Whitcomb: Dark Energy; Bright Spring; Dems’ Appeasement Doesn’t Work Well

Whitcomb: Dark Energy; Bright Spring; Dems’ Appeasement Doesn’t Work Well

“What wonder that we fear our own eyes' look
and fidget to be at home alone, and pitifully
put of age by some change in brushing the hair
and stumble to our ends like smothered runners at their tape;
We follow our shreds of fame into an ambush.’’

-- From “Train Ride,’’ by John Wheelwright (1897-1940),  American poet and architect

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Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“Whatever the pace of this technological revolution may be, the direction is clear: the lower rungs of the economic ladder are being lopped off.’’

-- Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), American civil-rights leader, in 1965

 

 

“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.’’

-- Herman Melville (1819-1891), American novelist, short-story writer and poet, best known for Moby Dick  (1851), considered one of the greatest American novels.

 

 

This, from a New York Times article, gives us some needed perspective amidst the craziness of daily news:

 

“Dark energy, the new measurement suggests, may not resign our universe to a fate of being ripped apart across every scale, from galaxy clusters down to atomic nuclei. Instead, its expansion could wane, eventually leaving the universe stable. Or the cosmos could even reverse course, eventually doomed to a collapse that astronomers refer to as the Big Crunch.’’

 

See Here

 

 

A change of seasons tends to bring back whimsical memories. Mine today is a slightly yellowed photo of a thin layer of snow on the ground amidst vividly colorful crocuses on a bright first day of spring in the late ’50s – I can’t remember the exact year. I used one of those cheap Kodak Brownie cameras, and then rode my bicycle to the village center, where I dropped off the film to be developed. It was ready about a week later. In the age of the photo-taking cellphone, this might seem laborious, but maybe we appreciated such images more then than now, when they’re so easy to take, and forget, in the digital vapor.

 

 

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If you have a yard, hold off raking or mowing the leaves from last fall for a few more days lest you kill the insects hibernating in them before they can arise and become food for birds. Insects are the major food for most avians. You can go to work after daytime temperatures have averaged more than 50 degrees for a week.

Meanwhile, a warming planet means stronger seasonal allergies.

 

 

Another Farce

“Without ethical elites, democracy becomes a demagogic spectacle hiding a plutocratic reality. This  also is its death.’’

-- Martin Wolf, in The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism.

 

Even by Trump’s standards, his warm and cuddly talks with Russia’s murderous tyrant were a sick joke. Only someone with industrial-strength wishful thinking would believe what these world-historical liars say.

 

Mango Man basically went along with Putin’s proposal for a “partial ceasefire’’  in Ukraine, which the dictator followed up with more attacks. But then, Trump was never much of a dealmaker, as his multiple bankruptcies show. Note that since he regained power, he has denounced the now lapsed trade deal with Mexico and Canada Agreement—hoping, on solid grounds, that most people will have forgotten that it was his deal – signed in 2018, during his first reign!

 

Willful ignorance, wishful thinking, civic sloth, embrace of celebrity culture and lousy public education in a large plurality of the public are what have  brought us a criminal regime. Much of the damage may be irreversible.

 

Our Great Demagogue fears Putin, even as he seeks to do economic deals with him, including for Russian resources to be sold by Kremlin-favored oligarchs and for Ukrainian resources to be looted. Trump hopes that he and his family and his allies can make a lot of money out of Russia and Ukraine to be subjugated by the Kremlin. If Ukraine is squashed, Putin will seek to put under his boots other Eastern European nations, in addition to Belarus, which is already a satellite.

 

Putin certainly doesn’t want the example of a democratic Ukraine to arouse the envy of his beaten-down subjects. After all, he hopes to sit on his throne until his death.

 

The Trump family and their entourage must be drooling over the potential commercial opportunities in Russia and, especially with Putin’s theft of large parts of Ukraine, in that country, too, as our dictator suck-up tries to work out secret and not-so-secret deals as part of selling out Ukraine. 

 

MAGA conflicts of interest are already fabulous, as the  Trump grifting empire leverages its political power for ever-greater wealth. Maybe its members  can add rare earths and oil to their cryptocurrency businesses (scam-rich and good for money-laundering), merchandise-licensing-branding deals, golf clubs, hotels and media/propaganda enterprises. But wait! Our  L’etat c’est moi leader is also interested in Ukrainian power plants.

 

Meanwhile, the recent cutoff of U.S. military aid to Ukraine has already led to major Russian advances on the battlefield in the past few weeks, aided by North Korea troops, being used as highly dispensable cannon fodder.

 

No wonder that most NATO members are scrambling to do what they should have done years ago: heavily rearm to defend themselves from Russian aggression. Given that the likes of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and their smaller allies represent the last great defenders of Western liberal -democracy values, those of us in an increasingly corrupt  America – rule of law – surely you jest! -- who still share those values can only hope that their rearmament goes fast.

