Here in “the Boston market,” as America’s corporate owners refer to parts of the country, we are now seeing a TV ad supporting the candidacy of US Rep. Seth Moulton in his bid to unseat Sen. Ed Markey, a progressive who has supported the Green New Deal, access to health care, voting rights, and a reasonable tax code.
As a constituent of and past voter for both Democrats, I receive their newsletters, including one from Moulton this morning which prompted the following reply:
Your TV ad with the doctor ridiculing Sen. Markey for being old is the most disgraceful, deceitful, distasteful ad I’ve ever seen. To give you an idea of how many ads that includes, I recall “I Like Ike!” Might as well be aimed at my entire generation. I wouldn’t vote for you if you ran against Jeffrey Epstein’s corpse. Not now, not ever, not for anything. Get my name off your mailing list.
When I posted that on Facebook, a comment soon arrived:
I know that if you remember the ‘I Like Ike’ ad then you remember the Willie Horton ad too. Moulton’s ad must have been really awful!
The year was 1988 when the Democrats nominated Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis for president. Willie Horton was a convict doing time for murder when some ill-considered weekend furlough program set him free. The result was another rape and murder. The George Bush (Senior) campaign’s ad made it seem like Dukakis himself singled out Horton for release, unlocked the prison door, held it open, and chirped “Happy weekend” as Horton danced away.
Years later, facts emerged that the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune distorted the case, giving the Bush campaign its premise to stoke racial anxiety and fear among white voters. For its effort at the time, the ET--my hometown paper, a paper I delivered when Ike was still golfing if not governing, and the first in which I ever published anything, an anti-war, anti-draft letter when I was still but 17!–won a Pulitzer Prize. That did not deter–may have actually encouraged–Ann Coulter from proclaiming about ten years back that Bush’s ad was “the greatest campaign ad in political history.”
I immediately reponded:
Thanks for the reminder. Now that I think of it, the Horton ad was in many respects worse. But I’ll stick with my call if only because, that attack, as distorted as it was, called attention to things that happened. Moulton’s ad is a slur against Markey for being old, and by logical extension against anyone for being old. Still, thanks for adding this!
Though I stood by my initial claim, the comment made me reconsider the Moulton ad. Before long I started to wonder how many others–not just my age, but of any generation who respect elderly people–would be just as repulsed. That led me to wonder if the ad may be the work of Markey supporters banking on reverse psychology.
Soon arrived an email from the Markey campaign, seeking donations. As you’d expect based on what I said above, I’ve recieved several of these in recent months, each of them outlining the senator’s position on issues as they arise, always with details to explain cause and effect and with options for what might be done next.
This morning’s mailing called for the removal of the cartoon character called Kash Patel from the FBI, but most consider pending legislation on all things threatened by an autocratic White-and-now-Gold House and a Congress paralyzed by Republicans who refuse to act: health care, the environment, voting rights, a reasonable corporate tax…
My doubt is dispelled. The Markey team has its eye on the prize. Team Moulton prizes itself.
I’ll let you know if I get a reply…
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Click of the mouse to the Newburyport Daily News for this pic of Moulton addressing a town hall meeting in Amesbury a few years ago. You might notice a familiar face right in the middle of it.
Here’s the first reaction to a social media post of the new sign on the Plum Island Turnpike, or “Causeway” if you prefer honest and accurate words:
What a joke…guess that’s where all your $ for donations went to saving that decrepit pink trash heap, congratulations, you got this dumb sign.
By my own measure, I suppose the narrow-minded assessment is at least partially correct: The sign is “dumb” because it doesn’t speak, not even if you go to the horrible, unconstitutional trouble of pressing one for English. And “decrepit” is a given when talking about a century old structure abandoned half a century ago.
Where the commenter veers over the bike lane, down the slope, and into the marsh, however, is by calling it a “trash heap.”
Could counter that assholessment with “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but why be superficial? Like most cliches and canned adages, it misses a much deeper meaning. And like most slurs, the comment reveals nothing about the intended subject, but everything about the person making it.
The Pink House, for many of its 100 years, certainly for its last few decades, was cherished by countless artists and photographers. As a resident of Plum Island since 1982, I’ve seen the license plates on vehicles pulled over by painters behind easels recreating the two-story house on canvas, or by photographers taking shots at various angles. They came from all over the US and Canada.
The old boathouse on Bearskin Neck in Rockport may be Massachusetts’ “Motif Number One,” but the Pink House here on the Newbury marsh was as close to a runner up as any. Too late now, but I wonder if the Honda Motor Company, had it been asked when it filmed the TV commercial, might have coughed up funds to save the Pink House–racing one way in the background while a Civic raced the other in the foreground–from demolition.
A comparison to Rockport is what makes the “trash heap” slur so unwittingly revealing of the man who made it. Would he also dismiss Rockport’s boathouse as “trash”? It is by definition “decrepit,” useless except for photos and paintings…
He does come closer to truth when he calls it a “joke.” Unfortunately, he applies it to the sign that is more than attractive, both elegant and forceful at the same time. Had he applied it to the placement of the sign, I’d have no choice but to agree with him.
