Doing their own things
At a town meeting in Huntington, Vt.
Downtown Arlington, Vt.
— Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879-1958), American writer and social reformer. She lived in Arlington, Vt., where famed artist Norman Rockwell also lived for some years.
Llewellyn King: Great newspaper editors I’ve known
Martin Baron, who servved as head editor of The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He lead The Globe’s investigation of sexual abuse of young people by Catholic priests, an investigation dramatized in the Academy Awards-winning movie Spotlight.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
I am something of a connoisseur of editors. I have worked for them, alongside them, and have hated and admired them.
So I was ecstatic when Adam Clayton Powell III, my cop-host on the TV show White House Chronicle, told me he contacted Martin “Marty” Baron, who has a place in the pantheon of great editors, and he agreed to come on the show.
We recorded a two-part series with Baron, which was a tour de force appearance. He talked about the excitement of being the editor of The Miami Herald when Elian Gonzalez was the big story; the years-long unveiling of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in The Boston Globe when he was its editor; and his becoming executive editor of The Washington Post and its transition from being a family property to being owned by Jeff Bezos, then the world’s richest man.
As he did in his book, Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post, he discussed how Trump early on had the new Post team to dinner at the White House and endeavored to co-opt them into the Trump camp. Trump had, as Baron explained, picked on the wrong team.
Baron’s biggest achievement, I believe, was the investigation that exposed the Catholic Church. I was traveling frequently to Ireland at that time — a country, sadly, that had seen more than its share of clerical excess. The Globe’s revelations had an immediate impact there and around the world: Think of the thousands of boys and girls who won’t be abused as a result.
Every editor edits differently and leaves a different mark. I worked for a weekly newspaper editor in Zimbabwe, Costa Theo, who set much of the hot type and edited on the Linotype machine. He urged me to use what he called “informants” many years before Watergate ushered in the practice of talking about “sources” without naming them and relying on the integrity of the reporter to guarantee the existence of the sources.
Herbert Gunn, father of the poet Thom Gunn, edited various newspapers in London’s Fleet Street — when I knew him, it was The Sunday Dispatch. He sat in a commanding way on what was called the “backbench” at the end of the newsroom and edited what he thought needed his touch in green ink with a Parker 51. If you saw green ink, you jumped.
Gunn was a superb editor and, like Ben Bradlee at The Post, gave a theatrical performance as well. All I ever saw in green ink were cryptic notes like “15 minutes.” That meant, “I will see you in the pub in 15 minutes.” It was an assignment not an invitation.
Some editors are technicians and change the look of the papers they edit. John Denson, at The New York Herald Tribune, is credited with introducing horizontal layouts using Bodoni typefaces as the principal type of the newspaper. This became the standard for many U.S. newspapers, including The Washington Post.
A newspaper genius, David Laventhol, put the women’s page in The Post to flight. As the Style section’s first editor, he did it with typological aplomb and with the use of photos in a Life magazine way: big and bold.
Laventhol, who ended up as publisher of the Los Angeles Times and Newsday, came to The Post from The New York Herald Tribune, where he had risen to managing editor. He and I worked together briefly in 1963 and I remember him having a days-long battle with Marguerite Higgins, the famous foreign correspondent, over the use of the word “exotic.”
Of course, Laventhol was only able to create the revolutionary Style section because executive editor Bradlee gave him free rein.
Bradlee edited with leadership, while affecting a kind international jewel thief persona, as might be played by David Niven or Steve McQueen. His genius always was the big picture. He didn’t write headlines or change captions, but he did decide the big stories of the day.
One of those stories was about a break-in at an office and apartment complex called The Watergate. I had arranged a dinner date with a reporter at the rival Evening Star. She called me and said, “I am afraid I will be late. There has been some sort of break-in at The Watergate. But it can’t be important because the Post is sending Carl.”
At that time, Carl Bernstein wasn’t a star, just a young city-desk reporter. I don’t think my date that night stayed in journalism.
Baron, like Bradlee, had a nose for the big one — and he brought it home.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
That day in D.C.
“January Sixth I, 2021,” (lithograph), by Nomi Silverman,, in her show “Palpable Process,’’ at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, in Norwalk, Conn.
The gallery says:=
“Nomi Silverman is a visual storyteller whose work elevates the voices of outsiders and those perceived as ‘other’ –people on the margins of society. She often approaches a broader story by focusing on an individual narrative, putting a human face to the generic nameless, faceless masses that are often portrayed in the media. Her subject matter has included homelessness, racial violence, Matthew Shepard, and Iraq. Most recently, she has turned her lens to topics of immigration, emigration, and refugees.
