Whitcomb: More, Not Less School; Speed up Bridge Building; Anomie; Assume the Position

Whitcomb: More, Not Less School; Speed up Bridge Building; Anomie; Assume the Position

“When you move away, you see how much depends

on the pace of the days—how much

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depended on the haze we waded through

each summer, visible heat, wavy and discursive

as the lazy track of the snake in the dusty road….”

-- Ellen Bryant Voigt (born 1943), Vermont-based poet

Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.’’

--Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), U.S. president 1929-1933, engineer and businessman. He said this in 1936.

 

 

‘’It is so difficult not to become vain about one’s own good luck.’’

-- Simone De Beauvoir (1908-1986), French writer and philosopher

 

 

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This is bad news indeed: After one year in which the school day of Providence was extended by 30 minutes, the day will go back to 6 hours, 15 minutes for elementary school students and 6 hours and 45 minutes for middle and high school kids. That might not sound like a lot, but it adds up to about two fewer weeks a year of education in classrooms! Interim testing suggests that math and reading proficiency improved as a result of the very modest daily increase in classroom time.

 

Providence, with a couple of sterling exceptions, most notably Classical High School, has mediocre or worse public schools.

 

The reasons for the reversal are that COVID funds are expiring and, as often is the case,  the opposition of the Providence Teachers Union to working even a little longer each day. It’s another reminder of why public employee unions (but not civil service protections) are a bad idea.

 

The city should move heaven and earth to restore that lost school time, even if it means a tax increase. Providence’s  -- and Rhode Island’s -- social and economic health depend heavily on the city’s education system. Of course, tax increases are always politically tricky. In Providence the trickiest thing is that the biggest taxpayers are on the affluent East Side, where many parents send their kids to private schools and so are less likely to care about public education, despite its great importance.

 

 

 

To Be Finished by 2036?

Most readers have driven on the two vehicle bridges – the Sagamore and Bourne -- over the spectacular Cape Cod Canal and noticed that the Feds built them both in only two years – 1933-1935 – with equipment and building materials inferior to what we have now. The current bridges have been impressively sturdy, though driving on the two-way spans, with their too-narrow lanes, can be unnerving. Clench your teeth and look straight ahead!

 

There’s also the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge, also built in 1933-1935, allowing a bit of freight and seasonal passenger service on the Cape.

 

So the decision has been made to replace the bridges, via a combination of federal and state money. Officials say that construction of the new Sagamore Bridge won’t start until 2027 and building of a new Bourne Bridge until 2029. The hope is to complete the Sagamore Bridge by 2034 and the Bourne Bridge maybe by 2036. The total cost is projected to be $4.5 billion.

 

(Who of us old folks will be around to see the new bridges, and would we be too decrepit to  drive on them?)

 

It’s very difficult to do big projects in America because of too many sometimes conflicting jurisdictions, too many permitting layers and the sometimes paralyzing fear of litigation. It would be nice if officials used the new bridges as a nation-leading example of how to speed up big projects.

 

I also thought of how more railroad service to the Cape would help cut down on what is often from May to October’s horrific  car traffic going to and from what is a man-made island.

 

Likewise, Aquidneck Island would be more habitable if a railroad(s) – MBTA and/or Amtrak -- connected it with the outside world and took a lot of vehicles off the road. New bridges would, of course, be needed. The terminus would be at Thames Street in Newport, whence tourists could easily walk to many of the City by the Sea’s famous sights and sites. Alas, that’s more billions of bucks!

It would be energizing and uplifting if the new bridges we do put up in such watery places as Rhode Island and Massachusetts were more than just for vehicles. They could be lively attractions, providing dramatic views for pedestrians and bicyclists. There could be plantings on them and maybe even snack bars. They could become like public squares, albeit with anti-suicide fences….

 

Here's what they did in Bordeaux:

 

 

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Yes, indeed, whether the videos or still photos are from Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management officers or beachside property owners, surveillance images should be used to prosecute people for illegally driving on beaches and imperiling wildlife and sometimes even people in the process.

 

Past time for crackdowns.

 

Must so many people be so selfish everywhere? Why do so many people avoid walking in beautiful places, insisting instead on using a polluting machine that belongs on a road? Then there are those shrieking snowmobiles….

 

American cacophony.

 

 

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The most terrifying word in the computer and Internet worlds – “UPDATE”

 

 

The Donnie Horror Picture Show

‘’Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.’’

-- Plato, circa 375 B.C.

 

 

Because of the implosion of the business model of news media, with endless layoffs, the range of stories being covered has shrunk. The remaining journalists tend to concentrate on, and often copy each other on, the same “Big Story.’’ So, just a relatively few words on the presidential campaign.

 

This past week or so, the emphasis, of course, has been on MAGA/Fascist/Trump Family Looting Association politics, fueled by the attempt to kill Trump by the usual sort of anomie-ridden young white man armed with MAGA’s favorite, and protected from regulation, weapon, an AR-15 assault rifle.  Indeed, this young man brings to mind the sort of guy so prominent at Trump rallies.

 

Precisely why these troubled souls shoot at people often remains a mystery, but with it so easy to get a gun,  it’s easy for them to do so. At this writing, the aims of the latest infamous shooter, registered Republican and gun nut Thomas Crooks,  20, still seem enigmatic. Maybe he was just trying to make a mark on the world, if only posthumously since he would probably be killed, by murdering a famous person.  Or maybe he was just flailing out in a general way at a world that paid him little respect. He was bullied a bit at school.  But the world doesn’t pay most of us much respect.