In case you don’t know, or in case you’ve driven to Plum Island these past few days and wonder why you haven’t seen it, the sign has been placed parallel and very close to the road. Turned out that I myself had already driven past three or four times each way without ever seeing it. After seeing the picture, I went looking, and barely spotted it while driving by. I was as dumbfounded by the placement of the sign as I was awed by its picture.
Once home, I immediately zapped a message to a woman at the forefront of the effort to save the Pink House from demolition:
Very nice memorial, but why in the name of basic logic is it parallel to the road rather than facing traffic? Does someone want to limit the views to the few pedestrians & joggers on that long road? Even cyclists, keeping their eyes on a narrow bike lane, are likely to be going too fast to notice.
When she informed me that it “had to be placed on Town of Newbury land so that it would not be removed by FWS” (National Fish & Wildlife Service), I asked if the town’s strip was so narrow, the sign could not be turned sideways, or put higher up on a single stand.
She then referred me to the Town of Newbury whose call it was to accept and display the gift. On the Plum Island side of the bridge is a much larger “Welcome to…” sign, turned sideways so that people can actually see it. But I know not where the boundaries are between the town and the FWS, not any more than I apparently know of boundaries between bureaucratic decisions and common sense.
Knowing well the untiring effort over several years of so many people dedicated to the cause of saving the Pink House, I can understand the tendency to say that this is all quite nice and feel good about it, but something is wrong here. I’m not saying that it’s nefarious, but there has been, to use the kindest term I can think of, a serious lapse in judgement.
On a road with a 40 mph speed limit, whether we call it “turnpike” or “causeway,” if a sign does not face traffic, it may as well not be there. That’s why our troll is not entirely wrong when he calls it “a joke.”
When I heard very late one night that Martin Barre, Jethro Tull’s lead guitarist, had written a memoir, it took no more than that night’s sleep, a cup of coffee, and a short drive to the mainland before I was ordering a copy in Jabberwocky Bookshop.
This was this past November when A Trick of Memory was released in the United Kingdom where Tull first formed in 1967. Barre, son of a jazz musician in Birmingham, England’s second largest city, joined the group a year later and, after frontman/flautist Ian Anderson, was Tull’s only mainstay until it disbanded in 2014.
Reasons remain under wraps, which is why I, a veteran of about two dozen Tull concerts in seven states since 1970, am eager to see what Barre has to say, include it in a review, and post it on Jethro Tull fan pages on social media.
Paul, Jabberwocky’s mainstay clerk, put my order in, consulted a distributor’s website, and told me it was due to land in the USA at the end of January. They always call when a book arrives, but when the calendar turned to February, I went in to check. Some delay. A very small printing house. Later in the month, I was told. Since I’m at a coffeeshop right next door every Tuesday morning, I kept checking in.
By this time, I met Steve, another, newer clerk at Jabberwocky who recognized the name Martin Barre and lit up. A fellow Tull-Skull! He started tapping a laptop and was as disappointed as I that no news was to be had. But he did add one more copy to the order.
March came in like a lion but apparently left A Trick of Memory to a dodo bird who may yet need a few more months to touch down anywhere in North America. Friends started telling me I could get it within days if I clicked into eBay or Amazon, but I never renounced my citizenship in the United States of America for consumership in the Lazy States of Convenience. If it doesn’t come from brick and mortar, I don’t want it. If it’s available locally, from an independent business, I’ll always buy from people I can see and talk to.
A week into April, I wondered if I might learn something about the impasse on Martin Barre’s or Jethro Tull’s websites. Nothing. However, a cutesy notice for a Spanish distillery offering “Aqualung Scotch” and “Thick as a Brick Brandy” caught my attention. Yesterday morning, I was in Jabberwocky to tell Paul:
Their specialty is putting custom labels on bottles of vodka or gin or whatever you want. You could get ‘Paul’s Rum’ with your picture wearing an eye-patch and a parrot sitting on your shoulder!
His polite laughter did not hide his puzzlement: Why are you telling me this?
The homepage had a bright-colored notice across the top saying something like: Sales to the United States have been suspended due to the tariffs. We are working to negotiate lower prices.
Paul lit up: “That would explain what’s happening with this book.”
I asked if he noticed it with other books from Europe and the UK, and he said no, but also said that he wouldn’t notice it unless someone had an order in. Then I made the mistake of telling him something that he neither needed nor wanted to hear: “Meanwhile, copies of the book are being sold on eBay and by Amazon, undercutting you.”
His expression made me regret my lame attempt at sympathy as soon as it was out of my mouth: “That’s all Amazon does: Undercut small business.”
“And now they have help. Keep my order in! I won’t go to them.”
As I made my way home, the word “help” stuck in my mind like a key in an old lock. I turned it. All this time, I thought, as most others thought, that the tariffs were a tough-guy illusion to rile the base who could be counted on to somehow believe that the increased prices in American stores would be Biden’s fault.
Yes, it was that, but it was–and still is–more. The tariffs are help. From a corrupt autocrat to his billionaire donors to help their mega-corporations squeeze every dollar, every cent, every pound-of-flesh they can from the independent, local, neighborhood, and mom-and-pop small businesses we pretend to so proudly hail.
Call it a trick of democracy when run as big business here in the Lazy States of Convenience.
Reaction to yesterday’s tweet from the man who 30% of American adults voted to be our president–and whom another 39% tacitly approved by not bothering to vote at all–was based more on the significance of the date than on its content.
