Whitcomb: Duking It Out on the Dock; How Do They Think? Poisoning for a View

Whitcomb: Duking It Out on the Dock; How Do They Think? Poisoning for a View

Dark brown is the river.  
  Golden is the sand.  
It flows along forever,  
  With trees on either hand.  

Green leaves a-floating,
  Castles of the foam,  
Boats of mine a-boating—  
  Where will all come home?  

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On goes the river  
  And out past the mill,  
Away down the valley,  
  Away down the hill.  

Away down the river,  
  A hundred miles or more,  
Other little children  
  Shall bring my boats ashore.

“Where Go the Boats,’’ by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

 

 

“I wish people weren’t so set on being themselves when that means being a bastard.’’

-- Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Canadian novelist and playwright

 

 

“Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.’’

-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), French writer

 

 

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Every summer, there are a few nasty incidents involving drunks on Block Island ferries and/or nearby land. The boozing can be particularly bad in the island’s village center, with its bars and restaurants.  The worst offenders are, as usual, young men.

 

I thought of this after reading last Sunday’s story about a brawl on the Block Island ferry dock in Narragansett that resulted in nine arrests.
 

See Story Here

 

 

This is the sort of thing that scares off law-abiding tourists, and their money, and especially families.  Unlike the rich folks who own summer houses on the windy, verdant island and can get to it on their own boats or fly there, most people have to take the ferries. Public drunkenness will tend to send some of these more, er, dignified, folks of modest means to other resorts.

 

Do the ferries need some sort of new security force with arrest powers, like college campus police?

 

There are other beautiful islands not far away. To me, the most scenic place is Cuttyhunk, which is to the east. But that place has no bars and it’s best to be related to property owners if you plan a visit! And the welcome mat is not out at gorgeous Fisher’s Island, to the west.

 

 

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“I do not consider that names that have been familiar for generations in England should be altered to study the whims of foreigners living in those parts. Where the name has no particular significance the local custom should be followed.’’

-- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

Changing the name of public infrastructure –- bridges, schools etc. – to address current themes and issues seems increasingly popular. An idea now being promoted in Boston  is to change Logan International Airport, named after the much admired World War I general, judge and politician Edward Lawrence Logan,   to Bill Russell Airport after the late  African-American Boston Celtics star and civil-rights champion. Maybe they will make that change -- until something more current-sounding comes along.

 

I do wish that more stuff was named in honor of scientists, physicians, inventors, artists and writers (as in Europe) and less in honor of politicians or, as sacrilegious as this sounds, less in honor of famous sports stars.  Scientists and inventors have more impact on how we live than most anyone else,  more than even Bill Russell or the great Willie Mays of my old baseball cards, may he rest in peace.

 

 

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We’ll be watching how swiftly a new Rhode Island law meant to promote the building of small attached and detached housing units (such as in backyards) starts to address the state’s critical housing shortage and so to cool housing costs. I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s very important for our social health and economy.

 

Of course,  some owners will use their new units as short-term rentals rather than as long-term accommodations for relatives.  Still, among other benefits, the units may encourage an increase in the number of extended (as opposed to nuclear) families living together, a practice that was much more common before World War II and that can still be a particular help for working parents raising young children.  In any event, any increase in the total amount of housing should help in such a densely populated state.

 

Here's how California has done with its law encouraging such accessory dwelling units:

 

 

But these units may be a tad claustrophobic for some.
 

 

 

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The weird and funny story of a back bear amusing him or herself swinging on a hammock in Waitsfield, Vt.,  as another bear watched recalls how our interactions with wild animals increase as people move farther into the country and some species become highly successful opportunists in living next to humans. It would be nice if you didn’t have to resort to rubber bullets to scare away big beasts.

 

Hit this link, which includes a video:

 

 

It also made me think about animal consciousness. How similar can it be to ours? (Even explaining human consciousness remains a daunting scientific challenge.) We do know that animals further down the food chain from such higher animals as mammals and some birds have qualities that you’d associate with something like intelligence.

It’s long been known that certain species of birds can count, have long memories, and distinguish between people. Scientists have found that octopuses remember and differentiate between humans and seek to avoid pain, and bees change their behavior after traumatic incidents.

 

 

These lower animals don’t have something associated with higher animals – language, at least so far as we understand language,  but they “think’’ in some ways.

