Whitcomb: Nostalgia for Bad Times; Municipal Over-Layering; Uninviting Eating
Monday, May 18, 2020
“Red cells and white, and then invisible
viruses spinning around in the soup of life,
seasoned with their subtle taint. Health, life –
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTon loan from its opposite, the foreclosure reading:
It’s nothing personal; just doing my job.’’
-- From “Bloodwork,’’ by Alfred Corn, who grew up in the South but now lives in Rhode Island. Quoted with Mr. Corn’s permission
‘‘Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on the land.’’
-- Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), American writer and scientist
“It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.’’
-- Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005), U.S. senator, presidential candidate and writer
“Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be,’’ title of the memoirs of Simone Signoret (1921-1985), French movie actress
I have read that long-running deep disasters, such as the Great Depression and World War II, bringing people together in communal missions and shared challenges, leave behind them a strange nostalgia for such terrible times. But then, nostalgia is a longing for a partly fabricated past as a means of coping with current pains.
We all tend to have times we’re particularly nostalgic about. Mine are 1960-early ’62, 1969-70, and the late ’70s. That’s when things were going well – and seemed likely to continue to go well -- for a long time to come, for me. They shine more brightly as the years roll by.
Certainly, the current mess has brought out in many people a spirit of cooperation, which is probably already fading as impatience, claustrophobia and economic fear mount and the knowledge that we’re not really “all in this together,’’ as the already privileged further cement their status and power, and we face the possibility of a high-tech dystopia dominated by a few gigantic companies. Anyway, in 20 years, some folks may actually look back at these times fondly. Strange creatures, humans!
State-Local Restructuring
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo talks about the need for state government restructuring and furloughs to address the vast costs of the pandemic. She is being forthright. While most of state government is not overstaffed, and some agencies are badly understaffed, there are some unnecessary, wasteful duplications. For example, as I’ve asked for years, why can’t the functions of the state Coastal Resources Management Council be wrapped into the state Department of Environmental Management?
But the biggest opportunity for saving taxpayer money and raising efficiency is for this tiny, crowded state’s ridiculously large (39!) number of municipalities to band together to provide their public services regionally, reducing red tape. It will be tough to overcome the political-turf-protection wars that would accompany such consolidation attempts but COVID-19 might do the trick.
Review Restaurant Rules
The complexity and harshness of the rules regarding the reopening of restaurants in Rhode Island (and some other states) will doom many, perhaps most of them to close permanently. First off, only outdoor seating (with tables eight feet apart) will be available for a while. There will be maximum of 20 tables. Many, perhaps most, restaurants can’t provide outdoor seating. And there’s that pesky thing called “weather.’’
Only five diners will be permitted per table and all guests must wear masks except when they’re eating and drinking. Reservations required. (Forget serendipity!) And there will be no valet service. (Who cares?!) And there will be relentless sanitizing. Will we be able to smell the food over the disinfectant? And there’s talk of limiting meals to no more than an hour.
Outstandingly uninviting!
I think that the governor has generally done a fine job in managing the state’s response to virus – a brutally complicated and difficult task. But I think the restaurant rules go too far. Major adjustments are needed.
We await a vaccine and hope that herd immunity is actually developing. But meanwhile, many states (backed by the demagogic Trump regime) are unwilling or unable to impose the sort of rules that might dramatically curb the contagion over the long haul, and people from those places will, of course, travel. So we’d better get used to having the virus around and resume as much as we can normal life while accepting that some people (very few as a percentage of the population) will continue to die as a result of COVID-19.
The governor, speaking of summer tourism, which is very important to this state, said that “we need a plan to figure out how to keep everybody safe and also enable some tourism.’’ Other governors have said similar things. But there’s no way “to keep everybody safe’’ and still have a functioning society. To say so is about as unrealistic as ordering people not to touch their faces.
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As food-supply-chain problems continue in supermarkets and eating in restaurants remains problematical, what I’ve suggested would happen is happening, here and abroad: People are buying more fresh vegetables and fruit from local sources. That’s a healthy sign amid the gloom. Check out your local farmers' markets, such as, in Providence, the Hope Street Farmers Market.
Please hit this link: http://www.hopestreetmarket.com/ Also, supply-chain problems are making red (fellow mammal) meat more expensive and sometimes even unavailable. That meat, as delicious as it can be, is bad for you. And I wish that avid meat eaters would tour slaughtering facilities.
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The wet and cool spring is fostering great flowering beauty. But diminishing that slightly are the used noxious face masks littering sidewalks and streets in some places. Please toss them in the trash!
And then go “forest bathe.’’
Lighting Up History
Wanna buy a lighthouse? How about Boston Light, on Little Brewster Island, in Boston Harbor? The first version of the lighthouse went up in 1716 and the current one in 1783! Now the Feds want to find a “new steward’’ of the theatrically sited structure to take over and preserve the lighthouse.
Maybe the buyer will be somebody like philanthropist Bobby Segar, who bought Minot’s Light, about a mile off Scituate and Cohasset, Mass., in 2014.
