Whitcomb: Plants and Animals; Will This Tower Go Up? Asking, Not Arguing; Sycophants Report for Duty

Whitcomb: Plants and Animals; Will This Tower Go Up? Asking, Not Arguing; Sycophants Report for Duty

“Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for!  Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out!  There's a big one…’’

-- From “My Philosophy of Life,’’ by John Ashbery (1927-2017), American poet and art critic

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“Your inability to see yourself clearly is what’s keeping you alive.’’

-- Sarah Silverman (born 1970), American comedian

 

 

“I suppose the pleasure of country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live.’’

-- Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), English author and garden designer

 

 

xxx

 

You see longer grass these days on many lawns and sidewalk strips than you would have seen a few years ago. It’s been dubbed “No-Mow May,’’ but you see it through the summer, too.

 

Some of this is because of environmentalists’ urgings. It may look scruffy to some, especially those of us raised in the post-World War II suburbia in which the over-fertilized lawns (most commonly Kentucky bluegrass) were cut very short and to almost putting-green smoothness, and, with the aid of poisons, such natural interlopers as crabgrass, dandelions and violets kept out.

 

But letting the grass, with some other plants in it, too, grow longer is much better for the environment. It requires less watering and less (or no) fertilizing (which can pollute local water supplies) and reduces air pollution from gasoline-powered mowers. (More and more people are commendably using electric-powered ones.) Longer grass also provides more homes for such pollinators as bees and butterflies and sites for birds to feed and hide.

 

Give nature more leeway while remembering that New England wants to be woodlands, not grasslands. This isn’t Nebraska.

 

 

Cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – are smart and communicate with each other in ways that scientists are trying to decipher.

 

And many of these creatures know that the biggest dangers they face are from the most lethal animal species – humans – who hit them with boats, ensnare them in fishing nets and poison them with pollution. And hunters from a few nations still “harvest” whales.

 

Are these highly social beasts counter-attacking? Maybe. After all, they have potent memories and a high capacity to learn.

 

There have been increasing reports of cetaceans, mostly orcas (aka killer whales) attacking boats in seemingly coordinated ways. Some experts think that this is just a form of playfulness. But others speculate that that it could be to retaliate for fellow creatures hurt by boats.

 

We have much to learn about these marine mammals, and what we know so far is exciting. Consider recent findings about sperm whales. Scientists have found that they communicate in clicks that, in aggregate, may represent a language with syllables, words and even sentences. I wonder how Herman Melville would have reacted to all this while writing Moby-Dick.

 

Maybe someday we’ll be able to “talk’’ with cetaceans?

See:

 

 

Messy Opportunists

Don’t feed Canada geese, those once-endangered big birds that have shown themselves very opportunistic, and even aggressive, year-round residents of densely human-populated areas. They particularly love golf courses, what with all that grass, and at many, water features. Their excrement adds to the pollution from the weed killers and manmade fertilizers used so enthusiastically by country clubs.

 

The geese will come right up to you demanding a handout.

 

People are so dominant in what some scientists have come to call the  Anthropocene that an ever-increasing number of species have adapted to living at close quarters with humans; there’s lots of easy food and far fewer predators than in rural and wilderness areas, though some predators, such as coyotes and even bears, have also begun to populate suburbs and even cities.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Will this year’s cicada explosion, just getting going, encourage many folks to try eating them, fried or grilled? High protein, nutty flavor, unlimited quantities this summer, environmentally friendly! Replacement for popcorn?

It won’t happen. Folks prefer to eat fellow mammals.

(My father told me that he learned about eating locusts when he was in the force invading North Africa in World War II. He said, “They weren’t bad, and people didn’t have much else to eat.’’)

 

 

 

A Tall Cool One?

We’ll see what the final design and public subsidies look like, but a Procaccianti Group proposal to put up a 30-story apartment next to the Amica Mutual Pavilion (aka Providence Civic Center) is a hopeful sign. One obvious benefit would be that the building would mitigate a little bit the city and region’s housing shortage by providing 216 units – 18 studio apartments, 108 one-bedroom units, 82 two-bedroom ones, and 8 three-bedroom units – with a range of rents.

I assume  that these apartments would mostly be rented by affluent people, though I suppose that the city may well pressure the developer to include a few under that murky term “affordable.’’

But Providence Mayor Brett Smiley made a good point when he told WPRI last Monday: “When a luxury apartment gets built, an older luxury apartment becomes a middle-class apartment and that frees up another apartment which frees up another apartment. Every new unit into the marketplace helps.’’

