Invasive species are crowding out New England’s native species
An Asian shore crab
Multiflora rose
Text excerpted from an ecoRI News article by Frank Carini
“Invasive Asian shore crabs are outcompeting young lobsters. Invasive snake worms and hammerhead worms are burying themselves deeper into southern New England, where the former consumes the top layer of soil and dead leaves where the seeds of plants germinate, and the latter is toxic and transmits harmful parasites to humans and animals.
“Invasive multiflora rose and oriental bittersweet have long been embedded in the region, crowding out native vegetation and strangling trees. Some Rhode Island nurseries and garden centers still sell foreign species that don’t mix well with local flora and fauna.
“The spread of invasive species has long been recognized as a global threat to the environment, the economy, and people. Last summer, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) for the United Nations issued a global assessment providing clear evidence of this growing threat.’’
Julie Appleby: Mass. company settles criminal case against it for lead-test malfunction coverup
Children living in such old urban dwellings as these three deckers in Cambridge, Mass., tend to have higher levels of lead exposure than average.
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
A company that makes tests for lead poisoning has agreed to resolve criminal charges that it concealed for years a malfunction that resulted in inaccurately low results.
It’s the latest in a long-running saga involving North Billerica, Mass.-based Magellan Diagnostics, which will pay $42 million in penalties, according to the Department of Justice.
While many of the fault-prone devices were used from 2013 to 2017, some were being recalled as late as 2021. The Justice Department said the malfunction produced inaccurate results for “potentially tens of thousands” of children and other patients.
Doctors don’t consider any level of lead in the blood to be safe, especially for children. Several U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., and Flint, Michigan, have struggled with widespread lead contamination of their water supplies in the last two decades, making accurate tests critical for public health.
It’s possible faulty Magellan kits were used to test children for lead exposure into the early 2020s, based on the recall in 2021. Here’s what parents should know.
What tests were affected?
The inaccurate results came from three Magellan devices: LeadCare Ultra, LeadCare II, and LeadCare Plus. One, the LeadCare II, uses finger-stick samples primarily and accounted for more than half of all blood lead tests conducted in the U.S. from 2013 to 2017, according to the Justice Department. It was often used in physician offices to check children’s lead levels.
The other two could also be used with blood drawn from a vein and may have been more common in labs than doctor’s offices. The company “first learned that a malfunction in its LeadCare Ultra device could cause inaccurate lead test results – specifically, lead test results that were falsely low” in June 2013 while seeking regulatory clearance to sell the product, the DOJ said. But it did not disclose that information and went on to market the tests, according to the settlement.
The agency said 2013 testing indicated the same flaw affected the LeadCare II device. A 2021 recall included most of all three types of test kits distributed since October 27, 2020.
The company said in a press release announcing the resolution that “the underlying issues that affected the results of some of Magellan’s products from 2013 to 2018 have been fully and effectively remediated,” and that the tests it currently sells are safe.
What does a falsely low result mean?
Children are often tested during pediatrician visits at age 1 and again at age 2. Elevated lead levels can put kids at risk of developmental delay, lower IQ, and other problems. And symptoms, such as stomachache, poor appetite, or irritability, may not appear until high levels are reached.
Falsely low test results could mean parents and physicians were unaware of the problem.
That’s a concern because treatment for lead poisoning is, initially, mainly preventive. Results showing elevated levels should prompt parents and health officials to determine the sources of lead and take steps to prevent continued lead intake, said Janine Kerr, health educator with the Virginia Department of Health’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.
Children can be exposed to lead in a variety of ways, including by drinking water contaminated with lead from old pipes, such as in Flint and Washington; ingesting lead-based paint flakes often found in older homes; or, as reported recently, eating some brands of cinnamon-flavored applesauce.
What should parents do now?
“Parents can contact their child’s pediatrician to determine if their child had a blood lead test with a LeadCare device” and discuss whether a repeat blood lead test is needed, said Maida Galvez, a pediatrician and professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
During an earlier recall of some Magellan devices, in 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that patients be retested if they were pregnant, nursing, or children younger than 6 and had a blood lead level of less than 10 micrograms per deciliter as determined by a Magellan device from a venous blood draw.
