Better than violence

“Family Game Night” (mixed media: game boards and pieces, cards, dice, acrylic paint), by Kristi DiSalle, in the show “Playing Games,’’ through June 19 at ArtsWorcester, whose members were invited to “submit works of art that dive into games, play and interaction.’’ Ms. DiSalle lives in the affluent rural/exurban town of Princeton, Mass.

1872 ad for games created by the Milton Bradley Co., based in Springfield, Mass.

The Princeton., Mass., Public Library, built in 1883 in the heyday of stone-based Romanesque architecture made famous by the Boston-based architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

Straddling Princeton and Westminster, Mt. Wachusett, at 2,006 feet, is the highest mountain in Massachusetts east of the Connecticut and the largest ski area.

Loco in loco

Storefront on Wooster Street in New Haven. New Haven is well known for its pizza but Yale students have been ordered not to eat in the city’s restaurants at least until Feb. 7 in an example of stringent medical theater.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

This note from a Connecticut boarding school is a display of that fragmenting thing, for a multiethnic semi-democracy, of excessive identity politics:

“As we continue the important dialogue

among Taft's BIPOC {Black and Indigenous People of Color} alumni and students,

we hope you will join us virtually 

Thursday, January 13, 7pm EST

This event includes

Taft's Pan-Asian Affinity Group,

Mosaics (Black/LatinX Female Affinity Group),

Shades (Black/LatinX Male Affinity Group),

and Somos (LatX Affinity Group)’’

Education should be  almost entirely focused on people as individuals, not as members of groups.

In other academic craziness, Yale has told students, whom they have placed under a quarantine until Feb. 7, that they:

“{M}ay not visit New Haven businesses or eat at local restaurants (even outdoors) except for curbside pickup.”

Does the university plan to send the campus cops around the city to arrest resisters at their tables?\

Then we have Princeton University’s order:

“Beginning January 8 through mid-February, all undergraduate students who have returned to campus will not be permitted to travel outside of Mercer County or Plainsboro Township for personal reasons, except in extraordinary circumstances. … We’ll revisit and, if possible, revise this travel restriction by February 15.”

Will there be roadblocks at the county line?

This is ridiculous medical theater and lunatic in loco parentis that will have little or no effect on the spread of COVID, which is pretty much everywhere now anyway.

But it’s certainly a good way to create right-wingers.

Commuter rail for skiiers

This winter picture of (mighty?) Mt. Wachusett makes it seem considerably more impressive than it actually is: only 2,006 feet high. But this monadnock (a geological term for a single mountain on a relatively flat landscape -- named after southern New Hampshire's famed Mt. Monadnock) is impressive for its neighborhood.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's Dec. 22 "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com.

A special ski train now provides service to and from Boston’s North Station to Wachusett Mountain Ski Area, in Princeton, Mass.,  for a round-trip fare of $23; children under 12 ride free.  The ticket includes a free shuttle from the recently opened Wachusett Station, in Fitchburg, to the mountain.  What a nice idea: Bringing commuter rail service to skiing.

The trains have ski and snowboard racks.  For more information,  please see this page of the MBTA Web site:

http://www.mbta.com/riding_the_t/whats_new/?id=14107

More trains to more places in our tight little region, please. But at least New England has far more train service than most of this car-dependent country.