Whitcomb: Woo Sox Experience - ‘And the Living Is (Sometimes) Easy’; Bloated Budget, My Trump Take

Whitcomb: Woo Sox Experience - ‘And the Living Is (Sometimes) Easy’; Bloated Budget, My Trump Take

“In the long dusks of summer we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and

cut grass, waiting for something to happen.”

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― Steven Millhauser (born 1943), American novelist and short-story writer, in Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories
 

 

On June 11, I drove from Providence to Worcester on Route 146, through old mill towns, to watch the Worcester Red Sox play the Rochester Red Wings at Polar Park. The WooSox won, 5-2, and it was a nice day, with only a little Canadian smoke.

 

The ballfield is in a gritty and depressing part of the old industrial city, though there’s been some new buildings in the past couple of years. But I find that looking a few blocks over to the bizarre Union (train) Station’s twin towers, which makes the 1911 structure look like something put up during the Raj, in India, cheers me up, as do the trains running right next to the stadium.

 

(Don’t feel you have to use the big parking garage next to Polar Park. There’s cheaper and easier surface parking a couple of blocks away.)

 

The main reason I went to Worcester was to see old friends who happen to be pals of the WooSox owners. Because of this connection, we watched the game in luxury from a suite with a lounge-like inside area and a porch from which we had a superb view of the field and the stands, though one of my hosts complained that watching a game from a fancy suite at ground level, as was the case with the Pawtucket Red Sox at McCoy Stadium, is more fun. We spent most of our time yakking while sporadically glancing at the action on the field, with cheering the main signal to pay attention.

 

New professional baseball-playing rules, by the way, have blessedly speeded up that action.

 

There were a little under 9,000 people there -- close to capacity. This is only the stadium’s third year in operation and so probably more than a few in the stands were there out of curiosity to see the glitzy facility. Of course, many baseball fans are still unhappy that this Boston Red Sox affiliate bailed out of Pawtucket. I did see some Rhode Island license plates at Polar Park.

 

Some economists who are experts in the public financing of such stadiums say that Polar Park will be a long-term drain on the city.  Worcester issued $146 million in bonds to build the stadium and owns it. It will take some years to know what the fiscal impact will probably be. The next recession with high unemployment will provide a test; buying a game ticket is, after all, very discretionary. Meanwhile, it has to be said that the WooSox is a very well-run organization.

 

How much money do WooSox fans from out of town spend in Worcester’s restaurants, etc., outside of Polar Park? Not much, I’d guess. And I doubt that many take in such impressive local cultural venues as the Worcester Art Museum.

 

Watching baseball, between gossiping with friends and meeting some of their pals for the first time while consuming the likes of lobster rolls or hot dogs (not the latter anymore for me; I avoid eating fellow mammals), popcorn and beer, and other goodies is a languid summer pleasure in New England.

 

As are walking on a beach or along a Vermont stream; letting ice cream and Popsicles drip on your hands;  going fishing; eating such vacation artery blockers as fried clams;  climbing mountains;  sitting on a park bench watching the birds in between desultory looks at a book, and going to country fairs and amusement parks (where you can watch the kids throw up after eating too much candy and then being spun around on a ride).

 

Summer has certainly changed in our corner of the world in the past five or six decades. One change is the vast expansion of air conditioning. Very few New Englanders had A/C in their homes before around 1970. Movie theaters, restaurants and big stores used to draw many customers simply because they offered cool air.

 

Summers have generally been getting hotter and longer, and so air conditioning has become increasingly attractive. The tricky thing is that generating the electricity to run the A/C units usually involves burning more fossil fuel, which, in turn, heats up the atmosphere more. Oh, well.

 

I suspect that home A/C has tended to discourage many people from spending as much time outdoors in the summer as they might have half a century ago – an unhappy change, exacerbated by computer-screen addiction. This probably has played a role in the obesity epidemic. Anyway, we all need more natural light (with sun block on our skin) and exercise. And breezy porches are soothing.

 

Other notable changes include the building of superhighways to places with great summer allure, most notably in New England  -- Cape Cod. This has led to rampant overbuilding there and the erosion of some of the qualities that made The Cape, etc., so beautiful. (I remember the two-way country road with summer farmstands and a piney aroma that led us from Cohasset, Mass., to my  grandparents’ house on the Cape in the ‘50s.) And while many folks used to lie for hours in the soporific sunshine, most of us are now aware that we were setting ourselves up for skin cancer.

 

One improvement is that more people are taking advantage of the fact that summer weather doesn’t end with Labor Day, and can in some years extend into October.

 

My drive back to Providence from Worcester was thrilling because fewer and fewer drivers these days signal before cutting across lanes. This is particularly menacing in the tangled spaghetti and confusing signage of Worcester’s roads. One guy in an SUV nearly got a bunch of us killed as he swerved across two lanes to get on an exit ramp he belatedly noticed. The best way in and out of Worcester is by helicopter.