Oh, there’s no question that Easter Sunday is an odd time to threaten a country of 82 million people with Back-to-the-Stone-Age annihilation, to do it with an F-bomb, and end it with “Praise be to Allah.” But it sure begs the question of just when is the right time.
With a Secretary of Defense–who calls himself “Secretary of War”–openly calling for a Christian crusade in the Middle East and claiming, “God wills it,” it’s readily understandable how religious meanings are eclipsing political realities. That’s as true of those of us who oppose as of those who support or passively allow authoritarian rule.
Still pouring in, the shocked reaction to the Mob Boss’s Easter Tweet reminds me of a few weeks back when the former FBI Director who led the investigation into Russia’s influence in Mob Boss’s 2016 campaign, Robert Mueller, passed away. Even some Republicans–who still support him nevertheless–admitted they were “aghast” and “disgusted” by the tweet on his doubly Orwellian-named “Truth Social”:
Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!
For all of the religious reminders that we should not speak ill of the deceased, especially so soon after that last breath when families and loved ones are still in the deepest of grief. Off course, patience is not Mob Boss’s long suit; in fact, it seems entirely absent from the deck, which is clearly not even close to full.
And so the smear of Mueller–decorated veteran and life-long public servant–just comes and goes, much like that of John McCain, entirely wrapped in the warped amorality of a man whose main drive now appears to be creating monuments to himself.
Lost in the smear of Mueller is political reality: When Mueller finished his investigation in 2019, it was first submitted, by law, to Mob Boss’s Att’y General, William Barr. Before public release, Barr issued a two-page summary that, he claimed, was “complete exoneration” of Mob Boss.
Days later, those who read the report saw that Barr’s summary was a bold white-wash. The report’s conclusions were damning. Yes, the Kremlin did install an American president.
But it was too late. As Orwell warned, those who speak first and loudest often win the day. Plus it was what most Americans wanted to hear, and most importantly, it was so much easier than the 476 pages that built so much evidence for what came only at the end. Mueller played by the rules of not casting a definitive verdict; Barr bent the rules by making it seem as though no verdict meant no conclusions. It was as if the word “exoneration” all by itself meant we could “put it all behind us” and “turn the page.”
Fast forward seven years almost to this day, and we should have noticed that Mob Boss forgot is own lie. If the Mueller Report was “complete exoneration,” that why be “glad he’s dead” and accuse him of “hurt[ing] innocent people”? In effect, Mob Boss’s Mueller tweet was an Act of Confession that we mistook for nothing more than his characteristic bad taste.
For all of the concern we on the left of America’s dial express about the separation of church and state, we need to see these religious expressions–from Hegseth’s crusades to Leavitt’s cross necklaces–for the camouflage that they are. If a couple of wild tweets recently aren’t enough to make you suspect, please consider the architectural plans for Mob Boss’s presidential library:
Is it not an American Tower of Babel? Or have we completely forgotten even the most basic cautionary tales handed down to us through centuries of history we are supposed to know so it “won’t repeat itself”?
Late one night after a weekend way out of town and not wanting to make dinner when I arrived home, I drove my voracious appetite into the 401 Tavern in Hampton, NH, and took a seat at the bar.
Happened to be the last of two seats on a corner, and so I sat next to a woman whose husband and another elderly couple were on the three stools perpendicular to us. They were all in their eighties, and very pleasantly welcomed me into their conversation.
Before long I was wolfing down a burger, and they resumed getting to know each other. When the man nearest me mentioned that he was a retired police chief, the other asked, “Portsmouth?”
“No. Burlington, Vermont.”
I swallowed and waited for a pause in the conversation: “Were you chief of police when Bernie Sanders was mayor?”
Under much darker-colored hair, the smile that immediately beamed back at me appears on page 456 of a new book, Bernie for Burlington, with an equally beaming Mayor Sanders and an in-character Crime Dog McGruff as they appeared in 1987.
It is one of many surprises of poet and English professor Dan Chaisson’s part-memoir, part-biography, part-history, and very-much-nostalgic ode to the city where he came of age during Sander’s eight years in city hall. It was the police union that put the socialist alternative to a corrupt Democratic incumbent and a weak rogue Democratic challenger in office. More specifically, it was the police union that did it with a unanimous vote.
Where were the Republicans, you ask? They were quite content to support the incumbent and make their efforts elsewhere in the state. And they dominated the state, including elections for the US congress throughout the 70s in which Sanders ran a distant, but improving third.
Before Chaisson gets to that, he gives us a look at Bernie’s childhood in the Bronx. Source for this is older brother Larry Sanders who describes a father who could have been the model for Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. Mom was equally hard-luck, but the brothers made do without complaint. Instead, they explore, including free pamphlets in a store named Vermont in Manhattan aimed at drawing tourists to the Green Mountain State.
At least Larry makes no complaint. Chaisson deliberately did not interview Bernie for the book, though they are pictured together, arm in arm and smiling, at a family picnic in 2024. Bernie and his wife Jane were said to be “aware” of the project and “intrigued” by it. Sources are numerous without them, including campaign workers, political rivals, neighborhood activists, historians, business leaders, and political allies, most notably his successor as mayor, Peter Clavelle. If you subscribe to the theory that your legacy is measured by the person who replaces you, then all you need to know is that Clavelle and Sanders were the co-founders of Vermont’s Progressive Party.
Other notables include Howard Dean, sometimes ally sometimes opponent, and Peter Freyne, a court-jester columnist for The Vermont Vanguard Press who predicted Sander’s rise: “Don’t be surprised to see Ol’ Bernardo draw a lot of votes from folks who just want to flip the bird at the status quo in Montpelier.”
Freyne also had the scoop of “the notorious smear shop” of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone “to attack… Eagle Scout Patrick Leahy,” Vermont’s long-time US senator in a campaign for re-election–three decades before the two felons helped fix America’s 2016 election.
Following Sanders’ upbringing in Brooklyn and a couple of semesters in Chicago, Chaisson give us a history of the hippie movement into northern New England, college-aged kids dropping out and looking for abandoned farms they would turn into communes. Sanders was in but not of that wave, as inspired by the renowned Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and A.S. Neil, he of Summerhill School fame, as any. To the contrary, he was impatient with the “tuning out” part, but he never gave up, and the grass roots grew. Unable to win a seat in the Vermont state legislature or in the US Congress, Bernie, as calculating as any natural politician, jumped at his chance in Burlington.
My Newburyport friends may do well to get Bernie for Burlington just to study the ins-and-outs of the waterfront issue, which beyond all else was what turned residents against the Democratic mayor. Writes Chaisson:
Sanders’ first Burlington apartment on Front Street was adjacent to Battery Park on the Old North End. Few physical settings in the United States present such a contrast between agonizing urban problems and almost unreal natural vistas. Bernie’s small, rented worker’s cottage, his first home in the city, sat on the seam between the two Burlingtons. His challenge was to make the city take its eyes off the sunsets and face itself.
Mission accomplished with the help of a cultural undercurrent the book captures in fine detail, such as new and trendy businesses downtown, some of which Chaisson worked at as a teenager. And around the state, such as Bread and Puppet Theater, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Phish, and Goddard College:
Between fish farms in the mountains and cauldron of soup at the Fresh Ground Coffee House, a relay ran. Goddard and the Fresh Ground, sixty miles apart, were the transmitting stations for radical ideas about power and subjugation. Sanders, no fan of fish farms or gourmet coffee, and “ruthlessly sarcastic” about (anarchist-environmentalist Murray) Bookchin’s wild-eyed pronouncements, nevertheless participated in the busy traffic moving between the two points, one artery in the larger organism evolving into a new Vermont.
Both those passages hint at more of the surprises this book has for those of us who supported Bernie Sanders in his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. He never got high marks from environmentalists because of his full commitments to unions. He was at harsh odds with the University of Vermont because the state–that “status quo in Montpelier”–paid no Burlington taxes. And he rode in the cruiser with Chief Kevin Scully during the crackdown on UV students.
As Scully told me a few years ago at the 401 in Hampton, in paraphrase: Bernie was great to work with. We didn’t always agree, but he always listened, and I know had some influence. Just as he had over me. He always explained things, and was always very clear.
To make 520 pages well worth the time, that last line is true of Chaisson’s book.
As a projectionist in a small arts-cinema with but a single screen, I’ve considered myself lucky all these years that I haven’t had to show or overhear or be in any way exposed to blockbuster films heavy with special FX.
That, of course, rules out most any film set in space, though I have always looked forward to documentaries regarding the Moon or Mars on PBS, some of them written and directed by Newburyport’s own Mark Davis.
As for the explosions, the high-speed chases, the hell-fire and deafening noise, I have no more appetite for them than I have for tofu and sushi. Do the cineplexes hand out barf-bags when they sell you a ticket?
Now comes Project Hail Mary, free of violence and minimal with blasts and booms, but necessarily loaded with FX necessary for a film set in space. For over a week I held to my own rule, but I also heard no end of patrons praise it as they left. Two words I kept hearing: “hilarious” and “heartbreaking.” That’s a combination I find impossible to resist.
Project Hail Mary begins mid-story. Ryland Grace regains consciousness well on his way to a destination from which he is to learn something that will save the world from a virus that will kill us all in 30 years. The two astronauts flying the craft are both dead. If that’s not enough of a problem, he has the immediate obstacle to overcome: He has never been on a spacecraft, and he was put on this one against his will, already unconscious.
As he will later recall yelling at the commander back on Earth who put him on the flight, “I put the ‘not’ in ‘astronaut’.”
No, Ryan Gossling (following his stellar Ken in Barbie) plays a high school science teacher who caught the attention of an international space agency due to a paper he wrote for journal that contained too many inconvenient truths for his own country to leave unpunished. But he’s an easy-going, carefree guy who mines the vein of entertainment in the classrooms of Grover Cleveland Middle School.
As he has to teach himself how to fly the craft already “Neptunish” away, he recalls bits and pieces of how he got there in flashbacks. Before too long in what is a long but fast-paced film, he finds himself aside another spacecraft that is launching objects about the size and shape of car mufflers at him. Gossling’s wondering aloud about whether he’s about to receive an intergalactic gift or a bomb was Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” cast as comedy and set to science fiction.
My expectation was that Project Hail Mary would harken back to 2001, but there are few hints of any Hal vs. Dave conflict. Instead, Capt. Grace meets Rocky, a creature about the size of a young goat who appears to be a cross between a crab and a monkey, or maybe a giant turtle with extra legs. Turns out, Rocky is also an advanced, sought-after scientist sent from another direction from Eridia, a planet also threatened by the same virus. Rocky and Grace soon figure out how to communicate and form a team.
More than an update of 2001, this film is the hopeful counterpoint to Don’t Look Up‘s sardonic doom and gloom. Rather than a very few people knowing the threat outnumbered by a world that wants to ignore them, Project Hail Mary is all about answering the call–which necessitates the ultimate sacrifice.
Subject matter here is quite serious–especially in a time when government agencies deny and defy science on behalf moneyed interests than will not hear any mention of inconvenient truth. But the film is flush with laugh lines, including a few sight gags, such as Capt. Grace appearing in one scene in a t-shirt reading, “I Had Potential.”
Also, this is yet another vibrant, often hilarious performance by Ryan Gossling with a solid, at times heart-breaking turn from Sandra Huller (following her Best Actress Oscar nomination for Anatomy of a Fall). And then there’s Rocky, an alien with a humane spirit as infectious as a Beatles’ song, specifically, “Two of Us”:
…wearing raincoats, Standing solo in the sun. You and me chasing paper, Getting nowhere, on our way back home.
We’re on our way home We’re on our way home
We’re going home...
Do Rocky and Grace make it home? Near the end of the film when Rocky asks if he has “a mate,” Grace sighs: “I had one, but she said I had my head in the clouds, that I live in another world.”
By now you may have heard that Trump’s fantasy ballroom is back in the news if only thanks to his ham-fisted changing of the subject when asked on Air Force One about his contradictory answers to questions about his war on Iran.
Occurred to me months ago when we were still grieving over the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, all of our objections were based on historical perception. Nothing wrong with that, and it should have been enough to point out that the White House is the people’s house, and the president but a tenant.
But what of architectural perception?
For that, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Randy Johnson of Natick, Mass., a senior partner in Resolution Architects who has done some consulting work here in the Lower Merrimack Valley, and a friend of mine since his nephew and my daughter hauled their families to each other’s college graduation parties down in the Hudson Valley back before the turn of the century. He also writes about local architecture for a newspaper in the section of Massachusetts known as Metro-West. When his editor preferred not to run this non-local piece, he asked my advice.
As soon as I began reading, I knew that it had to have circulation. By the time I finished, I decided that unless we could find a larger platform, I would offer to make it Mouth of the River‘s first “guest blog.” Back in the day when newspapers still had freelance budgets, this would have landed in a Sunday “Ideas” section as soon as an editor received it. To compensate for that, I’d just ask that if you know people who are into historic preservation, building design, or who simply appreciate handsome, functional architecture, please pass this on:
Last Straw Ballroom
by Randy Johnson
Knowing of the ornamentation now slathered on the walls and mantels of the Oval Office, I wasn’t surprised to see a lot gold in the renderings of the proposed White House ballroom.
Of course, that wrecking ball news immediately drowned in the media zone flooded by Epstein, Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota, yet more Epstein, and even another architectural foray-sure-to-be-folly to defile the Kennedy Center.
Keeping track of President Trump’s ballroom project is a challenge, but an addition to the White House will get built. A legal objection has been raised by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, but obstacles like this have not stopped other questionable Trump activities. Construction will proceed as legality is sorted out. Work on the foundation has already begun. The train has left the station.
Trump has fired the entire U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, and loaded it with his appointees. Among the new members is the ballroom’s initial architect. Likewise, the National Capital Design Commission is staffed with a handful of loyalists. The project, officially called the “East Wing Modernization Project,” was presented to the NCDC by the new architect in January; the Commission seemed to reach a consensus that the design program makes sense. After all, a great country shouldn’t hold its official gatherings in a tent, with porta-potties for sanitary facilities.
The East Room was way too small for big events. The White House public-visitor reception process was characterized as confusing and undignified, definitely in need of improvement. All the commissioners thought these sensible reasons for something new, in the tradition of previous modifications to the White House. The project was characterized as fostering “diplomacy, celebration and unity,” with a “respect for collaboration and tradition.” No mention of grandiosity, or conveying the wrong message.
What’s on the table is huge: 89,000 sq. ft., of which 22,000 sq. ft. is the thousand-guest ballroom. Beneath the main floor is the kitchen, along with a spacious First Lady office suite. The movie theater will be reconstructed. The NCDC presentation did not discuss how supplies will be delivered; as with the bunker design, loading docks must be among the top secret security concerns.
None of the NCDC commissioners seemed to question the scale or validity of the program. All acknowledged the experience and competence of the new architect. Only one quibbled with the design, expressing concern about the overall size and cornice height, and asking if reduction to the footprint were possible given the reported foundation start. To provide some balance to the design’s relationship to the residence, the architect’s mitigation proposal is to add volume to West Wing, another step in turning the White House into an American Versailles. The hearing ended with the understanding of “more details to follow.” The project is not on the Commission’s February agenda. It is not on their website’s listing of “Major Projects.”
The project is a perfect representation of where our nation is headed. You saw this first with the gaudy golden gee-gaws in the Oval Office, so it wasn’t surprising to see the amount of gold in the drawings of the ballroom’s interior. Even the dining chairs had a precious-metal look. The Trump style is heavy on gilding; it’s the mark of an imperial ruler. The design strives to create a suitable stage for our autocrat to impress his peers.
The exterior design is in keeping with the priorities of the administration. An executive order called “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again” dictates what any new federal building should look like. Bring back those columns and pediments, harkening to the good old days of ancient Rome and Athens. No room for other ideas that would compete with this vision. Building grandiose buildings is what Mussolini and other bullies did to further their agendas. Kudos to the American Institute of Architects for their opposition to MFABA, noting the “directive would replace thoughtful design processes with rigid requirements that will limit architectural choice.”
The ballroom facades mimic the adjacent Treasury Department building. The proposed main entrance has temple-like features, with ceremonial steps, columns and pediment, fitting for a place in which to pay homage to an autocrat, curry favors and make deals. Maybe the president is figuring that at $10,000 a plate, the scheme will gross $10 million for each chicken dinner. The ballroom might be Trump’s most lucrative deal.
In addition to the hollow, spiritless architectural vision, there’s the financing. The claim of “no taxpayer money” is fraudulent. Sure, private citizen billionaires have lined up to donate funds, getting both their name on a plaque and presidential access. But as any competent real estate developer knows, there’s the matter of ongoing operating costs, like heating the white elephant as it sits vacant 99% of the time. When Trump is gone, donors won’t be lining up to fund the power washing of all that marble.
Where’s DOGE when we need it?
Then there’s the mendacity. Beyond the financing myth, what about the promise of no demolition and a freestanding structure? Oops! It stings to think that one twisted mind can do so much damage to “the people’s house.”
What we need are forceful and respected voices to explain how this project runs counter to our national mythology. The design should put less emphasis on exclusiveness, power and opulence, and more on an image that speaks of our egalitarian roots, in keeping with the “People’s House” to which the East Wing is connected. The Trump brand will eventually fade away, but let’s not be left with a reminder of its shallow history in such a significant, prominent location.
The entities reviewing the East Wing Modernization design see it as a sensible response to the requirements of a functioning White House. But the key word is House. A project of this scale turns the property into more of an events center than the home of the president and family. For a president that primarily resides off-site, this shift is inconsequential.
For future presidential families, the shift in balance will be a loss. The program should ideally create a better residence, support the administrative needs of the executive branch, and establish the architecture for a dignified reception of the public and official visitors. The huge ballroom does not fit in. Do the big parties off site. Something will get built. If Trump gets his way, it will be a neo-classically correct reproduction of what he and his minions think Washington, D.C., buildings should look like.
If built, the best hope for a ballroom is adaptive re-use, like conversion to a 300 bed shelter for all the families made homeless by the Trump Economy. When asked where they reside, the previously unhoused occupants could respond that they are staying at the Last Straw Ballroom.
Instead of that bleak future, the better approach is to stop construction and conduct a thoughtful re-evaluation of what is really best for our White House.
Today, March 18, I turn 75. That’s three-quarters of a century, an occasion to be marked with something out of the ordinary.
One idea came to me last Friday, the 13th of all dates. Can’t recall any source of inspiration, though I did model it after the signs that line the highway approaching Wall Drug in what South Dakotans call “West River.” And I fashioned it a bit on “The News from Lake Wobegon” from A Prairie Home Companion with a common theme and a recurring phrase in the first five entries–the sixth being more akin to reaching the destination, a coffee and pastry shop in Newburyport at the Mouth of New England’s Merrimack River in lieu of a tourist trap posing as a drug store on the Plains somewhere between the Missouri River and the Black Hills.
Since then, I have posted one each day on social media. Expecting and aiming for a lot of laughs, the number of likes and loves and cares has taken me by surprise. But I laughed out loud when the second entry drew a comment from a friend telling me that I “may be onto a new podcast theme here.” If so, should I call it A Coastal Home Companion or Island Caffeine?
At any rate, I add that preface to explain the repetition you’ll encounter reading them all at once, hoping you’ll allow for it. I tried to lessen the pain of same by changing the phrases and words used, but how many ways are there to say 75 except to put the 7 before the 5? I suppose I might have used LXXV, but the letters remind me of sizes of clothing that I see on the tabs inside collars and waistlines, way too depressing for birthday requests:
March 13: — As in, Friday the… :
Word has reached me that, for my birthday this coming Wednesday, my renfaire friends in Rhode Island and along Massachusetts’ South Coast are pitching in to buy me a brand new Maserati Quattroporte. I’m deeply moved, but with a grandparent’s urgent obligation to this planet’s dubious future, I ask that any money that might be spent on me be given, instead, to the campaigns of candidates for the US Senate and House who have a viable chance of unseating a Republican. Thank you dearly, but please send your money to Brown in Ohio, Talarico in Texas, and others who might rid Congress of a Republican once their own state primaries are past. There’s also Ossoff in Georgia who needs to keep his seat out of the Republican column.
Trust me. As I turn a doddering 75, my Nissan Versa is an automotively young 76K, and it serves me well. I’ll make do.