The 2021 recall of Magellan devices recommended retesting children whose results were less than the current CDC reference level of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. Many of those tests were of the finger-stick variety.
Kerr, at the Virginia health department, said her agency has not had many calls about that recall.
The finger-stick tests “are not that widely used in Virginia,” said Kerr, adding that “we did get a lot of questions about the applesauce recall.”
In any case, she said, the “best course of action for parents is to talk with a health care provider.”
Julie Appleby is a KFF Health News reporter.
You’ll need it
Work by American conceptional artist Michael C. Thorpe, in his current show, “Homeowners’ Insurance,’’ at the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Mass.
The museum says:
“‘Michael C. Thorpe: Homeowners Insurance’ presents some of his quilt-based work. The 15 forms on view illustrate Thorpe’s distinct visual language known for its geometric shapes, colorful textures, and energetic stitching. A true storyteller, Thorpe shares his world through his expressions—his friends and family, inspirational figures, daily surroundings, athletic endeavors, even painterly abstractions and meaningful texts. By depicting harmonious narratives, Thorpe aims to inspire connection between people from all walks of life.’’
Cozy space for youth
“I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house, the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.’’
— Gary Shteyngart (born 1972), Soviet-born) American writer
DEI drive at some colleges can lead to dishonesty by job applicants
The MIT Media Lab, in Cambridge, Mass.
— Photo by Madcoverboy
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The right wing greatly exaggerates the degree of “wokeness” in U.S. higher education, but there’s no doubt that the anxious, hyper-self-conscious drive to achieve “diversity, equity and inclusion’’ has gotten out of control at some institutions. The Washington Post gave a couple of examples in a recent editorial. They show an alarming focus on characterizing people on the basis of their ethnic, sexual and other identity and/or their (real or fabricated) views on identity rather than on individuals’ intellectual achievements and ambitions.
It cited the MIT Communication Lab, which demanded that job applicants submit a diversity statement as an “opportunity to show that you care about the inclusion of many forms of identity in academia and in your field, including but not limited to gender, race/ethnicity, age, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, and ability status,” and “it may be appropriate to acknowledge aspects of your own marginalized identity and/or your own privilege.” The Post also cited Harvard University’s Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, which asks applicants, “Do you seek to identify and mitigate how inequitable and colonial social systems are reinforced in the academy by attending to and adjusting the power dynamics in your courses?”
In other words, people are asked to take what are basically political stands when the emphasis in academia should presumably be to hire people on the basis of their knowledge of their specialties, their ability to teach undergraduate and graduate students, their potential to undertake important peer-reviewed research and their integrity.
Of course, the intense competition for academic jobs, especially at elite institutions, will lead some candidates to lie about their views of DEI-related matters.
Here’s some related material on this issue.
Fair or not, DEI programs, along with such unworkable programs as “reparations” to Black Americans for slavery, and referring to a person as “they’’ in order to sound “gender-neutral” are potent ammunition for Trumpers.
The terror of making art
“The Pressure of the Blank Canvas,’’ by Duncan Reid, at SONO Arts Space at Norwood (Mass.) Arts Center June 16.
The astonishing Norwood Memorial Municipal Building.
— Photo Daniel P. B. Smith
They eat seaweed too
“Goats of Bass Harbor” (acrylic on canvas), by Maine-based painter and filmmaker Sharyn Paul Brusie, at Yarmouth, (Maine) Frame and Gallery.
Bass Harbor, Maine
— Photo (via drone) by King of Hearts
Chris Powell: Silly anti- ‘climate change’ drives in Vermont and Connecticut
MANCHESTER, Conn.
While it may be hard to believe, Vermont seems to have gotten ahead of Connecticut in "climate change" craziness.
The Green Mountain State has just passed a law allowing itself to charge big oil and natural gas companies for the cost to the state of the "greenhouse gases" emitted by use of the fuel sold by the companies between 1995 and 2024. The state itself will choose the criteria for calculating the cost. Mainly Vermont wants to blame the oil and gas companies for the extensive damage done in the state last year by terrible flooding.
Under the new law it won't matter that the fuel products on which "climate change" is being blamed were and remain not just perfectly legal but also crucial to modern civilization. No matter also that nearly everyone in Vermont has been using those products ever since they became available. Vermont wants to blame the manufacturers of the fuel products, not their users, the people for whom those products were made -- the people without whose demand the products wouldn't have been made at all.