Putting up a new skyscraper in downtown Providence next to Route 95 would suggest – accurately or not --  that the city is a good place to invest. The proposal will remind some people to uneasily ask: What about the long-drawn-out and taxpayer-backed effort to make the Industrial Trust Building into housing? Has that ever made economic sense, however lovely they may consider that Art-Deco skyscraper?

 

 

xxx

 

Because of the huge increase in remote work (expected to accelerate with the monster fraud-friendly machine AI), you can bet that some office buildings that can’t be economically converted to residential will be torn down. For that matter, a lot of big buildings aren’t built to last more than a few decades. It would be nice if a lot more of the demolition debris could be recycled, instead of ending up in landfills.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Look for wind-farm developers with sites off the Massachusetts coast to negotiate with utilities for a plan to extend contracts to 30 years from the current 20, to help cut, developers assert, customers’  monthly electricity costs.  Higher materials costs and interest rates have been hammering the industry. Connecticut and Rhode Island already allow 30-year contracts.

Meanwhile, can’t much more be done with tidal power?

 

 

Socratic Approach

A youngish friend of mine has been teaching a music-history course at a State University of New York campus. As the protests about the Israeli-Hamas War developed, his students, generally anti-Israeli, wanted to talk about the controversy. (Beats laboring on coursework!)

 

Rather than argue with them, my friend (who is half-Jewish) took the calm Socratic approach – asking the students such questions as “Can you define ‘Zionism’? What are the demands of Hamas? Was there ever a nation called ‘Palestine?’ ‘How would you have the school {which has a very small endowment} divest investments connected with Israel?’

 

The students were unable to provide coherent answers to any of these queries. The lack of accurate general knowledge about history and current events among these students is typical; blame the schools, parents and social media.

 

 

Reporting for Duty

The slobbering far-right sycophants of Trump who showed up last week at Trump’s hush-money trial did what servants of would-be dictators do. They’re going after the leaning-over-backwards-to-be-fair Judge Juan Merchan, who has put up with Trump’s illegal personal attacks on himself and his daughter even as the jury-selection process brought out potential jurors’ valid fears of violence from MAGA maniacs.

 

So much for what John Adams, a Founding Father, said the American republic should be: “A government of laws, not men."

 

The leading sycophants last week: House Speaker Mike Johnson, a master of theological double standards; fascist Senators J.D. Vance and Rick (Mr. Medicare fraud) Scott; outstandingly evasive North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum; deeply corrupt Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and narcissistic con man Vivek Ramaswamy  went to Manhattan to display their 100 percent support for the squalid Trump, whatever corrupt acts he has done or will do).

 

They did this to no small degree because they believe  that Trump will be elected. They are desperate to stay in this vengeful creature’s good graces, even as he shows ever more signs of psychotic incoherence (including a rapidly shrinking vocabulary). And at least two of these guys – Burgum and Vance – thirst to be the gangster’s running mate, knowing that actuarial science, as with Biden, suggests that they’d have a good chance of taking over the Oval Office well before the end of Trump’s next term.

 

Of course Trump’s ascendency suggests that tens of millions of Americans envy his sleaze and would engage in it too if they thought they could get away with it. Sadly for them, they had no very rich, ruthless and crooked father to send them on their way.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Congress’s months-long failure (now finally reversed), caused by the Putin-admiring cabal of the GOP/QAnon, to appropriate more military aid to Ukraine has been the key factor of the Russian army’s recent successes in northeast Ukraine.

 

xxx

 

 

While briefly watching snippets of elderly, ravaged-looking rock musicians on PBS (the shows must be cheap  to rent), I wonder if the fresh-faced new musical “artists” (as they’re called)  think: “I want to get off the train {under machine-gun fire from “Time’s Winged Chariot”} before I look like that.’’

Speaking of PBS, I can only imagine the tortuous work that goes into trying to ensure that the talking heads on its documentaries include as many racial, ethnic and sexual identities as possible.

 

 

The Place to Be, Sometimes

You could say that since the early 19th Century, the French Riviera has been inventing and reinventing the public’s conception of summer and winter resorts. The aristocrats, dangerous crooks, writers, painters, movie stars, statesmen, spies and others, through booms, busts and wars, have made this strip of coast in France perhaps the most exciting region in the world.

Popular historian Jonathan Miles’s new book, The Once Upon a Time World: The Dark and Sparkling Story of the French Riviera, takes you on an unforgettable ride through what the great English writer and long-time Rivera resident Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) famously called “a sunny place for shady people’’.