March 14 — Pie Day:
Now I hear that my Dakota friends, from the ones still in the territory to the diaspora that spreads from Lake Michigan to the Salish Sea, are chipping in to buy me a $10K gift certificate on Amtrak for my birthday this coming Wednesday. Much appreciated, but times like these call for sacrifice, and I ask that the $10K go instead to US Senate or House candidates who have a real chance of ridding Congress of a Republican. There are House elections everywhere. Find the one nearest you that is close in the polls, and whatever you’d have spent on me, spend on the Democratic or Independent or Green, or Farm-Labor, or Yippie candidate who has a reasonable chance.
Trust me. I’ve been to enough places in my 75 years, and I am now quite content with my annual weekend getaways in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In January. January. New Bedford. New Bedford in January.
March 15 — The Ides:
Rumor has it that my Salem friends, including a few as far flung as Florida and Oregon, are pooling money to buy me an all-expense paid month-long vacation in Reggio di Calabria on Italy’s Mediterranean coast for my 75th birthday on Wednesday. Ah, my mom’s ancestral homelands I’d love to see! But, for the sake of our kids and grandkids–any greatgrandkids yet?–please spend the money instead to help elect US Senate and House candidates who have a chance of winning what are now Republican seats or who need help defending themselves against Republican challengers.
Trust me. I live on Plum Island, so I see enough salt water. Then again, if you persist, you might want to talk to readers of the Newburyport paper who have offered me one-way tickets to go far away.
March 16 — Madison’s Birthday:
Officials in Newburyport City Hall are planning to surprise me for my birthday on Wednesday with a gift certificate from Park Lunch according to the mole who last year leaked to me the Confidential Report on the Library Investigation. Quite generous, too. Could keep me in fried clams and onion rings every day all the way to Mayday, even if they are upwards of $40 per plate. Mayday, indeed, but I’d lose my appetite thinking of how the total of those tabs might flip one Republican seat in the Congress if it went, instead, to a candidate with a chance of beating a Republican.
Trust me. At 75, I don’t need any more fried food than the occasional salmon I’ll sizzle this summer. But if any councilor, clerk, or character in the executive branch wants to spring for a falafel or gyros wrap over at Port City Sandwich Co., sure, I’m there.
March 17 — St. Patrick’s:
Through the magic of social media, I hear that my friends from Central Catholic HS Class of ’68 and St. Augustine’s Elementary ’64 have arranged a 20-day group-tour to Ireland, one of my parent’s and most of their parents’ ancestral homeland. For my birthday on Wednesday, each paid a share to include me on the trip. That includes two I’ve known since first grade, 1956-57. Erin go bragh!, as we were taught to say 70 years ago. But in this year that may be make-or-break for those to whom we will be ancestors, I must say Erin go braghless… Sorry, but any money you might spend on me, will be better spent on viable candidates opposing Republicans for the US House and Senate.
Trust me. At 75, I’ve quaffed more Guinness than most people have seen. And by the time you read this, I’ll either be on my way to a St. Patrick’s Day concert playing yet another jig or in my seat tapping my feet and quaffing yet another Guinness.
March 18: — Hangover Day:
Today, March 18, I turn 75. That’s three-quarters of a century, spanning from the appearance of the automatic transmission to the intrusion of the cellphone–or, in other words, the beginning and the end of human devolution. Certainly an occasion to be marked with something out of the ordinary. After sipping coffee with two friends at Cafe Chococoa for about two hours this afternoon, I realized just what that should be:
Sipping coffee in a downtown spot and chatting with anyone wanting to join me for all or part of two hours once a week. Starting next week, from Noon to 2:00 pm every Wednesday, I’ll be at Cafe Chococoa–located in Newburyport’s Tannery–or seated at one of the outdoor tables when weather allows, open to any and all subjects of conversation.
If you need added incentive, Chococoa makes a superb lemon-ginger scone as well as other tempting pastries. As an alternative to their fine coffee, their smoothies are quite good.
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A “selfie” more than three decades before the word was coined: In the darkroom of the St. John Valley Times, Madawaska, Maine, where I learned how to develop photos in February, 1975, just a month before my 24th birthday. Taken by a camera I put on a stand with a timer so that I could shoot my still-23-year-old self.
When the director of Mr. Nobody Against Putin accepted the Oscar for Best Documentary last night, I expected a condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for the USA to confirm its now dubious support for Ukraine.
Instead, David Borenstein immediately spelled out the film’s lesson, and without naming any countries, it was clear that his target was close to home:
Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage, it’s that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity. When we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume, we all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a “nobody” is more powerful than you think.
After it was over, Borenstein did name names while speaking with reporters:
One interesting thing about working with a team of Russians throughout this process has been my desire as an American to constantly compare the situation in America to Russia. But a lot of my Russian colleagues and friends always said, “No, no, it’s not the same situation. It’s actually happening quicker in America than it’s been happening in Russia.” Trump is moving a lot quicker than Putin in his early years.
The film itself, much of it assembled videos smuggled out of Russia by a young “videographer and events coordinator” opposed to his country’s war on Ukraine, focuses on the Kremlin’s efforts to control children’s perception of that war with revised history texts and “patriotic displays.” Echoes of calls for “patriotic education” by Republican officials in DC and in state capitols across the USA are hard to miss.
Also hard to miss are the confused and frightened looks of children and their parents who are receiving contradictory news from relatives and neighbors who have been sent to the front, and where many of them themselves may be dispatched. Some teachers are glad to go along and win citations for their enthusiasm, while most go through the motions, and silently pray for change–a listlessness not lost on their students.