For Palpable Process, Silverman selected prints from her personal collection that will provide insight into her storytelling process, and demonstrate how she collects and creates images that will ultimately come together into a cohesive artbook or exhibit.
Norwalk Harbor and vicinity
— Photo by Joe Mabel
Activated an alien probe?
From the show “Ken Grimes: The Truth Is Out There,’’ at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, through Jan. 14.
The gallery says:
{The work of New Haven-based} Grimes {born in 1947} “focuses on the question of extraterrestrial life, a topic he has been focused on for most of his life due to a series of coincidences which he interpreted as messages from aliens. Grime’s work has primarily been black and white and so his paintings demand careful consideration yet also play with fantasy, indeed making the viewer question the possibility of life out there.’’
Chris Powell: In Connecticut and elsewhere, ‘dollar stores’ reflect poverty
— Photo by Michael Rivera
MANCHESTER, Conn
Like the rest of the country, Connecticut is seeing an explosion of "dollar stores,’’ such as Dollar General, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree, discount retailers that are causing alarm in some quarters because, while they sell food and consumer goods, they don't offer fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables and they are feared to be driving traditional food markets out of business. As a result, some municipalities around the country are legislating to restrict or even prohibit "dollar stores’’.
Now, The Hartford Courant reports, a University of Connecticut professor of agricultural and resource economics, Rigoberto A. Lopez, has published a study supporting this resentment, linking the growth of "dollar stores’’ to unhealthy diets in "food deserts" and the failure of regular grocery stores.
But "dollar stores’’ aren't doing anything illegal or immoral. They wouldn't be successful if they weren't providing goods that people want and at low prices. Nobody seems to be accusing the "dollar stores’’ of using unfair trade practices or violating anti-trust law. If "dollar stores’’ are doing better than traditional grocery stores, competition is what a free-market economy is about. People can choose where to shop.
Critics of "dollar stores’’ don't like that. They seem to think that they should be allowed to decide not just where people shop but also what they eat.
Of course there is a problem. "Food deserts" are real but retailers aren't to blame for them. Poverty is, and the expansion of "dollar stores’’ is largely a measure of worsening poverty for many in the country as a whole as well as in Connecticut.
Too many people don't eat enough fresh food quite apart from their ability to pay for it, and combine bad eating habits with poverty and the problem is worse.
But poor households qualify not just for government housing, energy and income subsidies but also for federal food subsidies -- Food Stamps are now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- and if they live responsibly they can afford fresh food if they want it, and if they can travel outside their "food deserts."
That's the other part of the problem. Like other retailers, full-service supermarkets won't make as much money by locating in poor neighborhoods as they will make in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods. By avoiding poor neighborhoods, any retailer will suffer less theft as well.
So Hartford's city government is considering opening its own supermarket. Whether city government has the competence to run anything well is always a fair question, since the poverty of so many city residents is inevitably reflected in city government itself. But there probably will be "food deserts" in cities as long as their demographics are so poor. A city government supermarket in Hartford won't solve the problem.
Indeed, a good measure of the long decline of Hartford from what was considered the country's most prosperous city a little more than a century ago to a struggling one is the decline in the number of chain-owned supermarkets in the city -- from 13 in 1968 to only one or two today.
Because of this poverty there isn't much retailing left in Hartford generally. For years city residents have done much if not most of their shopping in West Hartford and Manchester. West Hartford's downtown long has been far more vibrant than Hartford's, because that is where the middle and upper classes -- the people who have money to spend, people who many years ago might have lived in Hartford -- have moved.
Blaming "dollar stores” for poor nutrition among the poor is just an excuse to ignore the causes of poverty. More than a study of the impact of those stores, Connecticut could use a study of what pushed Hartford and its other cities from prosperity to privation -- such as fathers who don't father, mothers who don't parent well on their own, schools that don't educate, policies that produce dependence instead of self-sufficiency, and government that takes better care of itself than its constituents.
The decline was underway long before Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump or either of the Bushes became president. But even as the "dollar stores’’ spread across Connecticut, no one in authority seems to have any curiosity about what happened.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Downtown Hartford in 1914, during “The Insurance Capital’s’’ heyday.
‘Poetry of their corpses’
“Hark,” (pastel), by Fu’una, in the show “Måhålang (Longing)”, at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, through Jan. 28.