 

One wonders why his father saw the need in a tranquil middle-class suburb to own the assault rifle that his son used. Fear of immigrants?  A way to express his belief that the MAGA version of the Second Amendment is the only amendment that counts, ignoring the “well-regulated militia’’ part? Simply to feel tougher in a rapidly changing  world?

 

You don’t need an AR-15 to shoot deer. They’re designed to kill people -- lots of ‘em real fast.

A look at guns for defense and offense:

 

The elder Crooks was described as a “Libertarian,’’ which has generally come to mean ‘’far-right Republican.’’

 

Then came the “Republican” convention,  with its utterly predictable orgasmic adulation of its Fuhrer  --  traitor, thief, rapist, pathological liar and wanna-be dictator, and part of the Godhead – conventioneers’ kind of guy! – and the anointing of his deputy and heir-apparent, J.D. Vance, 39, a  very smart, carnivorously  ambitious and cynical pol,  who has been  preparing for high office since his teens. His well-written, if oft-misleading, book, Hillbilly Elegy, was his launching pad.  He’s since become a protégé of far-right tech billionaires.

 

The extreme obsequiousness of the MAGA conventioneers, on the floor and at the podium, toward their leader was, in itself, sometimes hilarious, if you ignore its ominous implications. They were desperate to, shall we say, assume the position in their leader’s presence.  The funniest were the remarks of former Trump critics Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. They have now passed all the requirements for full membership in the world’s oldest profession.

 

Vance’s high intelligence and self-discipline, especially compared to his boss’s, may make him seem even more dangerous than  Trump, that demagogic genius. (One senses that many of his followers want  to be deluded.) At least Vance may seem more dangerous for the dwindling number of Americans who might actually like the idea of democracy governed by relatively honest people.

 

Political conventions often produce lemming-like behavior. Most attendees follow directions and yell with the crowd. So it was last week in Milwaukee. It reminds me of the often-lethal group strandings of dolphins (like us,  social animals) on beaches and low-tide mudflats, such as the record one that recently took place on Cape Cod:

 

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/cape-cod-dolphin-strandings-explained/3427881/

 

Whatever. Historians, psychiatrists and sociologists will, over the years, calmly explain what happened in the rise of MAGA. Trump’s  depraved history is an open book. Vance used to cite it, until succumbing to extreme opportunism. The MAGA Master’s disciples may one day admit what he and they had done to America, but by then it may be too late to repair the damage.
 

Assume the position, America!

 

 

The other biggest recent political phenomenon has been the suicidal slowness of Democratic leaders in telling Biden that he’s too old, tired and weak to run again, and that it’s past time to let one of the most impressive Democratic leaders  -- e.g., Josh Shapiro, Gretchen  Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar – compete with Kamala Harris for the nomination at the convention next month. Otherwise, a party-wide (and nationwide) catastrophe may well be in the offing in November. That’s sad, given that Biden has been a very good president in particularly trying times.

 

History is rife with leaders who stay dangerously too long.  Consider the increasingly very sick (mostly with heart disease) and narcissistic/ magnetic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1944 election, which, he won partly because of his and his entourage’s success in covering up his grim condition.

 

He was so sick that Joseph Stalin outmaneuvered him at the Yalta Conference in February of 1945, and he died, at age 63, on April 12, 1945. Thank God the far from narcissistic but decisive, courageous and impressively well-informed Harry Truman succeeded him. Still,  if the very able and honest New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, a moderate and internationalist Republican,  had won the 1944 election, America would have been in good hands, and that would have been healthy for the Republican Party.

 

Meanwhile, a recent article in The Conversation said:

 

“What about finishing out that four-year term? Our calculations from the life tables reveal that there is a 63.3% probability that Biden will survive another five years – to at least 86. And there is a 73.6% probability for Trump to survive that period – to at least age 82.’’
 

 So it’s even more important than usual who their vice president is.

 

Biden is 81 and often looks like he has Parkinson’s disease. Trump is 78, fat and unhealthy-looking (covered up to some extent by very heavy makeup). Both are increasingly incoherent. The difference is Trump’s grandiose and non-stop lying and threats.

 

Of course, we know far less about Trump’s health than Biden’s.

Hit this link:

 

 

A Rotation Problem

Here’s a, er, funny? article.

 

Scientists say that the rapid melting of the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is making days longer by slowing Earth’s rotation. A Guardian article reports that while “the change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds…this is enough to potentially disrupt Internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which depend on precise timekeeping.’’

 

“The melting of the Greenland  and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate – or fatter – slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.’’

Good for productivity? Don’t worry, be happy!

 

Here’s a scientific paper on this phenomenon:

 

 

 

Meanwhile, note that on most nights, the low temperature in recent years has usually been above ‘’normal.’’ It’s a better indicator of global warming than daytime highs.

 

 

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Summer moving along at a good clip. Brown spots on lawns, less birdsong. It’s getting dark slightly earlier.

 

 

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I continue to be surprised that so many people have very easy to remember vanity license plates. You think that they want something complicated, to make it harder for crazies to chase them down, in, say, road rages. Something like: VY6MZ5Q.

 

Vonnegut’s Essays

Regarding Kurt Vonnegut’s (1922-2007) mostly darkly comic novels, of which I suppose Slaughterhouse-Five is the most famous. Some work, some don’t. But I love his essays – trenchant, funny, with interesting and/or outrageous advice. So pick up a copy of his collection called Wampeters Foma & Granfalloons.  He explains that a “wampeter’’ is “an object around which the lives of many unrelated people revolve’’; a “granfalloon” is “a proud and meaningless association of human beings’’ and “foma’’ are “harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls.’’