Screening Room patrons leaving the film call it both heartwarming and heartbreaking, no doubt due to Pavel Talankin, the videographer dubbed “Mr. Nobody” at the center of the film. He does all he can to keep students engaged and hopeful until he senses a tightening noose and defects. He, too, has an Oscar, but, like Vladimir Zelenskyy telling the world, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition,” Talankin didn’t come here seeking any award. He came here for the students of his country seeking a much stronger ally.
Overall, I’m satisfied with the Oscar choices. Can’t really pontificate on them because, unlike most years, I missed half the films nominated. Wish I had seen Sinners, nominated for a record-breaking 16 awards, but taking just four. Problem was that it was billed as a horror film, a genre for which I have no more interest than I have in roller skating.
The top awards for One Battle After Another–Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay–surprised me even as I cheered each time. Surprising because it was satire that many people took literally, and because it was as incisive and relevant to the ICED-America in which we now find ourselves. That artistic sin led several critics to dismiss the film as “liberal fantasy.”
But the second highlight of the night goes to Norwegian Director Joachim Trier. Accepting the Best International Picture Oscar for Sentimental Value, he concluded by paraphrasing James Baldwin’s observation that all adults are responsible for all children.
Would never have thought of it before the event, but that was a common theme for all of last night’s winners.
Ever since I was a young boy, I played language like pinball. From Lawrence down to Salem, I bet I played it all.
For me, a silver ball such as “Gaol” lights every bumper and racks up the score. Why, I might flip so furiously at its possibilities that I’ll tilt the machine.
The Old English spelling remained in use until 1960 when finally overtaken by the phonetically friendly, though visually anemic “jail.”
At age nine, I never noticed. A decade later, when I was thrown into one, all the signs said, “Charles Street Jail.”
Too bad. “Jail” made me think only of bail.
With “gaol,” I’d have tripped on the psychedelic hint of “ghoul” and haunted my captors, or I’d have prolonged the sound of “goal” and declared victory over them.
Then there’s one Gail way back in the black mining hills of Dakota, called herself Nancy, though everyone knew her as Lil. Cherished memories that may yet tilt whatever is left of my septuagenarian machine.
Newburyport’s “Old Gaol” even recalls the Old Golds we smoked when we were left recumbent, close to paralyzed, and staring at the ceiling after the bells and buzzers fell silent and the bumpers dimmed.
Washing ashore in 1982, I was heartened that the Port’s numerous historical treasures include the Old Gaol.
That’s why, on Tuesday, March 10, at 7:00 pm, I’ll attend yet another Zoning Board of Appeals meeting in the Senior Center to decide its fate.
Or will they?
Since 2019, the Old Gaol has been pinballed into a bureaucratic Limbo that began when owner Charles Griffin gained variances to divide the lot for the sake of separate sales.
For that rare form of zoning relief, he agreed to place a preservation restriction on the Old Gaol buildings. The ZBA reasoned that the public would benefit from the preservation of a rare architectural treasure.
Eager to get what he wanted, Griffin has not been so eager to give what he promised. Seven years later, there is still no restriction on the Old Gaol buildings and landscape.
In Massachusetts, such applications must go first to the city, then to the state Historical Commission, and finally to the City Council.
Alas, that document was never sent. Instead, Griffin submitted revised versions in 2021 and again last year, both of which MHC rejected.
But why waste words? If language is a pinball machine we can tilt, politics is a whirl that tilts us.
That’s good news for Griffin. His long-time ally on city commissions is Kim Turner, who is now Mayor Sean Reardon’s Special Projects Manager.
Rather than enforcing its own laws, City Hall awarded him a “Certificate of Appreciation” for his interior improvements of the exact same property that, nevertheless, remains the site of his non-compliance.
Perhaps if the beleaguered folks in the City Clerk’s office had ignored laws rather than enforcing them last year, the mayor might have treated them with a modicum of respect.
Anyway, as if by invitation, Griffin is back at the same ZBA asking for a whole new variance to use the Old Gaol as, if not an Airbnb, then maybe a Bed and Breakfast or hotel.
Six weeks after Reardon’s inauguration last year, Griffin filed a new application on February 18, and a public hearing was set for March 25.
Board members discussed the matter, only to continue it to April 8, then to May 27, then to June 10, July 8, August 12, October 28, and finally to January 13 of this year.
Did I say “finally”? My bad. On January 13, it was continued.
On that unfateful evening, some 20 members of the public attended in hopes of protecting the architectural treasure, some planning to comment during the time that all civic meetings include.
When the first began speaking, the chairman apologetically interrupted to remind her of the continuance.
She could comment only on the motion, but all else had to wait for when the Zoning Board would finally, if ever, vote on Griffin’s appeal.
“Alright. But just one question.”
“Yes?”
“How many continuances does he get?”
A burst of laughter from the audience lit my bumpers and sounded my bells: If the ZBA were a pinball machine, its name would be “Continue to Continue!”
Stall until it falls your way. It’s a bureaucratic flipper that always gets a replay. I’ve never seen it fail.
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Redesigned as living and office space: Photo by Newburyport Daily News.
Mouth of the River 