 

In any case, more animals than we might think are highly sentient and experience pain, pleasure, and anxiety. I wonder how many people might stop eating meat if they saw our fellow mammals’ terror as they’re being led to slaughter.

 

 

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Sadly, MBTA service between Boston,  New Bedford, Fall River, and Taunton is being delayed again, this time to next May, apparently mostly because of safety-testing delays. That would be 18 months later than the original planned opening.

 

America is the toughest country in the West in which to do big infrastructure projects – blame overly complicated  contracts, layer upon layer of regulation and litigiousness. The latest delay in this project is deeply frustrating to folks in and around New Bedford and Fall River. The MBTA link would be an economic boon for those cities and a tonic for those who don’t want to drive on the congested highways, with innumerable bad and angry drivers, between the Massachusetts South Coast and Greater Boston.

 

Keep your hazard lights ready for those tailgaters!

 

 

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The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center plans to  set up its Ocean Renewable Energy Innovation Center on New Bedford’s waterfront. It will be focused on  ocean-related energy development, and so of course offshore wind will be part of it.  However, most interesting is that it will also include trying to develop tide and wave power.  They’re apt to be less controversial than offshore wind.
 

The center will be part of a business incubator and part of a place to discuss and share technology ideas.

 

Read about a huge tidal-power project that never came to pass but remains one of  many precursor experimental projects:

 

READ HERE

 

 

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I just got back from doing business on the Maine Coast last week. Something that struck me, besides the fact that the roads were already crowded with out-of-state plates, though it isn’t yet high tourist season: How hard it is to see the ocean from much of the coast’s main drag, Route 1, despite all those seafood joints along it. The Maine Coast’s geography of long peninsulas and estuaries means that there are few straight stretches of coast. It’s often hard to sense you’re  near the ocean, though you do get occasional vistas of bays and piney islands.  But seemingly well inland, aromatic marshes, mostly bordered by woods and with muck exposed at low tide, suggest that the sea is near.

 

 

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While in Maine, I came across a story that vividly expresses the arrogance so common in this Gilded Age:

 

A rich couple from Missouri, Arthur Bond III and his wife, Amelia, wanted a better water view from their summer house in fancy Camden. So they had a powerful herbicide dumped on a neighbor’s property to kill  big oak trees, poisoning the area. In doing so, they made a dangerous foe of the neighbor – Lisa Gorman, the widow of L.L. Bean chief Leon Gorman.

 

“Wealth and power don’t always go hand in hand with intelligence, education and morals. This was atrocious and gross and any other word you want to use to describe abhorrent behavior,” said Tom Hedstrom, chairman of the town’s select board.

 

 

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Will the expensive new anti-obesity meds sweeping the country result in huge savings to America’s healthcare system by reducing the incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and so on? And could they change the world’s image of us as a notably fat people?

 

In any event, patients on these drugs, for which there are, of course, side effects, still need to exercise much more and eat more carefully if they want to further raise their chances of long and healthy lives. Depending on pricey weight-loss meds alone isn’t healthy.

 

 

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I  recently saw a Bentley parked outside a medical office I frequent. With bills of plus-$250 for a five-minute visit one might guess it was one of the owners of the practice. Ah, the American healthcare industry.

 

 

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Some states – huge California probably will soon be the next one -- are trying to ban college  “legacy admissions,’’ in which applicants from families whose members have attended certain institutions, especially private “elite’’ institutions,  get a leg up. I have my doubts as to whether politicians should get into micromanaging college policies like this.  That’s among other reasons because it can sometimes be difficult to determine if a student who happened to have family connections at a college was primarily admitted because he/she had those connections.
 

And as I’ve written before,  there’s the law of unintended consequences. People with family links to colleges tend to give more money to them  -- much of which goes to scholarships for low-income and middle-class students.

 

 

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Deep Red State Louisiana, which has the third highest crime rate in America, with New Mexico #1 and  Arkansas #2, has enacted a law requiring that all public-school and state-funded college classrooms have the Ten Commandments displayed. (Even the ones about adultery, lying and stealing?)

 

Let’s see what the crime rate of the Evangelical-dense state is in five years. In the Deep South, religiosity, pervasive poverty and crime co-exist with apparently minimal tension. Can theology explain this?

 

 

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What will be next on Putin’s tour of tyrannies to gain more support for murdering Ukrainians, now that’s he’s embraced North Korea even more tightly and stopped off in Vietnam? Burma, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua?