Whitcomb: Theology and Catastrophe; Gasoline-Tax Idea Looks Sillier; Switch to Tents?

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

View Larger +

Robert Whitcomb, columnist

 

“You know a real friend? Someone you know {who} will look after your cat after you’re gone.’’

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

-- William S.  Burroughs (1914-1997), writer and visual artist and a major figure of the Beat Generation

 

xxx

 

The tremendous earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last week reminded me of the ruminations of the French writer, philosopher and historian Voltaire (1694-1778) on the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which undermined for many the belief, or at least the hope, that God cares about us, in this “best of all possible worlds.’’

 

Read his satirical work Candide, in part inspired by the Lisbon quake.

 

Or his poem, translated from the French, “On the Lisbon disaster; or an Examination of the Axiom, ‘All is Well’’’:

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth!

Affrighted gathering of human kind!

Eternal lingering of useless pain!

Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,”

And contemplate this ruin of a world.

Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,

This child and mother heaped in common wreck,

These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—

A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,

Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,

Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,

In racking torment end their stricken lives.

To those expiring murmurs of distress,

To that appalling spectacle of woe,

Will ye reply: “You do but illustrate

The iron laws that chain the will of God"?

Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:

‘’God is avenged: the wage of sin is death’’?

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived

That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?

Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice

Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?

 

 

View Larger +

PHOTO: file

My humble guess is that there is some sort of intelligent force (however you want to define intelligence) in the universe that we’ll never be able to understand. But I don’t see (yet) how it cares about us humans, individually or in the mass. (Of course, much of our hope in The Almighty is based on our  intense denial of death.)

 

This reminds me of a funny 1976 essay by the editor and writer Caskie Stinnett (1911-1998), in The Atlantic magazine, about his decision to leave New York to mostly live in Maine. The essay, “Farewell, My Unlovely,’’ ends:

 

“Above all, I want to get away from the indifference of New York. I want to care and—it sounds implausibly poignant—be cared about. New York doesn’t give a damn. It has seen thousands of us come and go,’’ as The Almighty has seen billions of us come and go.

 

Here’s Mr. Stinnett’s essay:

 

Anyway, the biggest questions, such as why is there something instead of nothing, will always be unanswerable by puny man.

 

As Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860),  the German philosopher, noted

     “The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.”

 

 

Speaking of intelligence,  framing questions to present to such artificial intelligence programs as ChatGPT so that they can most effectively write for us/teach us may become the most important white-collar job skill. Prepare for more damage to primary-source scholarship,  what’s left of professional journalism and truly creative, idiosyncratic writing, not to mention sabotage by tyrants and just plain criminals. Or not. But in any case, a high-speed revolution is upon us. Put on your helmets!

 

xxx

 

I wonder if the swift and extensive earthquake aid provided by America and some other Western countries might lead Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president/quasi-dictator of NATO member Turkey, to reduce his frequent sucking up to Russia and stop putting up barriers to Finland and Sweden in their bids to join NATO in order to better protect themselves from Vladimir Putin.

 

The catastrophe from the same quake in Syria was worsened by the deliberate destruction of hospitals there by the Russian military in support of Putin’s man Bashar Assad, the Syrian tyrant, in that country’s long civil war.

 

And in Turkey, building codes enacted to reduce earthquake damage were all too often ignored by corrupt builders and their enablers in government as the Erdogan regime did all it could to promote a construction boom.

 

xxx

 

View Larger +

MAP: file

The Chinese spy balloon, used to check out U.S. military bases, that we shot down Feb. 4 was almost comically big, visible to the naked eye from the ground and recalling The Moon in a small children’s book. So why weren’t similar Chinese spy balloons that moved over America during the Trump administration and early Biden administration identified?

 

I agree with Mackubin Owens, my fellow GoLocal scribe, that the Chinese may have been using the balloons, at least in part, to test the firmness of our reaction to these  brazen violations of our air space. Dictatorships often do such testing.

 

Hit this link to read the Owens piece on this:

 

 

View Larger +

Rhode Island continues to have the worst roads in America under Peter Alviti PHOTO: State of RI

Permanently Pause the ‘Pause’

The plan by Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee to “pause’’ a 3-cent-a-gallon increase in the state’s gasoline tax scheduled for July 1 looks more and more dubious. It would deprive the state of $25 million a year of much-needed transportation-infrastructure money while giving individual motorists (some of whom would be out-of-staters) minimal relief. And the pause would come after a federal judge blocked the state’s truck tolls program, which has been bringing in an estimated $40 million a year to spend on fixing the state’s notoriously bad roads and bridges.

 

Further, having the state’s general fund cover more of these transportation expenses would be unfair to the many Rhode Islanders who don’t drive. It seems only fair that those who use transportation infrastructure should pay a large share of the cost.

 

Meanwhile, as electric vehicles gradually replace gasoline-powered vehicles, what are the plans to make up the lost gasoline-tax revenue?

 

Who has the worst roads CLICK HERE:

 

 

View Larger +

PHOTO: File

Just Not Here, Redux

Everybody knows that we need more housing, but far too many groups fight building it even in places where it makes the most sense.

 

Consider how neighborhood groups in Braintree, Mass., are fighting a proposal by ZOM Living to put up 495 apartments on part of the aged  South Shore Plaza’s parking lots, which are now often much less than half filled even in prime shopping hours amidst the brick-and-mortar store implosion. The mall opened in 1961.

 

The idea is to turn the location into a vibrant mixed-use community on what is now wasted space. It’s in a densely populated area very close to Boston and is served by the MBTA. Further, the project would bring the town much-needed property-tax revenue, some of it as a result of new business at the surviving stores from people living in the new complex.

 

Braintree’s population grew by about 3,000, to about 39,000, between 2010 and 2020,  during which time the town only added 775 housing units, according to a town planning document.

 

But the housing plan has fervent foes, who say that they don’t want more traffic, though many of the apartments’ residents would take public transportation and do much of their shopping and other activities right there in the ZOM development. The foes also fear that it would crowd Braintree’s now-underfunded public schools, though the project could produce more money for the schools. There also seems to be concern that riff raff will occupy some of the apartments, rather than the allegedly respectable suburban folks who live in houses.

In any event, whether it’s solar arrays, wind turbines or much-needed housing, we need to use the ever increasing wasted space on mall parking lots.

Hit this link for the  aforementioned Braintree master plan:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfimmgghjdnbdlk/6.BraintreeMP_ExistingConditions_revised_092022_clean.pdf?dl=0

 

 

What’s next? Huge tent cities to house those who can’t afford to live under roofs?

If Blue States are to compete with Red ones in luring and keeping workers, they must put up much more housing to bring rental and purchase costs under control. The pull-up-the-bridge approach looks like a slow-motion economic disaster.

 

Unless artificial intelligence makes many of those workers redundant?

 

xxx

 

Another example of just how difficult it is to provide more housing as the population grows along with housing costs comes from the liberal (by Florida standards) college town of Gainesville, home of the flagship campus of the University of Florida.

 

There, Bloomberg City Lab reports, newly elected city commissioners voted to reverse a zoning plan that sought to increase housing supply. “That plan, passed by a lame duck city commission in August, had made Gainesville the first city in Florida to eliminate single-family only zoning citywide,’’ the news service reported, also saying:

 

View Larger +

PHOTO: File

“In Gainesville, upzoning single-family neighborhoods citywide to allow for duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes became a lightning rod for frustrations about rising costs and neighborhood change in the rapidly growing midsized city. The ordinances faced a great deal of backlash when they passed last year, but pro-housing groups and officials are surprised by how swiftly the reforms were undone.’’

 

The obsession with single-family housing,  supported by federal, state and local policies, especially promoted by groups representing the affluent and homebuilders, that go back many decades.

 

I wonder if advocating for the construction of very small apartment houses, with, say, four to nine apartments, amidst neighborhoods mostly composed of single-family houses, might be a partial way of overcoming local opposition to urgently needed new housing. We have some of these little apartment buildings in our neighborhood. Most seem to have been built in the 1920s, and no one complains about them. Indeed, they add a bit of charm and diversity to the local resident mix, especially regarding the age of residents.

 

Anyway, the BANA -- Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere – ideology reigns, as do variants of “Don’t tax you, Don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree,’’ a line attributed to Louisiana U.S. Sen. Russell Long (1918-2003).

Here’s Bloomberg’s Gainesville article:

 

 

Histrionic Music

All hail Dr. Ed Iannuccilli’s funny piece last week about attending and trying to survive a “dark comedy” musical called  Jagged Little Pill.

 

As with many musicals these days, this show’s pop/rock music is histrionic and some lyrics are incomprehensible amidst the caterwauling. The age of musicals with melody-rich music mated with witty,  resonant,  sometimes haunting, lyrics is pretty much dead, except for revivals. And most rock/pop music now is utterly forgettable, both the music, such as it is, and the tedious, banal, repetitive lyrics.

 

Obviously, with nonstop marketing, this stuff has massive, if fluid followings, and so some of these “artists” are making piles of money. But how many people will be listening to the current hits in 10 years, as opposed to how many people will still be listening to the Gershwins?

 

The Song Is Ended: Songwriters and American Music, 1900-1950, by William G. Hyland (1929-2008), is a good look at some of the creations in “The Great American Songbook,’’ which even some very young people like, sing and play. Mr. Hyland was a man of broad interests! Among other important positions, he was editor of the very influential journal Foreign Affairs, a presidential adviser and a CIA agent.

 

Thanks for the memory:

 

 

I make an exception in my whining for some of the rap songs, a few of which are memorably sharp.  The rap-rich musical Hamilton is brilliant, including as a much needed history lesson. And a lot of that  ‘60s rock packed a punch.

 

 

Hit this link for Dr. Iannuccilli’s essay:

 

 

Lovely, Especially Upright

Southern New England has a gorgeous collection of a wide variety of trees – an advantage of being in the temperate zone -- some almost fearsomely tall, and especially appreciated along our urban streets. They’re mood-elevators to look at and soothing to hear as the wind goes through their leaves. They clean the air while cooling us in the summer and buffer us a bit from cold winds in the winter. When they fall down, they provide wood to burn, from kindling to logs, and they’re homes to such charismatic creatures as squirrels, raccoons and colorful birds.


However,  as we discovered yet again when the so-called polar vortex blew through Feb. 3-4, they also present some excessive drama from time to time when part or all of a big tree falls on a nearby roof with a memorable crash, as we ourselves heard Feb. 4. Still, most of them are too life-affirming to cut down without regret, even if they’re a tad too close to your bedroom window.

 

There are lots of roads around here, especially along increasingly decrepit retail strips, that sure could use major tree-planting campaigns. One of the most depressing is Newport Avenue in East Providence and Pawtucket.

 

 

xxx

 

I suspect that if more people saw how cattle and pigs, our fellow mammals, are treated as they are raised and taken to be slaughtered, they’d stop eating meat, which is generally bad for you anyway. Pigs, by the way, are quite intelligent. And I wish that vegetarian dog and cat food would become the norm.

 

xxx

 

“’I’ve gotten so used to it, I’ve even brought guests up through the service entrance’, said Mr. Steiner, 54, who runs a fetish wear company {!} with his husband.’’

 

-- From a Feb. 5 New York Times article about managers of fancy Manhattan buildings forcing residents to use service entrances for their dogs. Is it painful to wear “fetish wear”? Or is that the point? And maybe there are too many dogs these days.

 

Hit this link:

 

 

View Larger +

KGB's Putin

Rising From the Rubble

How do people in defeated countries such as  Germany rise from the ruins around them and rebuild? And how many truly absorb the lessons of their past loyalty to an evil regime? Many of the answers are swimming in practical and moral ambiguity in Harald Jahner’s Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955.

 

(Some of the tales and atmosphere remind me of Vienna in the classic 1949 film noir The Third Man.)

 

This is a mix of broad descriptions of Germany, East and West, trying to heal and advance after the mass death and destruction initiated by Hitler, who was avidly obeyed by most of his compatriots for so long, and of individuals’ stories. We see women picking up the square miles of rubble in each bombed-out city,  traumatized German soldiers, millions of displaced persons, some from concentration camps and many others from homes seized from them after national boundaries were redrawn as the war ended, to black marketeers, to the technocrats who spawned West Germany’s “Economic Miracle” of the ‘50s.

 

We see the post-war renaissance of high, middle, and low culture, in music, the visual arts (West Germans embraced American Abstract Expressionism!) architecture and even furniture. Then there was the effect of the war’s trauma, and the new freedom that followed the defeat of the Nazis, on sexual and other relationships.

 

Willful amnesia and brazen lies about who did what during World War II, economic opportunism and even patches of idealism and altruism are expertly woven through this history of a nation awkwardly moving from a mass-murdering fascism toward freedom and democracy and a prosperity made possible, in a macabre way, by how much was destroyed by war.

 

With a homicidal fascism in the form of Putin’s Russia laying waste to much of Ukraine, a flawed democracy (as all democracies are), one can’t but think that there may be a few lessons in Jahner’s book for now -- for instance how to reuse materials from civilian buildings leveled by missiles and artillery.

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal,  and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.


 

Related Articles

 

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

 
 

Sign Up for the Daily Eblast

I want to follow on Twitter

I want to Like on Facebook