 

Their leaders refuse to go along with the charade that Putin wants peace, and they understand the bad stuff that comes from the Russian dictator and American semi-dictator conspiring without them at the table.

 

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The Democrats’ messaging in the face of MAGA outrages has been weak and diffuse, with most of it spread among the party’s congressional leaders with varying degrees of rhetorical strength and occasional confusion.

 

What they ought to do is select a panel of their best, most forceful speakers, say Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, to each day counter the day’s White House lies.

 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should have refused to do a deal with the Republicans on the budget, though his desire to protect people who a government shutdown would harm is admirable; better to let the ingenuous public get a strong taste of what MAGA wants to do to the country. Many citizens still don’t want to understand that many government services they have long relied on are imperiled, all as part of a plan to further increase our fascist-flavored, Russian-style oligarchy’s (with their very own corrupt autocrat to suck up to!) wealth and power.

 

As the oft-quoted H.L. Mencken line goes, with a little editing by me:

“Democracy is the theory that the common people {think they} know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.’’

 

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As long as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power (which he needs to do to avoid criminal prosecution for corruption), we can assume that Israel will keep bombing the Gaza Strip.  That’s in large part because far-right people in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition demand it. They want to maintain the Israeli occupation of Gaza indefinitely and, indeed, maybe annex it.

 

But the attacks are happening with rapidly diminishing returns and ever-tougher international denunciations. The fact is that without some sort of permanent peace based on a two-state solution attractive enough to suppress Hamas’s call to eliminate Israel, the horrific killing of civilians will go on and on, and Israel will be more and more isolated.

 

 

 

 

Build, Build, Build

I’d guess that the five-story condo complex proposed for the corner of Angell and Brook streets, on Providence’s East Side, that could house around 100 people might well  end up mostly inhabited by college students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, which are well known for the affluence of students’ families.

 

Parents would buy these condos for their kids to live in during the academic year.

 

Whatever! Any new housing would tend to slow the rise of housing costs in the area. Supply and demand. Such new construction would free up housing previously inhabited by college kids that could be used by poorer renters.

 

While I’m at it, Brown should make any old multi-family houses available for housing it has been holding off the market. Hit this link:

 

 

Behave Yourselves!

This is something that would be good for big malls everywhere, but probably especially in cities if they don’t already have it:

 

Providence Place, which is in receivership, has a new, more rigorous code of conduct that lists 13 activities that are banned or heavily controlled there.  And the mall’s management reminds the public that it’s private property, and so those running the complex determine what behavior is allowable. 

 

This is overdue, and let’s hope that the mall’s security people and, in a crunch, city police can make it work. Providence Place has too often been the site of disruptive and worse activities, especially by youths, in recent years. This has scared away business at a time when Amazon, etc., has ravaged the physical store sector. That’s particularly sad when it comes to Providence Place because of its centrality in the city – and next to the Rhode Island State House -- and that it's far more architecturally and otherwise attractive than most large enclosed malls.

 

Here's the new code of conduct:

 

https://www.providenceplace.com/conduct

 

 

Island Life

The beauty and increasingly complicated society of the Maine Coast sure draws novelists. The latest of note is Caleb Mason’s Thickafog (a lobsterman expression), a mystery  set on an island based on Vinalhaven. Fog, of course, is often on, or lurking just off, that storied coast, making scenic views more unpredictable than in most beautiful places.

 

And there’s the psychological and emotional fog that comes and goes in this tale centered on the deadly fall off a cliff of  Bobby, a charming  (maybe too charming?) elderly man.  Jon, his alcoholic, intense, often bitter, but still usually functioning, son,  becomes a suspect in the death. He’s a carpenter on the island, where work on new and old summer places provides a lot of local income. Then there’s  Ingrid, an increasingly demented but still elegant lady nicknamed “The Island Queen,’’ who becomes the romantic  focus of Bobby, causing conflict in her family.

 

As in any good novel, events change leading characters in the book in strong or subtle ways.

 

Unlike many novels set on the Maine Coast that tend to be mostly about affluent, or at least formerly affluent,  summer people with fancy educations, Thickafog’s characters include a range of year-round locals with individual family troubles and joys. Challenges include drug addiction,  crime, teenage angst,  isolation-spawned anxiety/depression, poverty,  material shortages, medical emergencies, and rigorous weather.  And yet the islanders, year-round or just summer folks, and of all financial classes and other backgrounds,  have a way of coming together when needed: The novel displays the island’s rough-hewn sense of community and the ironical humor that helps support it. And all this happens amidst the island’s vividly described seasonal changes, from temperate if sometimes low-visibility summers to cold stormy winters.