Indeed, the mere manufacture of fuel didn't emit the "greenhouse gases" Vermont is complaining about. The use of them did.
Like all other states, Vermont already has a fuel tax. If the state wants to recover what it believes are its costs of the "climate change" caused by use fuel, it can raise that tax and get the money from the parties responsible for their use: its own residents. And if the state really believes that "climate change" disasters are being caused by the use of oil and gas, Vermont already should have outlawed those fuels.
Of course the legislators who passed the law don't really believe its premises. The new law is just a money grab that, if ever implemented, will be nullified in one court or another after years of expensive litigation. But until then legislators who voted for the law will pose as saviors of the environment.
Meanwhile Connecticut's climate alarmists want Gov. Ned Lamont and leaders of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly to put "climate crisis" legislation on the agenda of a special legislative session that is to be called to make a fix in motor vehicle assessment law, a special session that was supposed to be brief.
The "climate crisis" bill at issue passed the House of Representatives during the recent regular session but was stalled by some of the majority Democrats in the Senate who thought that it was more important to guard against climate change by modifying municipal zoning. (The Senate's Republican minority almost certainly would have opposed the "climate crisis" bill, as the Republican minority in the House did.)
After declaring a "climate crisis," the bill would just specify options for reducing "greenhouse gases" by 2050 -- safely beyond the political lifespans of most current legislators. Actual sacrifices would await another day.
Whatever one thinks of "climate change" and its causes -- natural phenomena or manmade phenomena arising only in recent decades -- the "climate crisis" legislation is silly. For even if "climate change" is substantially the result of the use of oil, gas and coal as fuel, Connecticut can do nothing meaningful about it.
The state could outlaw those fuels and shut down all its industry requiring a smokestack and all its transportation requiring a tailpipe and the rest of the country and the rest of the world would continue to use those fuels. Since Connecticut's contribution to the world's "greenhouse gases" is tiny, the state would only disadvantage itself without achieving any measurable reduction in those gases.
Even a national policy of eliminating oil, gas and coal as fuel would have little impact on "greenhouse gases" worldwide, since the developing world, including industrial giant China, will continue to use those fuels until something better comes along. Only a worldwide solution is worth pursuing -- if there really is a problem to solve.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Nervous gay times on lower Washington Street
Washington Street in the 1920’s.
Excerpted from From The Boston Guardian
(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
“Before the Combat Zone, lower Washington Street was Gay Times Square, a mecca of bright lights, entertainment and a tolerance for life beyond the societal norms of heterosexuality….
“Prior to being plagued with strip joints with names like The Naked i Cabaret and the Pussycat Lounge, the neighborhood was home to Playland, the Petty Lounge and Touraine Cafe. The gathering places drew an LGBTQ crowd, while the local theaters, such as the Stuart Theater and the Pilgrim, created a show-business atmosphere that New York’s Times Square is known for.
“Many of the bar owners in the area often used bribery or connections with organized crime to keep police from raiding their establishments, according to research from The History Project, a Boston-based LGBTQ history organization.
“In the 1950s and 1960s, threats of persecution and prosecution kept the LGBTQ community underground, making many of the bars on Washington Street appealing….”
But I won't ask
Work by Barbara Kruger, in her show, through Dec. 1, at the Hall Art Foundation, Reading , Vt. She’s an American conceptual artist and collagist.
Jenne Farm, in Reading. It’s one of the most photographed farms in the world.
Llewellyn King: Tech giants want in on electricity
Centralized (left) vs. distributed electricity systems
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
During the desperate days of the energy crisis in the 1970s, it looked as though the shortage was permanent and we would have to change the way we lived, worked and played to allow for that.
In the end, technology solved the crisis.
For fossil fuels, it was 3D seismic, horizontal drilling and fracking. For electricity, it was wind and solar and better technology for making electricity with natural gas — a swing from burning it under boilers to burning it in aeroderivative turbines, essentially airplane engines on the ground.
