Whitcomb: Better Than a Hole in the Ground; More Comfortable if More Dangerous; Mid-Century Tales
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Better Than a Hole in the Ground; More Comfortable if More Dangerous; Mid-Century Tales
“How many times how many towns have seen it,
the light, the hope, the promise, after the dark –‘’
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTseen it, and watched it flicker and ebb and vanish,
leaving no trace except some little park….”
-- From “Pro Patria,’’ by Constance Carrier (1908-1991), Connecticut poet and Latin teacher, in a poem about a Civil War memorial in New Britain, Conn.
“We need once more to acknowledge the towering truth of the old saw that the price of peace is perpetual vigilance, together with a willingness to fight, kill and if necessary die — or at least commit others to do so — to defend our vital interests.’’
-- Max Hastings, British military historian, in a Bloomberg News essay on Putin’s assault on Ukraine. To read it, hit this link:
“I always told my journalists, there aren’t two sides to a lie. Yes, you should be non-partisan, but not neutral. Journalists must be biased in favor of the truth and facts.’’
-- Richard Stengel, former Time magazine managing editor
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.’’
-- Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), American novelist
xxx
I’ve never been all that enamored of the exterior of the building, with its eroding limestone façade, and would be happy to see it replaced by a more beautiful and taller building. But the grand art deco first floor is a treasure. And of course, the building’s size and height provide a bit of excitement and energy to the downtown. And wouldn’t it be energizing to see light coming from most of its windows at night?
A caveat. It’s misleading to call this an “affordable housing” project. Yes, there would be a few apartments set aside for people of modest means, at least partly for political PR reasons. But the real marketing would be to affluent people lured to the views from the upper stories and able to pay a lot for the privilege. A fancy restaurant and conference center at top would also be draws. On the grand ground-floor level, there could be space for public meetings and a restaurant or two. Given the implosion of much brick-and-mortar retailing, I’m skeptical you could lure more than one or two small stores there. However, an exception might be a large bookstore. Bookstores have had a bit of a revival in the past few years, and they serve as happy meeting and event places – author talks and so on. (Many of us still miss the long-gone Borders bookstore in Providence Place.)
So, as I implied above, the city and state must do what they can to save the building and in so doing revitalize downtown after the damage done by COVID-19, or settle for a hole in the ground.
So far as I can see at the current stage of negotiations, saving the Superman Building would be a much better deal for the state than subsidizing a stadium for the late lamented PawSox would have been. Hit this link to read about the, er, financial ambiguities for Worcester in paying for the WoxSox:
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/category/minor-leagues/minor-league-baseball/worcester-triple-a-team/
xxx
xxx
It’s interesting that public-works folks are tearing up sidewalks at the corners in some Rhode Island communities, most notably, perhaps, in Providence, to make curb cuts for wheelchairs, etc., even as the roads continue to crumble.
xxx
xxx
I’m looking forward to an exciting summer of disputes between members of the public seeking access to Rhode Island’s shore and affluent and well-lawyered property owners trying to shoo them away. Let’s hope that things don’t get violent!
xxx
While Massachusetts is America’s friendliest state for bicyclists, Rhode Island was ranked only No. 21, says the League of American Bicyclists. Given that the Ocean State is densely populated and has many almost European-style town centers (like the Bay State), it should be doing better.
xxx
I’ve found that one of the nice things about returning to southern New England at this time of year after more than a week in the Sunshine State is to see how much more things have greened out, the flowering trees, etc. It’s really a lot prettier around here than in flat Florida, at least from April to early November.
“At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station
and not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.”
― Ogden Nash (1902-1971), poet of light verse
The understaffed and under-equipped U.S. airline system often descends into chaos these days. If you’re traveling by air, remember that all plans are imaginary.
Anyway, I was on a plane from West Palm Beach, Fla., last week right after a 35-year-old Trump-appointed federal judge named Kathryn Kimball Mizelle (whom the American Bar Association declared unqualified) threw out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for people in public transportation places – planes, airports, trains, buses and so on -- after some right-wing cranks brought suit. Mizelle was certainly appealing to Trump’s angry base in agreeing with the plaintiffs. Judge Mizelle, by the way, is married to a former Trump regime official.
So on my flights back home, only about a third of the passengers wore masks in the air and airports.
Interestingly, the head pilot on my flights warned the Trumpers aboard not to harass the folks on board who continued to wear masks – I’m sure for very sound medical reasons in many cases. “Be respectful,’’ he advised.
Public transportation provides powerful spreading places for disease. That’s why in many regions, especially in Asia, most people wore masks in such public places even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless of Mizelle’s nonscience-based ruling, people with underlying health conditions, including the condition known as “being old,’’ would do well to keep their masks on in crowded places what with all sorts of people you don’t know coming from God knows where and with who knows what viruses.
By the way, don’t believe any official data on COVID cases in China. Like mass murderer Putin’s Russia but with even stronger surveillance, it’s a police state where the government lies about anything that might undermine its power and prestige. People who speak out with the truth are apt to end up behind bars – or worse. So we really don’t know how many people have died from COVID in China, or, for that matter, in increasingly authoritarian India, where the death count is likely in the several millions.
