Whitcomb: Summer Spraying; School Leadership; A Classics Case; ‘Autonomous Political Lunatic Asylum’

Sunday, June 13, 2021

 

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Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

“The season’s ill—

we’ve lost our summer millionaire,

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who seemed to leap from an L.L. Bean

catalogue. His nine-knot yawl

was auctioned off to lobstermen.’’

-- From “Skunk Hour,’’ by Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

 

 

“Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.’’

- André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869-1951), Nobel Prize-winning French novelist

 

 

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PHOTO: File

I read Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring on our back porch in the summer of 1962 as it was first published, in The New Yorker magazine. I already liked her stuff, especially The Sea Around Us and The Edge of the Sea (but then, my family lived on the seacoast).

 

Silent Spring told of the devastating effects of pesticide use, and especially of DDT, on ecology. The book’s title comes from the fact that the stuff was killing songbirds and other creatures in vast numbers. Despite pushback from chemical companies, the U.S. banned DDT in 1972, for which we can thank Rachel Carson.


We were so blithe about pesticide use back then. I remember small planes swooping down to spray fields, golf courses, woods, marshes and even suburban subdivisions. (For that matter, people were still pretty relaxed about cigarettes, despite the mounting evidence of their lethal effects.)

 

We’re still too blithe about herbicide use – e.g., Roundup – which causes short-and-long-term damage to the environment. There’s been no book out yet about their use and misuse with the impact of Silent Spring. Anyway, thanks to Ms. Carson, at least we aren’t being drizzled with poisons from planes flying a couple of hundred feet over the ground on nice summer days. I remember adults warning “Don’t look up!’’

 

Too bad that so many people hate weeds. Some are beautiful and most of what we eat is in effect cultivated weeds.

 

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Do some readers remember those salt tablets in big jars in un-air-conditioned buildings (outside of the executive offices) in the summer? I do. I’m not sure how effective they were in staving off heatstroke but they, along with those big fans at the top of poles, were summer symbols. Things got more humane after the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in 1971, one of several admirable “liberal’’ administrative creations of the Nixon administration; far more companies installed air conditioning as a result.

 

Before then, many of us simply moved more slowly in the summer, inside and out. A certain level of lassitude was acceptable.

 

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McKee announces new Providence interim superintendent

When in Command, Command

Kudos to Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee for intervening more directly in the crisis that is the Providence Public Schools. He took the extraordinary step of naming, with state Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green, an interim superintendent, Javier Montanez; he’s principal of the Leviton Dual Language School. I have no idea whether Mr. Montanez would be a good permanent superintendent. But the governor is showing political courage in taking direct responsibility for the schools, including in contract talks with the Providence Teachers Union, whose rigidity has been a big barrier to reforms that might help start to close the schools’ achievement gaps.

 

Still, by far the biggest cause of the gaps is deep poverty in large parts of Providence and the problems associated with it – fragmented and unstable families, substance abuse, crime, etc. The student outcomes in, say, Barrington and East Greenwich public schools are so much better than Providence’s because these suburbs are so much richer than Providence. (There are some exceptions to Providence Public Schools’ low rankings – most notably Classical High School, which still attracts some students from middle-class and affluent families.)

 

Providence’s yawning education gaps hold back the state’s social and economic progress.

 

For Rhode Island to prosper over the long run, Providence schools must be fixed so that every student has the opportunity to learn to become productive citizens. After all, most families cannot afford to send their kids to private schools.

 

‘Free’ Transit

As I’ve said here before, some communities around the world offer free public transit (mostly buses) and Rhode Island officials are now looking into it, I’m glad to learn. Of course, “free” doesn’t mean it won’t require tax money.

 

The Ocean State might be the best state in which to try the service: It’s densely populated and has many almost European-style town and city centers. That makes it very efficient for bus routes. Further, it has one of America’s oldest populations – which means a lot of people who won’t or can’t drive.

 

Owning a car is painfully expensive for many people. Offering “free’’ (but also more reliable) bus service could be an incentive for more people to come and work in Rhode Island, particularly in crowded Greater Providence. Companies might like that this would expand their potential-employee base, and it would reduce the need for parking places.

 

The environmental benefits are obvious.

 

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Photo: Will Morgan

On the Bridge

I’ve been mystified by the mania for the stuck-upright bascule railroad bridge on the Seekonk River. It’s ugly. Why not tear it down and replace it with, say, a dock that can be used by recreational boaters? I suppose that a pedestrian bridge connecting Providence’s Fox Point neighborhood and East Providence might work, too, though the price might scare people.


Whatever scheme is adopted, let’s make sure that money is dedicated for maintenance – something that’s all too often forgotten. Indeed, we seem to love new projects, but what about repairing what we have and cleaning up the trash and graffiti?

 

I suspect that, whatever the weird romanticism around the bridge, stuck since 1976 (and a reminder of Rhode Island fiscal and public-works problems), it would fairly swiftly be forgotten after its demolition.

 

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More Serious About Competing With China

It’s about time! For decades the idea of the U.S. adopting an “industrial policy” has been lambasted as “socialistic’’ even as China has used its government agencies and companies -- working in tandem --  to steal U.S. technology and to subsidize and hugely expand important economic sectors (including military) in violation of World Trade Organization rules.  America has not always followed the spirit and the letter of WTO rules; still, China has set the pace for the world in flouting them.

