Whitcomb: Waiting for Wrecking Ball; Obsolescence-Free Learning; Avoiding Highways
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Waiting for Wrecking Ball; Obsolescence-Free Learning; Avoiding Highways
“First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad….’’
-- From “Directive,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
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“The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.”
-- Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher
“I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.’’
Antonio Porchia (1885-1968), Argentine poet
“Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
― Nora Ephron (1941-2012), American writer and filmmaker
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Those golden Honey Locust tree leaves on sidewalks and roads now make things look very Pointillist (a kind of Neo-Impressionism) in our suburbs and cities. Meanwhile, here’s an American Impressionist-connected event in Newport you might want to attend: SEE HERE
At least one nice thing about rainy days in autumn: It shuts off the leaf blowers for a little while. And last Friday morning, as we saw the tomatoes rot after the frost, some of us looked forward to spring.
Before you go to Gillette Stadium or just watch pro football on TV, you might want to read this and then talk to your cardiologist.
Providence’s Industrial Trust Building (aka “Superman Building”), a classic Art Deco skyscraper opened in 1928, has been empty and decaying since 2013. It has certainly garnered a lot of attention, such as on The Wall Street Journal’s front page on Oct. 6. But despite the romantic affection that many have for it, we should accept that its most likely future might well be demolition, despite the work that’s been done, with major public financing, to try to repurpose it, mostly for 285 housing units.
Providence could always use more housing, and the people from 285 units would be a big economic and sociological boost for downtown.
But much more money is needed! So far, about $100 million in federal, state and local subsidies and tax incentives has been spent on the building and tens of millions by the owner, High Rock Development, though the total amount it has spent remains a mystery; it bought the place in 2008 for $33.2 million.
The economic and interior-design challenges of big old downtown buildings make them very tempting to tear down, and public fatigue is setting in when it comes to spending more tax money on the Industrial Trust Building. (A billionaire architectural historian who loves Jazz Age buildings is unlikely to show up to save it.)
Note that a beautiful Belle Epoque building called the Butler Exchange, which went up in 1871, was at the same site. It was demolished after a fire did heavy damage to it in 1925. With the Industrial Trust Building, will we end up with what economists sometimes call “creative destruction’’ or just destruction and a big hole in the ground?
Educating for Come What May
Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., is faced, as are many fine colleges and universities, with declining overall student enrollments amidst changing demographics and economic and technological change. Of course, the Trump regime’s war on universities that, like Brandeis, have drawn many foreign students makes things tougher. (By the way, three of the six U.S. Nobel Prize science winners this year are foreign-born.)
So the university plans to change its core curriculum, to put a focus on career development and professional education, combined with liberal arts, which has heretofore been the main focus. It almost sounds as if Brandeis seeks to become at least partly a vocational school.
Brandeis says that its new approach will “transform the student experience by integrating career preparation into every stage of a student’s education, requiring internships or apprenticeships, sustaining career counseling, and implementing a core curriculum built around the skills that employers value most. The plan also reimagines teaching. It will be more experiential and practical, and introduce new ways to measure and showcase student learning and growth over time.’’
The problem with focusing on career development is that no one really knows what job-based skills and knowledge will be in demand in the years ahead and whether technological and other changes will make them superfluous. What will “careers” look like in a decade, and what sort of companies will we have? Consider that students just a few years ago were advised to go into computer coding and other fields now being eviscerated by artificial intelligence.
Better to emphasize developing broad skills adaptable to relentless and unpredictable change, especially critical thinking, and provide broad general knowledge about the world. So to its credit, Brandeis and some other schools offer majors or minors in a program that started at British universities called Philosophy, Politics and Economics. This interdisciplinary liberal-arts-based approach is aimed at providing students with the skills to better understand and deal with a changing world, whatever happens with technology, demographics and other ever-changing forces.
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Some southern New England homeowners are in for big surprises as the Federal Emergency Management Agency updates its floodplain information. Many people living near streams, small and large, will find that they’ll have to buy flood insurance for the first time. This reflects global warming’s effects on rainfall. In our region, this has meant an increase in very serious flooding, though we still have the occasional droughts, too, as the weather tends to become more extreme.
The need to buy flood insurance will lower real estate prices in some places. Water views may become less alluring.
Screams From Lifeboats
The desperate-sounding pleas for money come faster and thicker on public media, now that the Republicans have cut off all federal grants to them. I suspect that some smaller stations will soon close, particularly in Red States, drawing complaints from many of the very same people who voted for Trump. The complainers will mourn the loss of yet more local news reporting, which they’ll still want in between opening a cool one, watching Fox “News’’ and seeking cures for what ails them on “social” media.
Meanwhile, I wonder if NPR and PBS news reporting will get tougher in covering the most corrupt administration in American history now that they no longer have any federal money to lose. And what will happen to their excessive focus on identity politics?