A new energy shortage — this time confined to electricity — is in the making and there are a lot of people who think that, magically, the big tech companies, headed by Alphabet’s Google, will jump in and use their tech muscle to solve the crisis.
The fact is that the tech giants, including Google but also Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Meta, are extremely interested in electricity because they depend on it supplies of it to their voracious data centers. The demand for electricity will increase exponentially as AI takes hold, according to many experts.
The tech giants are well aware of this and have been busy as collaborators and at times innovators in the electric space. They want to ensure an adequate supply of electricity, but also they insist that it be green and carbon-free.
Google has been a player in the energy field for some time with its Nest Renew service. This year, it stepped up its participation by merging with OhmConnect to form Renew Home. It is what its president, Ben Brown, and others call a virtual power plant (VPP). These are favored by environmentalists and utilities.
A VPP collects or saves energy from the system without requiring additional generation. It can be hooking up solar panels and domestic batteries, or plugging in and reversing the flow from an electric vehicle (EV) at night.
For Renew Home, the emphasis is definitely in the home, Brown told me in an interview.
Participants, for cash or other incentives (like rebates), cut their home consumption, managed by a smart meter, so that air conditioning can be put up a few notches, washing machines are turned off, and an EV can be reversed to feed the grid.
At present, Brown said, Renew Home controls about 3 gigawatts of residential energy use — a gigawatt is sometimes described as enough electricity to power San Francisco — and plans to expand that to 50 GW by 2030. All of it is already in the system and doesn't require new lines, power plants or infrastructure.
“We are hooking up millions of customers,” he said, adding that Renew Home is cooperating with 100 utilities.
Fortunately, peak demand and the ability to save on home consumption coincide between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.
There is no question that more electricity will be needed as the nation electrifies its transportation and its manufacturing — and especially as AI takes hold across the board.
Todd Snitchler, president of the Electric Power Supply Association, told the annual meeting of the United States Energy Association that a web search using ChatGPT uses nine times as much power as a routine Google search.
Google, and the other four tech giants, are in the electricity-supply space, but not in the way people expect. Renew Home is an example; although Google’s name isn’t directly connected, it is the driving force behind Renew Home.
Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), a development fund, financed largely by Google, has invested $100 million in Renew Home. Brown is a former Google executive as is Jonathan Winer, co-CEO and cofounder of SIP.
As Jim Robb, president of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the congressionally mandated, not-for-profit supply watchdog, told me recently on the TV show White House Chronicle, the expectation that Google will go out and build power plants is silly as they would face the same hurdles that electric utilities already face.
But Google is keenly interested in power supply, as are the other tech behemoths. The Economist reports they are talking to utilities and plant operators about partnering on new capacity.
Also, they are showing an interest in small modular reactors and are working with entrepreneurial power providers on building new capacity with the tech company taking the risk. Microsoft has signed a power-purchase agreement with Helion Energy, a fusion power developer.
Big tech is on the move in the electric space. It may even pull nuclear across the finish line.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Waiting for a friend
“Milo” (digital photograph, digital print), by Navid Abedzadeh, at Cambridge Art Association.
Two Connecticuts
“I lived in a town called New Canaan {Conn.}, which is far too snobby to even mention celebrities. Many American towns are famous for things like ‘See the World’s Largest Ball of String.’ I think my town’s would probably have to be ‘Most Pretentious People.”’
-- Katherine Heigl (born 1978), American actress
Skyline of Norwich, Conn.
“Eastern Connecticut is very different from western.; we’re more liverwurst than pate, more bowling than polo.’’
— Wally Lamb (born 1950), American novelist and native of the old industrial town of Norwich, Conn.
The New England Aquarium and the blue economy
The New England Aquarium’s plaza, in a 2017 photo.
— Photo by Beyond My Ken
Edited from a New England Council report
BOSTON
“The New England Aquarium is using its family-oriented reputation to educate and help grow the blue economy. This multi-pronged approach brings together big names from the industry, young and small startups and businesses, and academic experts.
‘‘The first initiative involves industry and the market working with the aquarium’s BalanceBlue lab to help promote sustainable ocean use, from improved fishing practices and carbon removal innovations. ‘You can’t have a climate conversation without the ocean. All the programs come together to think about how we are going to create new pathways to promote responsible ocean use,’ said Emiley Lockhart, the aquarium’s associate vice president for ocean sustainability.