The artist says:
“There are few things more consistent in my life than a sense of longing. To be Pacific Islander on the East Coast is to feel like a part of you is always missing. In my trips to Guåhan (Guam) I’ve learned to make the most of my time. I gather images and ideas that feed my creative practice. This practice has helped me connect to wherever I am living.
“In an era where we spend 90 percent of our lives in artificial environments, I find joy in the flora and fauna that indicate where you are. But biodiversity continues to shrink as land is eaten up by condos and shopping centers. For years I would draw dead animals not just for the poetry of their corpses but for the simple fact that we are an invasive species that has disrupted once thriving habitats. I seek out what I can find and compose them in my paintings into bouquets of animals, florals, and text.
“The antidote to måhålang is presence and connection. My large-scale paintings hint at memories of immersion and claim physical space where my subjects can live in perpetuity.’’
The French connection
Percentage of the population, by county, speaking French at home in New England. This information does not discern between specific demographics of New England French, Quebec French, and dialects of immigrants from France. This does not include French Creole languages, which are spoken by a sizable population in southern New England urban centers. Percent of residents speaking French (2015) 10–15% 5–10% 1–5% 0.5-1%
Coming distractions
Above,“Winter Blues” (encaustic), by Providence-based artist Nancy Whitcomb. Below, her “Winter Blues” in oil.
How about a county revival?
Somerset County Courthouse, in Skowhegan, Maine
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
County governments with substantial powers are mostly long gone from New England. That’s for a variety of practical and political reasons. Among them are that towns and cities were incorporated here earlier than in the rest of America, and there has long been little unincorporated land (except in Maine). Still, many of the region’s counties used to have real powers (most of which were taken away in the past half century). But town and city officials have tended to want to grab those powers, and voters were increasingly convinced that counties were dinosaurs.
And yet some things are best handled regionally, rather than community-by-community, including such matters as open-space protection, water supplies and, increasingly, encouraging the provision of that somewhat ill-defined thing called “affordable housing.’’ Certainly there can be more regionalization of public-safety services and education, especially in suburban and exurban areas. This could save money (by reducing service duplication) and improve service quality.
I was impressed when I briefly worked in Delaware, in the ‘70’s, by the generally high quality of the services and infrastructure of New Castle County, which includes the city of Wilmington as well as suburban and exurban land. It’s one of three counties in The First State, which is the second smallest state in the Union by area. New Castle County has an elected county council and county executive. Rhode Island, especially, would do well to study it. As has been asked many times before, does the tiny Ocean State really need 39 municipalities and 36 school districts (32 municipal and 4 regional) school districts? But maybe the desire for very local control trumps efficiency?
Mixed traffic
“Ciiserec —Now Do You See It?” (collage and mixed media on ledger paper), by Henry Payer, in the show “Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context,’’ at the Addison Gallery of American Art, in Andover, Mass.
The gallery says:
{The show} “places a focus on the gallery's newest additions to its collection. But new works don't exist in a vacuum, each piece is surrounded by other works collected over the Addison's nearly 100-year history. These associations create a dialogue between old and new, putting everything in a new light.’’
Samuel Phillips Hall, the social science and language building of Phillips Academy, the elite boarding school in Andover.
'And paying for the sins of their parents'
“When I grew up, there really was the sense of ’Why would you want to live anywhere else?’ {than the Boston area} .There’s a proudly parochial aspect to Boston. That strong tug of place was one of the themes I wanted to work with, the way environment influences what somebody becomes, that and children paying for the sins of their parents.”
— Ben Affleck (born 1972), American movie actor, director and producer. Born in Berkeley, Calif., he grew up in Cambridge, Mass.
My ‘stark vulnerabilty’
Work by Andy Moerlein at Boston Sculptors Gallery. He’s based in Maynard, Mass.
He says:
“Men are always expected to be ‘Age Defying Superheros.’
”As I add years to my very physical life, I am finding my limitations creeping inward ever so slowly. As a sculptor of large work, my pieces demand a wearing and persistent physicality. In my art I confront ideas and challenge different media – using my stamina and strength, my mind and memories.
”As I contemplate the endless and seemingly pointless things I do as an artist – as I meander around and try to process what I am experiencing. As I work to understand myself in relationship with the greater world around me, it seems the goal posts are always moving. A toil without end. Yet I relish the work. Perhaps as much as my results. It is a joy to work with my hands and mind every day.
”As maturity becomes evident, and those about me age and die, I am confronting a stark vulnerability that I have lived my life rather oblivious to.