Now we can be fairly certain that there will be an increase in COVID cases, some fatal, caught by travelers. The Biden administration will rightly appeal Mizelle’s ruling, which rejected the authority of the CDC to impose a mask mandate to protect public health. But politically – and cynically -- speaking, the administration might have done better to have accepted Mizelle’s highly dubious decision. The reduction of rage amongst GOP/QAnon anti-maskers might more than offset any political damage done by ending the medically justified face-mask mandate and free up more opportunity for Biden to tout, for example, low unemployment and his infrastructure bill, whose benefits are starting to show up.
Indeed, like the mostly far-right-controlled U.S. Supreme Court throwing out Roe v. Wade and thus making abortion almost entirely a state matter -- denationalizing the issue -- ending the transportation mask mandate could help the Democrats, although it will sicken and kill some people, including children, especially since many who refuse to wear masks are also anti-vaxxers. Grim calculus.
In other aviation news, why are there so many people these days going on and off planes in wheelchairs? Airline gates look like evacuations from war zones. There are far more wheelchair passengers than I saw a decade ago, when I flew frequently. Are there really that many incapacitated people? Are some people just claiming to be disabled to get priority boarding? Aging of the population? But many of these people looked middle-aged or younger….
The GOP/QAnon tribe is an avid proponent of “cancel culture.’’
DeSantis is pitching to Trump followers, the majority of whom swim in lie-based conspiracies, tend to be poorly educated, read little and get most of their information from Fox and other far-right lie machines. They’re the Republican base these days. These people, and plutocrats who seek even more goodies from the party amidst the smokescreen of culture wars, are the base to which DeSantis must appeal to get re-elected governor and then become the GOP/QAnon presidential candidate. He’s a very smart and disciplined Yalie and so may pull it off.
xxx
The real-estate business rules in Florida, especially on its “Gold Coast,’’ from Vero Beach to Miami. I saw one new McMansion after another (in coming decades to be destroyed by hurricanes and sea-level rise). So eager are the Realtors to get their 6 percent that they often lay plastic grass in front of the new houses – instant, and you don’t have to wait for the illegal-alien landscapers to show up.
I wonder what the cute lizards scuttling across the plastic think of it (if they “think”).
Here’s one outfit that made sure its houses have green (and often washable!) lawns:
“Premier Estate Properties, established in 1993, continues as Florida’s only boutique luxury real estate brokerage presenting properties exclusively in excess of one million dollars. We are distinguished for our successful marketing, the largest percentage of sold million dollar-plus properties and our concierge-level of personalized service.’’
I wonder how long this will go on. Is this just a bubble?
My talk to the Palm Beach area crowd was about working (fishing boats, freighters, etc.) and recreational waterfronts, accelerating sea-level rise and related matters. After I noted that PB was only about seven feet above sea level, one lady said: “Let’s just enjoy it while we can.’’ There seemed to be no climate-change deniers in the group, most of whom were pre-Trump-style Republicans. A cheerful fatalism ruled. Another attendee asked in response to my brief reference to alternative energy (electric cars, etc.) to get off burning fossil fuel: “What about all the lithium, etc., we’d need for the batteries?” Indeed.
I miss those Florida roadside stands of decades ago that sold fresh-squeezed orange juice.
One wonders how much of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s traffic-slowing of fruit and vegetable shipments at the Mexican border with state inspections, assuming powers that are the Feds’, was simply an attempt to cause shortages and higher inflation in U.S. stores that he and fellow GOP/QAnon folks could blame on the Democrats. The official reason was to catch illegal immigrants, which as usual flow across the border in varying degrees of flood, as, it often seems, from time immemorial. But Abbott’s plan may have politically backfired.
No, Not “One People’’
Putin is trying to conquer Ukraine via mass murder amidst the lying rhetoric that Russia and Ukraine are “one people’’ when in fact most Ukrainians hate the bloody kleptocracy of the Kremlin. It reminds me a bit of Hitler’s rhetoric in seizing the German-speaking part of what was then Czechoslovakia in 1938 before occupying the rest of the Czech part of the country in 1939, when the Slovak part became a Nazi satellite. Indeed, more than 92 percent of Ukrainians voted for independence from the Soviet Union in December 1991. In the face of brutal repression by Moscow, Ukrainians have maintained a strong sense of nationhood for hundreds of years. Actually few people in other former Soviet “republics’’ want to be ruled by the thug regime.
As for Putin’s nuclear-armed missile threats against the West, just remember that appeasement of that war criminal made the current crisis inevitable.
I was leafing through a copy of Dr. Edward Iannuccilli’s book What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner? … and Other Stories the other day and enjoyed yet again these memoirs, which I first read some years ago. The tales of growing up in a tight-knit Italo-American family in Rhode Island are sometimes very funny, occasionally sad and filled with finely constructed dialogue, strong narrative drive and an understanding of the social history that everyone in the book (and most everyone else in those decades) was living through. They show how immigrant traditions were diluted and sometimes even evaporated in an always churning America. But this charming book is for everybody who has followed life in the mid-20th Century. It certainly brought back a lot of memories to me and many friends and relatives.
I liked his dedication, to his wife, Diane, and “To the courageous immigrants who made it possible.’’ Of course, the old cliché is that we’re “a nation of immigrants’’ – true, including the Siberian-Americans we call Native Americans or Indians.
See Iannuccilli's newest book HERE.