“The BalanceBlue lab includes the bluetech incubator BlueSwell, which helps startups working on both ocean sustainability and the marine economy. BlueSwell has helped four startups receive funding and mentorship since 2020. An additional part of the BalanceBlue umbrella is the UpSwell program, which runs in collaboration with SeaAhead and is publishing a series of webinars and papers about ocean tech. According to Lockhart, the blue economy will be expanding rapidly, and he believes that ocean-derived technology will be an important part of that growth, with the New England Aquarium leading that growth.’’
Tangled web
“Spring Peepers” (oil on canvas), by Kathy Hodge, in the show “Complex World: Paintings by Kathy Hodge and Nick Paciorek,’’ at the Providence Art Club through June 28.
The gallery says:
“Hodge’s wild and tangled vegetation of New England and Paciorek’s colorful celebration of the bounty of vineyards reveal the hidden order within the apparent chaos of the natural world.’’
“Southern France Vineyard ‘‘ (oil on canvas), by Nick Paciorek.
Complex water view
“Parhelion, Full Flower Moon,’’ by Maine-based art photographer Linda Mahoney, in the group show “Lens Remembrance,’’ a collection of the work of Maine and New Hampshire artists using photography as an art form, at the Lakes Gallery at Chi-Lin, Laconia, N.H., June 6-July 21
Jhordanne Jones: The science behind this year’s menacing hurricane-season forecast
The Edgewood Yacht Club, in Cranston, R.I., ravaged by Hurricane Carol’s storm surge, on Aug. 31, 1954.
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1, and forecasters are predicting an exceptionally active season.
If the National Hurricane Center’s early forecast, released May 23, is right, the North Atlantic could see 17 to 25 named storms, eight to 13 hurricanes, and four to seven major hurricanes by the end of November. That’s the highest number of named storms in any NOAA preseason forecast.
Other forecasts for the season have been just as intense. Colorado State University’s early outlook, released in April, predicted an average of 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes and five major hurricanes. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts anticipates 21 named storms.
Colorado State also forecasts a whopping 210 accumulated cyclone energy units for 2024, and NOAA forecasts the second-highest ACE on record. Accumulated cyclone energy is a score for how active a given season is by combining intensity and duration of all storms occurring within a given season. Anything over 103 is considered above normal.
These outlooks place the 2024 season in league with 2020, when so many tropical cyclones formed in the Atlantic that they exhausted the usual list of storm names: A record 30 named storms, 13 hurricanes and six major hurricanes formed that year, combining for 245 accumulated cyclone energy units.
So, what makes for a highly active Atlantic hurricane season?
I am a climate scientist who has worked on seasonal hurricane outlooks and examined how climate change affects our ability to predict hurricanes. Forecasters and climatologists look for two main clues when assessing the risks from upcoming Atlantic hurricane seasons: a warm tropical Atlantic Ocean and a cool tropical eastern Pacific Ocean.
Warm Atlantic water can fuel hurricanes
During the summer, the Atlantic Ocean warms up, resulting in generally favorable conditions for hurricanes to form.
Warm ocean surface water – about 79 degrees Fahrenheit (26 degrees Celsius) and above – provides increasing heat energy, or latent heat, that is released through evaporation. That latent heat triggers an upward motion, helping form clusters of storm clouds and the rotating circulation that can bring these storm together to form rainbands around a vortex.
How hurricanes form. NOAA
Ocean heat in 2024 is a big reason why forecasters are warning of a busy hurricane season.
The North Atlantic sea surface temperature has been shattering heat records for most of the past year, so temperatures are starting out high already and are expected to remain high during the summer. Globally, ocean temperatures have been rising as the planet warms.
A long-term temperature pattern known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO, also comes into play. The summer Atlantic ocean surface can be warmer or cooler than usual for several seasons in a row, sometimes lasing decades.
Climate patterns associated with the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO. NOAA Climate.gov
Warm phases of the AMO mean more energy for hurricanes, while cold phases help suppress hurricane activity by increasing trade wind strength and vertical wind shear. The Atlantic Ocean has been in a warm phase AMO since 1995, which has coincided with an era of highly active Atlantic hurricane seasons.