New Englanders will like this ranking: SEE HERE
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It’s sad, if inevitable, to see regional and national hotel and restaurant chains with big money moving into quirky (“quaint”?) towns such as Provincetown, muscling aside some of those locally owned and eccentric establishments that give such color to the likes of Ptown. Homogenization.
Don’t blame illegal aliens for crowded emergency rooms. There are a few there, despite J.D. Vance’s endless fabrications. (Illegal and even some legal immigrants fear that masked ICE agents will arrest them there and send them to one of the regime’s concentration camps, such as “Alligator Alcatraz,’’ in Florida.)
The main causes of ER crowding include America’s fragmented health-insurance arrangements, with its gaping holes, the world’s most expensive health care by far (with huge salaries and profits for some), and too few hospital inpatient beds, which forces “boarding” in ERs. Our chaotic “system’’ forces many people to use ER’s for primary and other care that in more civilized nations would be provided at lower cost elsewhere.
It will get worse as the regime cuts billions of dollars from Medicaid support that keeps rural and community hospitals afloat and reduces aid to community health centers, which provide primary care to lots of people in low-income areas, thus often letting them avoid emergency rooms.
But fear not, campaign donors with “concierge” medical services will be fine, at least until they need to go to an ER, where they might have to suffer the indignity of being treated like everybody else, if only for a little while.
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I wonder how many more crimes are being committed now that so many federal law-enforcement dollars are being diverted to ICE to go after immigrants, and people who Trump’s Gestapo think look like immigrants, even though they’re citizens. Maybe we’ll never be allowed to know.
Trying to Get Around
Is flying safe in America now? Well, not particularly, as air-traffic controllers, already stressed by the nature of their jobs, exacerbated by long-term staffing shortages, are being ordered to work without pay, sometimes for up to 10 straight hours a day, That’s even as Trump threatens to fire thousands more federal employees, whom Trump likes to frequently insult and threaten. DOGE got rid of many federal workers earlier this year. That will help pay for tax cuts for very rich folks, though it’s already slamming some federal services.
Some controllers, who, of course, are very highly trained, are calling in sick while taking side jobs. Some are looking to switch careers.
Take the train if you can.
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Trump hates renewable energy (about which he is impressively ignorant, both about its technology and its economics) and public transit. So the general thrust of his policies will be to cause more air pollution (and intensify global warming) and denser road traffic by forcing more people into gasoline-guzzling cars.
Think of that over the next few years when you’re in gridlock on Route 95.
But wait! If you have some disposable income, you can fly (at $79 each way) from Logan Airport to New Bedford in 35 minutes with the new Cape Air service, avoiding the claustrophobic traffic in and around Boston. The planes, however, can only take nine passengers.
Will REGENT "seagliders," electric-powered vehicles that would skim just above the water on “flights” of up to 180 miles along the coast, help reduce car traffic a tad? These vehicles, which would carry 12 passengers, are being developed at Quonset Point. The idea is that they’d blend an aircraft’s speed with the convenience of a boat. My guess is that tickets would be pricey and geared to business executives and rich people.
Of course, REGENT’s success would be a boon for the regional economy.
Congrats to Trump for apparently achieving a “first phase’’ of ending the Hamas-Israel war! This will involve a pullback of Israeli troops to a new line and a swap of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. But I doubt that Hamas will disarm or drop its demand that Israel cease to exist. Hope must be mixed with skepticism.
But for now, it seems that Gaza, or what’s left of it, may experience a cold peace for a while, while violence will continue to erupt from time to time in the West Bank, to which Hamas might transfer many of its activities.
Northern Exposure
Poor Canada! It’s urgently seeking to expand trading ties with countries other than the United States to try to offset some of the Trump tariffs and, more generally, to reduce its economic dependence on an increasingly autocratic, aggressive, corrupt and erratic country. But geography and the long tightly interwoven economies of the two nations will make it very difficult for our friends to the north. Europe and Asia are far away.
The U.S. used to share ethical, humanitarian and political values with Canada, but apparently not so much anymore.
(When you’re up there, be generous with your spending.)
The Madness of Crowds?
What’s fueling the stock market bubble? A big part is extreme speculation on companies involved in artificial intelligence. Shades of the dot.com bubble of the late ‘90’s.
The Bank of England’s financial policy committee warned last Wednesday: “The risk of a sharp market correction has increased.’’
“On a number of measures, equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence. This…leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic.”
But few dare to jump off the merry-go-round alone.
RIP, Joan Kennedy
Mrs. Kennedy was the wife of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, before their 1982 divorce. She was a classical pianist and arts promoter, and spokesperson for those, like her, who struggled with alcoholism and mental illness. She died in Boston last Wednesday at 89. I met her a couple of times back in 1970-71 when I was working for the old Boston Herald Traveler and found her very gracious and charming.
Reading her obituary took me back to the decades when the Kennedy clan, with its triumphs and catastrophes, was the dominant political family in America. It must have been tough being an in-law.