The Boston Globe quoted Kathy Abbott, the CEO and president of Boston Harbor Now:
“This beloved National Historic Landmark is steeped in our country’s history dating to the American Revolution and is as relevant today as an icon of our strength and resilience. Continued public access to this historic American treasure is critical to the public’s ability to enjoy its beauty and history.” Indeed, the lighthouse’s endurance is a reminder that we’ve been through much, much worse times than now.
Maybe Not So Much Car Traffic After All
Pandemic-slammed cities will come back (we are social animals), though with fewer people. Meanwhile, fewer people will take mass transit for a while. More people will start commuting by car again, though driving may pose more danger of getting killed or maimed than riding a bus or train filled with people wearing face masks. Whatever. So, as restrictions are lifted, gridlock might return. I say “might” because many employers will have more of their employees work from home permanently. The lockdown has proven that working at home works out just fine for many enterprises that are always seeking to cut office-space costs. More than a few folks will permanently lose their jobs, so they won’t be driving as much, and many may no longer have the income to own a car.
As commerce comes back, more people will die in car crashes, workplace accidents, shootings and other crimes. And air pollution will rapidly increase. It’s a complex world.
Could anti-virus rules been more focused from the start on where the threat was, and remains by far, most serious – nursing homes and other concentrations of the elderly, as well as dense urban communities -- and a tad less on subjecting the general population to socio-economic paralysis? I suppose historians will take on that question.
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The interconnections of history: I heard John Barry, the author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History discuss on Terry Gross’s NPR show how Woodrow Wilson’s getting the flu in the 1918-19 epidemic may have so seriously underminded his mental health and cognitive abilities that he was unable to block some of the worst elements of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. That failure, Mr. Barry speculates, helped lead Germany to the Nazis and World War II in Europe.
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I’m quite familiar with Florida, whose governor, Trump follower Ron DeSantis, can point to his state’s surprisingly low COVID-19 cases -- low considering its large population of elderly people. I think that can be explained by the Sunshine State’s emphasis on focusing on by far the most perilous places – nursing homes – and on the state’s most densely populated part, and with the highest percentage of old people – South Florida. There, quite stringent controls remain in force, though some will soon be lifted. The governor also has been gung ho about opening up parks and beaches. He’s right: For their physical and mental health, people need to get outdoors, where the chance of getting infected is much lower than indoors. And Florida’s beaches and parks are essential elements of its economy.
Much of COVID-19 remains a mystery, including its contagiousness and death rate but so far, anyway, Florida, the nation’s third most populous state, has done well. We should watch for lessons, happy and unhappy. Stay tuned.
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The three northern New England states – Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine – have had low rates of cases and deaths in the pandemic, especially Vermont. That’s partly because of their mostly rural and exurban character. But it’s also because of good state governance, strong civic sensibility and the stability of communities.
Creative Destruction 101
When seeing the decline of, say, the newspaper business, I think of the disappearance, or at least decline, of businesses my family were in after the Civil War: A great-grandfather’s company made ladies’ riding gloves; another was a partner in a company that shipped guano from South America to make fertilizer (!); other ancestors were in the Midwest iron ore and steel business; some built large wooden boats; one was a partner in a big department store selling stuff to the newly rich of Minnesota, and some grew up on farms as recently as the late 19th Century. The economy marches on.
Whom We Value
How dare some people say that healthcare workers, cops and grocery-store staffers might be as valuable as hedge funders and reality TV stars!
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Lie, lie, lie. Consider Trump’s huge, political-campaign banner posted behind him at a recent press conference that stated that “America Leads the World in Testing’’.
Actually, America remains behind several countries in Covid-19 testing, and it was very slow in getting testing programs going in the first place. As of May 9, the U.S. testing rate was about 26 per 1,000 people, according to Our World in Data; Denmark’s rate was 53, Italy’s 42, New Zealand’s 39, Germany’s 33 (as of May 3), and Canada’s 28.
A Splendid Little Invasion
How hard is one Banana Republic leader working to overthrow another? The dictatorship of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro asserts that a tiny group apparently including some U.S. mercenaries were captured by Venezuelan troops after the group landed with the mission of trying to start up a coup attempt. The alleged organizer, ex-Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, was photographed in 2018 apparently working as a security guard at a Trump rally.
The Trump regime denied “direct” U.S. involvement in the adventure, which is more likely than not to strengthen Maduro’s hold on power. This might be the basis of a comedy thriller.
Leading Through the Blitz
And we think we’re living in tough times! Consider the British in the Blitz of 1940-41, when the United Kingdom was mercilessly bombed by Germans while facing the threat of a Nazi invasion and brutal occupation and fighting mostly alone (while desperately awaiting more American help). So I highly recommend superb popular historian Erik Larson’s latest book, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, {his} Family and Defiance During the Blitz. The book covers the first year of Winston Churchill’s prime ministership – May 10, 1940-May 10, 1941. The cast of characters around Churchill could have populated many Shakespearean plays, and Mr. Larson, after what must have been very strenuous research, brings them all colorfully alive in his pages. What a collection of deeply eccentric and often exasperating relatives and friends “Winnie’’ had!
There’s a bit of soap opera in some places but all in all Mr. Larson has brought forth new understanding of this pivot point in world history. As Mr. Larson notes: “This was the year in which Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all think we know, when he made his greatest speeches and showed the world what courage and leadership looked liked