How the Pacific can interfere with Atlantic storms
It might seem odd to look to the Pacific for clues about Atlantic hurricanes, but Pacific Ocean temperatures also play an important role in the winds that can affect hurricanes.
Like the Atlantic, water temperatures in the eastern Pacific oscillate between warm and cold phases, but on shorter time spans. Scientists call this the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. The warm phases are known as El Niño; cold phases are called La Niña.
La Niña promotes the upward motion of air over the Atlantic, which fuels deeper rain clouds and more intense rainfall.
During La Niña, the Atlantic is stormier as warm air rises there. Fiona Martin, NOAA Climate.gov
During El Niño, more storms form off California as warm air rises over the warmer waters of the eastern Pacific. Fiona Martin, NOAA Climate.gov
La Niña’s effects also weaken the trade winds, reducing vertical wind shear. Vertical wind shear, a difference in wind strength and direction between the upper atmosphere and the atmosphere near Earth’s surface, makes it harder for hurricanes to form and can pull apart a storm’s vortex.
In contrast, El Niño promotes stronger trade winds, increasing wind shear. It also centers the upward motion and rainfall in the Pacific, triggering a downward motion that promotes fair weather over the Atlantic.
The map shows recent temperatures compared with the 1971-2000 average. In the eastern Pacific, the cooler water along the equator suggests El Niño is ending. Climate Reanalyzer, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine
El Niño was strong during the winter of 2023-24, but it was expected to dissipate by June, meaning less wind shear to keep hurricanes in check. La Niña conditions are likely by late summer.
Where ENSO is in its transition may determine how early in the season tropical storms form – and how late. A quick transition to La Niña may indicate an early start to the season as well as a longer season, as La Niña – along with a warm Atlantic – maintains a hurricane-friendly environment earlier and longer within the year.
This ocean tag team controls hurricane activity
The Atlantic and eastern Pacific ocean temperatures together control Atlantic hurricane activity. This is like bouncing in a bounce house or on a trampoline. You get a good bounce when you’re jumping on your own but reach far greater heights when you have one or two more people jumping with you.
When the eastern Pacific is in its cold phase (La Niña) and the Atlantic waters are warm, Atlantic hurricane activity tends to be more frequent, with a higher likelihood of more intense and longer-lived storms.
The record 2020 hurricane season had the influence of both La Niña and high Atlantic ocean temperatures, and that’s what forecasters expect to see in 2024.
It is also important to remember that storms can also intensify under moderately unfavorable environments as long as there is a warm ocean to fuel them. For example, the storm that eventually became Hurricane Dorian in 2019 was surrounded by dry air as it headed into the Caribbean, but it rapidly intensified into an extremely destructive Category 5 hurricane over the Bahamas.
This article has been updated with NOAA officials describing the forecast as the highest number of storms it has ever forecast.
Jhordanne Jones is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Climate and Weather Extremes at Purdue University.
She completed her PhD in the Atmospheric Science Department at Colorado State University (CSU) and continues to collaborate with forecasters associated with CSU's seasonal hurricane outlook.
A state for small business
At Dan and Whit’s General Store, in Norwich, Vt.
“I represent a rural state and live in a small town. Small merchants make up the majority of Vermont's small businesses and thread our state together. It is the mom-and-pop grocers, farm-supply stores, coffee shops, bookstores and barber shops where Vermonters connect, conduct business and check in on one another.’’
Peter Welch (born 1947), U.S, senator from Vermont
Beyond the scandals
Mount Katahdin, in northern Maine.
“We were beyond fences, away from the clash of town-clocks, the clink of town-dollars, the hiss of town scandals. As soon as one is fairly in camp and has begun to eat with this fingers, he is free.’’
— Theodore Winthrop (1828-1861), in Life in the Open Air, an account of the author's adventures in northern Maine and the ascent of Mount Katahdin in the mid-19th Century. The Connecticut native, writer, lawyer and traveler was killed in the Civil War; this book was published posthumously.
The beauty of bugs
“In the Midnight Garden” (detail from “Wonder’’), by Jennifer Angus, in her show “Jennifer Angus: The Golden Hour,’’ at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn., June 6-Sept. 8.