 

But now, a somewhat bipartisan (but mostly Democratic-supported) measure in Congress would commit almost $250 billion to promote basic science (which can spawn applied science) and new technologies in areas where an increasingly aggressive and expansionist China has been pulling ahead of us. Particularly creepy is the dictatorship’s advances in surveillance technology; Orwell would have been impressed.

 

The measure in Congress includes funding for projects in artificial intelligence, computer chips, quantum computing, robotics and lithium batteries in smart devices and electric vehicles. New England, especially Greater Boston, is a   center for much of the related science and engineering, and so the legislation could be quite a boon for the region.

 

 

Fascism in Polling Places

Among the most unsettling things about the GOP/QANon voter-suppression bills around America is that they make it easier for partisan poll watchers (most notably far-right Republicans) t0 intimidate election officials and poll workers who are just trying to impartially do their stressful jobs.  In some states, some of these poll watchers will bring their guns. Fascism marches on….

 

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The Democrats aren’t going to get a voting-rights law passed this session. So they should concentrate on infrastructure, especially those projects that can quickly employ people. The economic benefits of that would probably exceed in political value a voting-rights law in the 2022 congressional elections.

 

 

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President Joe Biden PHOTO: White House

Still Above the Law

I think that the Biden administration is leaning over backward – too far – to try to depoliticize the Justice Department after the damage done by Trump and his corrupt attorney general, William Barr, who sometimes operated more as the Dear Leader’s personal lawyer more than as a Cabinet officer.

 

A couple of examples:

 

The current Justice Department has blocked release of the full version of a dubious memo by Barr on why Trump shouldn’t be charged with obstruction connected with his threat to Ukraine to try to get it to damage Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

 

Federal Judge Amy Barrett Jackson wrote that the assertions by the current Justice Department to try to shield the memo from public scrutiny “are so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence,” saying that the department tried to “obfuscate” the facts. Meanwhile, I wonder if an additional reason for the refusal to let the public see the whole memo is to set a new precedent for shielding future department materials.

 

The other case involves a defamation suit brought against Trump by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Trump of raping her.  Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department last week basically agreed with Barr’s department by arguing that Trump couldn’t be sued for defamation because he made his scurrilous remarks about Ms. Carroll while he was president.

 

I’m sympathetic to the idea that we need to move on from the sewer that was the Trump regime. But letting him continue to get away with so much in the federal courts and in the court of public opinion (with the public being kept from learning the full range of his abuses) will just encourage him and others like him to do even worse.

 

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I wonder how long before the majority of Americans revolt against the minority rule (through the structure of the U.S. Senate and relentless gerrymandering) that  has long dominated our government.

 

 

A Classic Case of Condescension

Princeton University has removed the requirement that classics majors have some proficiency in Greek or Latin. Classics majors study the history and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, which are closely connected.

 

Apparently the rationale, once you cut through with a chain saw all the apologies for the school’s (founded in 1746) racist past (especially of some big past funders), is that many students from low-income backgrounds, who tend to be people of color, would not have had the opportunity to study those languages before entering Princeton and/or would find them too difficult to study in the university. But Latin and Greek are crucial parts of classics. And not requiring them is sort of racist: It suggests that these rigorous classes are beyond the intelligence of certain students.

 

In an essay for The Atlantic, John McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia University (who happens to be Black), wrote that the university’s decision is “a typical example of a university rushing to make policy changes under the guise of promoting racial equity that are as likely to promote racism as to uproot it.”

 

He writes: “When students get a degree in classics, they should know Latin or Greek. Even if they are black. Note how offensive that even is. But the Princeton classics department’s decision forces me to phrase it that way. How is it anti-racist to exempt black students from challenges?’’

 

Also, while I never took classical Greek, I did take Latin, which I have found very useful in figuring out the meaning of words and English and French. After all, many, many words in English are of Latin origin. And the Roman Empire was one hell of an exciting ride!

 

 

Agonies in Ulster

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe’s riveting 2019 nonfiction book about “The Troubles” in the region also called Ulster, sometimes recalls the French diplomat Talleyrand’s remark about the Bourbon dynasty: “They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” The bitterness, resentment and suspicion from this ethnic, political and religious irregular war are still there, though nothing like during the three bloody decades before the Good Friday Accord, in 1998. That peace pact was between the British and Irish governments, and most of the political parties in Northern Ireland. Let’s hope that Brexit doesn’t make things worse by putting up new walls between Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and the Irish Republic, which remains in the European Union.

 

While the book seems very historically accurate, its architecture is more that of a complex novel, as it moves back and forth between characters, places and events.

 

There are both warnings and cause for hope for other places soaked in sometimes violent historical grievances in Mr. Keefe’s book about a place that Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) called “an autonomous political lunatic asylum.”

 

As a reminder of the very close links between southern New England and Ireland, the book starts off in the archives of Boston College. Mr. Keefe grew up in Boston’s heavily Irish-American Dorchester neighborhood. (I attended an IRA fundraiser there in 1971 as a reporter; no one asked my ethnicity.)

 

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