Whitcomb: Mellow Time, Except….Eroding Education; Alviti Must Go

Whitcomb: Mellow Time, Except….Eroding Education; Alviti Must Go

 

“As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,

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A  landscapeful of small black birds, intent

On the far south, convene at some command….’’

From “An Event,’’ by Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), American poet and literary translator

Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,

To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile

Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other….’’

From “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars),’’ by Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), American poet and essayist

The whole poem:

 

 

 

“Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.’’

—Honoré de Balzac, (1799-1850), French novelist and playwright

 

 

This week should be one of Indian summer, following the frosts of recent days, at least in some normally cold places around here. Calm, hazy, mild and sort of sad in a way,  and with the afternoon sun low in the horizon (and thus bad for driving west then) as our shortening winter approaches. Indian summers used to be smoky as people burned leaves in piles, creating a sweet pollution, supplementing the cigarette smoke that seemed to be everywhere. Most communities have since banned most outdoor burning.

 

Now, the most notable source of Indian summer pollution is screeching gasoline-fueled leaf blowers, encouraged by even middle-income people hiring yard crews heavily staffed by very poor people from south of the border and, I suppose, also encouraged by the ban on burning leaves. It’s too exhausting and time-consuming to rake leaves, even when they’re dry, light and crinkly?

 

As I’ve written before, Indian summer always reminds me of October 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis put us on the edge of The Apocalypse. It feels a bit like that now, not the least, because we face one of the scariest elections in American history. The weather was quiet and seemed unnaturally warm then in the hilly Connecticut town where I was in high school, even as anxieties grew. We huddled around radios for the latest news bulletins from WABC in New York.

 

 

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Hikers complain that thousands of fall-foliage leaf peepers have recently overwhelmed parts of New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch State Park.

 

Get used to it: It’s show business! Celebrate natural beauty!

 

 

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It’s more and more rare for Americans to see friends and family die. They’re apt to expire in a hospital or nursing home, out of sight for everyone except healthcare professionals.  And, of course, far more Americans used to see fellow military service members die in war.

 

At the same time, we seem more and more fearful of the inevitable.  That fear of course is a major reason why people embrace religions that promise them eternal life  if they do this or that, and/or if they don’t do this or that. Perhaps that also explains to some extent the plethora of Halloween decorations, which include lots of  plastic skeletons. Call it exposure therapy for those fearful that they might be moving toward nothingness rather than toward paradise. Paging Hamlet!

 

 

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I am sure that millions of Americans are fed up with talking to robots on the phone. The decline of personal service, except for the wealthy, is one reason that so many Americans are anxious and depressed. It gets worse and worse. A lot of tech has made life more complicated, not less, despite the jazzy new tools it offers. It has certainly ravaged civic life and poisoned much of our politics.

 

And even if you can get someone to help you on the phone, they’re often folks working in India or elsewhere abroad with such thick accents that they’re hard to follow, however nice and helpful they might try to be.
 

I suspect that this raises the hatred and fear of immigrants pumped up by the MAGA mob, even though many of these phone personnel don’t live in America!

 

 

Bad Move in Mass

Approval of Proposition 2 on the Massachusetts ballot could produce a slow-motion disaster for education in that state. By no longer making passing the state’s standardized MCAS tests a requirement for graduating from high school, it would ensure that more students would be given a diploma without proof that they had learned the rather basic stuff they were supposed to learn to arm them to go out in the world. By the way, the vast majority of students do pass the MCAS.

 

(These comments don’t address the need to expand vocational education in the trades.)

 

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has spent mountains of money to try to get Proposition 2 enacted. That’s mostly because some teachers don’t want to be held accountable for MCAS results.

 

And some school systems will feel free to lower other academic standards in general if the requirement is dropped. The MCAS/graduation requirement has served to encourage a certain orderly rigor in the Bay State’s oversight of public schools. Dropping the MCAS graduation rule will reduce that. That will undermine the state’s society and economy. That its public education has been ranked as the country’s best plays a key role in Massachusetts’s diversified economy. Eliminating the MCAS graduation requirement will likely reduce the state’s standing.