 

 

Please Explain

Yikes! GoLocal has reported that in the past five years, the size of Rhode Island’s state budget has grown  48 percent and that the fiscal 2024 budget will exceed $14 billion.

 

Meanwhile, given that Massachusetts’s population is about 6.3 times more than Little Rhody’s, you might guess that the  Bay State’s fiscal 2024 budget would total about $88 billion. But no, it’s $56 billion! And remember that Massachusetts is a much richer state than Rhode Island, mostly because of Greater Boston. Does Rhode Island’s relative poverty force it to provide more per-capita support to its residents?
 

What’s the role of federal money in all this?

 

Please hit this link:

 

 

xxx

 

 

A fairly new U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program is encouraging a revival of public housing for low-income people. Public housing has always had its problems, but we need to do a lot of things to address the growing housing-affordability problem.
 

Hit this link and consider how this might benefit, or at least affect, us, especially in the cities:

 

 

xxx

 

 

Dallas’s mayor has some pointers on fighting crime:

 

 

And So It Goes…
 

 

 

Everyone’s chiming in on Trump’s latest indictment in Miami. Here’s my take:

Many thoughtful people remain mystified that Trump – a  traitor, thief, con man, sexual predator and 24/7 liar -- still has the allegiance of tens of millions of people despite half a century of easily verifiable depravity. Part of the answer is fairly simple – his foot soldiers tend to be poorly educated, with many barely literate,  and civically lazy people who get most of their “news” from professional TV and radio “personalities,’’ who rile up their audiences to boost their ratings and thus their incomes. Trump’s sucker fans rarely research his assertions, and bogus conspiracy theories and false equivalences take hold with relentless repetition on social media, cable-TV, talk radio and elsewhere.

 

Then there are the appeals to the holy rollers mesmerized by the presentation of a suffering Trump as an extension of Christ himself.
 

 

(Of course, the “mainstream news media,’’ knowing the intensity of interest in  this low life, overcover him to boost their ratings.) 

 

Look at a U.S. map for the districts with the worst public education and you’ll tend to find the most zealous Trumpers. Of course, some of these people are just stupid – not their fault.

 

These fans are putty in the hands of some very cynical people who promote Trump because he has favored them (and himself) with the tax cuts and deregulation that have made them richer and more politically powerful; they will be  even more so if he returns to power.

 

As for that allegedly “conservative’’ party called the Republicans, Mary Trump, Trump’s niece,  psychologist and  writer, put it well after her uncle’s court appearance last week:

 

“Do the leaders of the Republican Party care enough about the rule of law, American democracy, and the oath they took to uphold and defend the Constitution, to tell the truth about the indictments being brought against Donald Trump?

 

“The answer, at least so far, is emphatically ‘no.’ Elected Republicans, do not care about any of those things; nor do they care about the knock-on effects of amplifying the kind of dangerous rhetoric that led to January 6th as evidenced by the easily debunked and patently obvious lies they’ve been telling since Donald broke the news of his own indictment.’’

 

There are a few exceptions to Ms. Trump’s take on the GOP’s leaders, but not many. It’s generally profiles in cynicism and cowardice.

 

 

xxx

 

 

I wish that people would stop saying that the U.S. Justice Department indicted Trump in the documents case. No, a federal grand jury, composed of randomly selected citizens living in South Florida, indicted him after hearing the facts gathered by the FBI.

 

 

xxx

 

 

Look at who, at this writing, was slated to preside at Trump’s trial in Miami:

 

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is a long-time member of the far-right Federalist Society (a billionaires’ tool) and someone with minimal experience as a judge. She only joined the federal bench in November 2020.

 

 

So far, she’s been in the bag for Trump. Consider, for example, that a federal appeals court panel  (composed of judges with Republican backgrounds!) strongly rebuked her for granting Trump’s legally outrageous request for a special master. This person was supposed to review the many classified documents that our wanna-be kleptocratic dictator stole from the government and kept at his Mar-a-Lago palace, in Palm Beach, before the federal investigation of  Trump would be allowed to proceed. As an endlessly corrupt businessman and politician, he has always done everything he can to swamp legal actions against him (and his mobster-style company) with lawsuits and other delaying tactics.

 

We can only hope that Cannon will consider how history will judge her if she continues to put her thumb on the scale to protect the thug who got her her job.

 

 

xxx

 

 

I wonder if we’ll ever learn if Trump gave access to top-secret documents to the Saudis,  Russians and/or God knows who else.  His money lust is insatiable. And it’s long been clear that Putin has dirt on him….

 

 

Here’s a useful fact-check of Trump’s lies about the documents case:

 

 

xxx

 

I’m sick of the political rhetoric touting “small-town values.’’  Which small towns?