“Frankly, at the start of this exploration, I struggled with my own modesty. I drew in masks and settled on clay reliefs as a medium. As I needed better renderings, I shot self-portraits. When I needed impossible positions, I collaged photocopies together. Through the hours of work, I became immune to my self exposure. My collages became more than references and I recognized them as works on their own.’’
Maynard in 1879, at the height of the Industrial Revolution.
But you get used to it
“Cold Morning” (1951), by Francis P. Colburn (1909-1984) at the Fleming Museum of Art, at the University of Vermont, in Burlington. He was a native of Fairfax, Vt.
A house in Fairfax during winter
— Photo by Doug Kerr
James T. Brett: A plea for ‘civilizing speech’ in 2024
Regions of New England 1. Northwest Vermont 2. Northeast Kingdom 3. Central Vermont 4. Southern Vermont 5. Great North Woods Region 6. White Mountains 7. Lakes Region 8. Dartmouth/Lake Sunapee Region 9. Seacoast Region 10. Merrimack River Valley 11. Monadnock Region 12. North Woods 13. Maine Highlands 14. Acadia/Down East 15. Mid-Coast/Penobscot Bay 16. South Coast 17. Mountain and Lakes Region 18. Kennebec Valley 19. North Shore 20. Metro Boston 21. South Shore 22. Cape Cod and Islands 23. South Coast 24. Southeastern Massachusetts 25. Blackstone River Valley 26. Metrowest/Greater Boston 27. Central Massachusetts 28. Pioneer Valley 29. The Berkshires 30. South Country 31. East Bay and Newport 32. Quiet Corner 33. Greater Hartford 34. Central Naugatuck Valley 35. Northwest Hills 36. Southeastern Connecticut/Greater New London 37. Western Connecticut 38. Connecticut Shoreline
At the close of 2023, a pollster quipped that the state of our union resembled “mourning in America”… a sober sentiment about a turbulent year filled with relentless challenges and grievous perils as close as debates and disputes in our local communities… and as far away and yet as inextricably linked as the ongoing tragic upheavals in distant lands.
I would never turn my back on the past -- as we turn the pages of the calendar year -- for our past will always define, inform, and determine our future … the future that we will to need to face and address with renewed conviction, but also with a resolve that seeks to both break down walls and unwind the dispiriting display of uncivil discourse.
But the present moment – this new year – offers us an opportunity to start anew, to amend, to actually “look with eyes that see”. To soften the heart…to sharpen both the mind and the pencil, and to fix what is broken. To work to deepen the dialogue, to dial back the divisive rhetoric, to break down the walls of “us” and “them”.
What “we the people” need is civilizing speech for that is what makes us most human. What makes us most civil begins with respectful, open-minded listening – in our places of both labor and leisure. Offering our better selves… our “better angels” … in thoughtful and thought-filled communities where attentive deliberations can help us clarify what is important to us as moral beings as we renavigate our very differences. I know the tasks at-hand are many…and complex, often difficult, but vitally important. I know too that my and our efforts won’t always succeed, but I also know we cannot stand aside.
For all my years invested in such fine company kept at the New England Council, within the charitable organizations of our states, with our legislative bodies, and powerfully and poignantly for me in my faith community, I have received such bountiful blessings, made such special friends, and have had my belief that we are “stronger together” affirmed many times over. The work of the spirit and the will of good citizens can come together to produce revelatory miracles and great surprises.
On into the new year with renewed hope and optimism.
James T. Brett is president and chief executive of The New England Council, based in Boston.
The unofficial flag of New England.
‘The burden of a year'
“Father Time and Baby,’’ 1909
What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.
‘‘The Year,’’ by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919). She spent much of her adult years living in Branford, Conn.
Branford Town Hall
— Photo by Kenneth Zirkel
Mountain marvels
The late lamented gondolas at Wildcat Mountain, in New Hampshire. Working from 1958-1998, they were the first ski area gondolas in the United States. They were replaced by a high-speed chair-lift system.
“Mount Lafayette in Winter” (1870), by Thomas Hill (1829-1908). The mountain, at 5,249 feet, is the highest peak in New Hampshire’s Franconia Range.
Thin religiosity and archaic roads
On a typically narrow Boston road — Hull Street. From left to right: the Skinny House, the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge and the Copp's Hill Burying Ground. The Skinny House, built soon after the Civil War, is reportedly the most narrow in Boston, and is said to have been built to spite the neighbors.