 

Massachusetts tends to set the pattern for New England.

 

Here’s the lowdown on Rhode Island graduation requirements:

 

 

Face Reality - Alviti Must Go

Rhode Island officials’ response to the Washington Bridge fiasco will almost certainly ensure that Dan McKee is a one-term governor. There’s little trust in what his administration says about bridge-reconstruction plans.

 

What would help is the firing of the, er, obfuscating, state Transportation Director Peter Alviti and his replacement by a highly regarded apolitical engineer/executive without political, union, or other conflicts of interest.

 

The estimable Ken Block sums up the mess and what needs to be done thusly:

 

https://www.golocalprov.com/news/block-alvitis-lies-lack-of-legislative-leadership-washington-bridge-fiasco

 

Meanwhile, could somebody please finally put up a big sign at the infamous new roundabout at the eastern end of the Henderson Bridge directing confused drivers to Route 195 east!?

 

 

Where Teachers and Nurses Can Live Too

Affluent towns often battle proposals to change zoning rules to encourage building more housing for low-and-middle-income people. The battle has been quite intense in some Boston suburbs, with Milton perhaps the leader in fighting state mandates aimed at curbing dwelling costs by allowing construction of more multi-family housing, especially near public transportation.  The more the supply, the more the rise in costs of owning or renting a place can be slowed.

 

Some affluent Bay State towns, such as Westwood and Lexington, have supported housing expansion. Their residents realize the benefits of being communities where such essential workers as teachers, police, firefighters, nurses, child-care workers and assorted skilled trades people can afford to live rather than having to face the hassle and expense of  commuting in from other towns. Even  rich folks need nearby poorer people to serve them.

 

Healthy communities need an economically mixed population for the long term. For such a mix, we must increase the housing stock. Obviously. And that means accepting more density in some places.

 

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Coastal cities such as Providence and Boston could reduce the damage from storm surges by looking for vacant shoreline land where thick vegetation can be planted and by replanting shellfish beds.  (But don’t eat those mussels, oysters and clams in dense urban areas.)
 

These act as flood buffers, which will be more and more important with the sea-level rise and more intense storms from global warming. And letting underused shipping channels silt up would also help. Deeper channels allow storm-driven water to more easily enter inner harbors and cause flooding.

 

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With all of its problems, Providence can depress. But those of a certain age know how much better it is in various ways. Consider the spiffed-up shoreline of the inner Providence River, with new and renovated buildings, park-like open space and that very inviting pedestrian bridge. Almost inspiring!

 

 I noticed that last week when meeting somebody for lunch at Plant City, on Water Street.

 

 

Bye-Bye Bibi

It’s past time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down. His country needs new ways to try to find an end to its wars with Hamas and Hezbollah and violence in the West Bank, some of it fomented by Netanyahu’s allies, who have stolen Palestinians’ homes. “Bibi,’’ whom most Israelis blame for the security lapses that allowed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack, is too much a part of the country’s far-right coalition to have the flexibility to pursue effective negotiations.

 

Of course, he has one powerful reason to stay in office: It gives him protection from prosecution for the corruption he’s been charged with, kinda like somebody else you might have heard of.

 

Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which started the current Mideast wars, is already emboldening a few brave Gazans to speak out against Hamas. That terrorist group’s brutal and corrupt rule of the Gaza Strip led to the misery inflicted by Israel’s long and very bloody counter-attack, which has killed many thousands of civilians forced to live among Hamas fighters.

 

Note that Netanyahu’s government helped Hamas before Oct. 7, 2023, including by facilitating the sending of  Qatari money to Hamas-run Gaza.

 

The Israelis have been adapt at killing their worst enemies! Consider that they have also killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Now, what will Iran’s leaders do?

 

 

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The vicious tyranny that is North Korea is playing an increasing role in helping its fellow dictatorship, Russia, kill Ukrainians. Iran, another tyranny, is helping out too. They all want to quash democracy wherever they can, to discourage their own brutally suppressed subjects from seeking it.