestine, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, and we still live in aspects of the ancient world. Indeed, by studying ancient Greece and Rome, we study ourselves.

 

Consider how much of our philosophy,  art, education, and science has its origins in the Greco-Roman world.

 

This reminds me of how common instruction in Latin and even ancient Greek was not that many decades ago in what high schools used to call the “college course’’. I can’t speak with much personal experience about the usefulness of Greek. However, I  found Latin remarkably useful, especially in understanding the very many English words of Latin origin; that was even more so when I worked in France, where of course the language has far more Latin-based words than does English. They don’t call it a Romance language for nothing.

 

(Meanwhile, the number of those of us who remember when the Roman Catholic Mass was in Latin is rapidly diminishing.  Sad, in a way. Hearing Latin evoked a sense of mystery.)

 

And ancient Greece and the  Roman Republic and Empire were one hell of a spectacle.

 

A quibble: I do wish Professor Fox had provided a tad more discussion of the cultures and political systems of the assorted “barbarians” who were always threatening the Classical World and would eventually take it over while, of course, being deeply influenced by it. Of course, all groups started as “barbarians.’’

 

Many famous people have taken a skeptical view of Western Civilization. When a reporter asked Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) what he thought of it, he quipped:

 

 "I think it would be a good idea."

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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