“Even after thirty years, I still think New Englanders sound funny, that they expect too much of the Red Sox, that their religiosity is more procedural than deeply felt, and that their highways are built with the conviction that automobiles could not possibly replace the horse-drawn buggy, and therefore need not be wide, permanent, or especially well-designed.’’
-- C. Michael Curtis (1934-2023) in New England Stories (1992). A New York City native, he was the long-time fiction editor of The Atlantic (magazine ), which was based in Boston from its founding, in 1857, until it was moved to Washington, D.C., in 2006
First Unitarian Church of Providence.
‘Light, space and poetry’
“Quarry Winter” (oil on linen), by Thomas Torak, at Helmholz Fine Art, Manchester, Vt.
He says:
“Luminosity, atmosphere, poetry, craftsmanship, joy, life. These are the cast of characters in my paintings. Most artists use light, color and design to express what they want to say about the objects in their paintings, I do just the opposite in my work. I use subject matter, apples, flowers, trees, mountains, portraits and nudes to explore the possibilities of light and space and poetry. Some artists paint in prose, some paint in poetry. There are artists who feel the more details they paint, the more accurately they describe something, the more successful their painting will be. Others, like myself, prefer to express things in the most elegant way possible.’’
Marble quarry in Dorset, Vt.
Woodbury Granite Co, around 1900.
Rock of Ages granite quarry in Graniteville, Vt.
— Photo by Mfwills
Chris Powell: Criminal convictions shouldn’t be a secret
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut law is full of mistaken premises, and more will be added in January when the criminal records of an estimated 80,000 people will be privatized -- not exactly erased but removed from public access under what is being called the “clean slate” law. The records involve convictions for misdemeanors more than seven years old and "low-level" felonies more than 10 years old committed by people not convicted of anything since.
The rationale for the new law is, first, that it's not fair that old convictions should be known, and, second, that public knowledge of convictions is a huge impediment to people seeking housing and employment.
But why shouldn't convictions be impediments to getting housing and jobs?
Since most criminal charges are substantially discounted in plea bargaining to avoid trials, most people who have been convicted have already received extra consideration from the government. So what is fair about eliminating all trace of their discounted offenses?
What is fair about depriving landlords and employers of basic information about people for whom they may become responsible?
What is fair about keeping people ignorant of what their government has done?
Of course, society also has an interest in having everyone honestly employed. But people have to compete for jobs and housing, so why shouldn't people who have not committed crimes have an advantage over former offenders? Why shouldn't former offenders have to try harder to show they are worthy of trust?
Criminal convictions are not the biggest impediment to finding housing these days. The biggest impediment is the sharply rising price of housing that results from general inflation and the general scarcity worsened by municipal zoning. Connecticut is said to need at least 90,000 more housing units for its current population. If the state suddenly had another 390,000 units, rents would be much lower and landlords wouldn't be so picky about tenants. Eliminating public access to conviction records will not build more housing.
Criminal convictions are probably not the biggest impediment to obtaining jobs either.
Gov. Ned Lamont himself hinted as much this month when he announced that the "clean slate" law would take effect in January. The governor noted that Connecticut has a labor shortage and "desperately" needs former offenders in the workforce. The worse the shortage of labor, the more that employers will be willing to overlook old convictions, if former offenders can demonstrate their ability to do the job -- and ability to do the job is almost certainly the biggest impediment to employment for former offenders.
Lack of a good upbringing, education, and job skills push people toward crime, and Connecticut, with a welfare system based on destroying families and a school system based on social promotion, is full of people who lack what they need to support themselves. Indeed, if one's education and job skills are strong enough, even the worst offenses may be readily forgiven.
Such is the lesson of the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the first hero of the United States space program.
Von Braun's career during World War II was with the Nazi government of Germany. He designed the infamous V-2 rocket bomb, became a major in the criminal SS military force, and was awarded the Iron Cross by Adolf Hitler himself. (Years later a biography of von Braun was titled "I Aim at the Stars," prompting the American comedian Mort Sahl to say it should have been subtitled "But I Sometimes Hit London.")
Nevertheless the U.S. government hired von Braun as soon as the war ended. His rocketry skills overcame any concern about his record as a Nazi criminal mastermind.
Instead of presuming that erasing criminal records will somehow qualify people for housing and jobs, state government should provide a year or so of paid employment, basic medical insurance, and rudimentary housing for former offenders who are not yet able to support themselves, allowing them to build the creditable record everyone needs to gain employment and housing.
Better still, state government should fix the failures of its welfare and education systems.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net).\