Sunday, May 28, 2023
Robert Whitcomb, columnist
Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o’er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.
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Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain–
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.
The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint:
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.
How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.
Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.
Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.
At dawn the river seems a shade–
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.
The season’s tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.
“June’s Coming,’’ by John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist, nature essayist and poet
“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible.’’
— George Washington, in his Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796
“Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.’’
— From The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce (born 1842; date of death unknown), an American short-story writer, journalist, poet and Civil War veteran.
Ah, Memorial Day weekend. Flags by graves, “Taps,’’ parades, trees in full leaf, pollen on windshields, it’s safe to plant the last of your vegetables, cookouts, traffic jams to shores, ants. Southeast winds bringing us the aroma of the Gulf Stream, southwest winds the scents of industrial New Jersey.
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I noticed that one of those portable basketball net setups on the street near us has been removed. The son who used it has grown up and moved away. (Leaving it up for some future grandchild would be presumptuous.) The decades roll by. But the family’s cute little dog still yelps.
PHOTO: Ambitious Studio* – Rick Barrett, Unsplash
When the Lunching Was Long
A new email friend of mine called Don Morrison has made a little recording about missing those days when white-collar workers’ leisurely and tax-deductible business lunches, with wine or cocktails, were common. The many-decades-long saga of the tax deductibility of alcohol-lubricated lunches is entertaining. Some of us remember tales of the rise and fall of “the three-martini lunch,’’ whose deductibility was challenged by Presidents Kennedy and Carter. (Actually, very few people ordered martinis (powerful liquid!) at lunch even in the cocktail’s mid-century heyday, though such shows as Mad Men may have implied that they did.
Letting white-collar employees and/or their employers write off lunch costs while few blue-collar workers can do so may seem unfair, but the former can argue that their repasts are valid marketing, sales and employee-advancement opportunities.
Every time I was hired in newspaper publishing included such a lunch, seasoned with cigarette smoke; smoking at restaurants has long since been banned, but up to the early 80’s it was pervasive. At one of these lunches, at the Oak Room in New York’s Plaza Hotel in 1982, the distinguished editor who was hiring me got a tad drunk and became ever friendlier as the two- (or was it three-?) hour repast proceeded, and finished up with Irish coffee.
Now, far more people lunch at their desks, and midday drinking is much frowned on.
Back in 1972 I spent some time on a project at Business Week magazine in a green Art Deco skyscraper in New York. A couple of editors would take me to lunch at the restaurant/watering hole Sardi’s. They’d each have a cocktail and share a bottle of wine during the about 1.5-hour lunch. Then one of them, the editor in chief, John Cobb, would go back to the office and preside with great statistical and other rigor at the day’s editorial meeting as he puffed on a meerschaum pipe. The other man, Pete French, chief of correspondents, would disappear into his office for a while. To nap?
I suppose that these lunches over the years were unhealthy in their way, but I still have fond memories of the camaraderie that developed at them. This may be misleading nostalgia, but I think we had more fun back then. Certainly it was easier to develop work-related friendships and, yes, some lunches helped you to do your job better, especially in dealing with office politics.
Mr. Morrison noted:
“With the industrial revolution, working hours became regimented, with regular lunch breaks. The restaurant, invented in 18th Century Paris, was embraced by the rising white-collar class.
“I was admitted to that circle with my first real job, at a large magazine company in Manhattan. It was a work-hard, lunch-hard kind of place. I was given a modest allowance to cultivate sources and glean information.
“After filing my first expense report, an editor took me aside and said I was damaging the company’s reputation by entertaining important people at cheap, Formica-clad diners.’’
To hear Mr. Morrison on lunches, please hit this link:
And to read a little history:
John Goncalves PHOTO: Campaign
Whatever You Can Get Away With
In a time when it seems that you can look up virtually anything online to verify an assertion, public people still lie. Indeed, it often seems that they lie more than they used too; perhaps standards of some expressions of integrity have declined. Consider John Goncalves, the Providence city councilman whose memorable mustache recalls that of a silent movie villain and who has been running, in a crowded field, for the Democratic nomination for Rhode Island’s First Congressional District.
Mr. Goncalves claimed to have graduated from the Providence public schools (man of the people!) when in fact he graduated from the private and very pricey Wheeler School.
His fib was caught, and he’s been backing and filling since.
The slick Mr. Goncalves, who’s also a plagiarist, should not hold public office.
Hit these links:
https://www.golocalprov.com/politics/congressional-candidate-goncalves-constantly-changing-bio-forgot-he-was-a-p
But what struck me, as with New York GOP/QAnon Congressman/con man George Santos, is that he lied about stuff that could be easily checked. Paradoxically, it often seems that there was more checking of job applicants before the early ‘90s, when there was no World Wide Web. I well remember my potential employers checking out my claims of previous employment and education by calling those places on the phone, and my doing the same thing when I was charged as a boss with trying to confirm job applicants’ pasts.
You’d think that lies of the sort used by the likes of Goncalves could be caught much earlier than they usually are.
A big part of the problem is the disinclination of voters to take even a few minutes to check out the resumes and claims of candidates. Of course, some voters don’t care as long as candidates tell ‘em what they want to hear. Consider Trump’s many decades of brazen lies and open fraud. No problem for his followers.
Here’s why:
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There’s a move afoot in Massachusetts to have the cell phones of public-school students locked up during the school day. This would advance educational rigor. There are some other venues where locking up these phones during certain hours would be a good thing….
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It’s remarkable that more bystanders aren’t killed in police car chases of criminals, such as last week’s expeditionary force pursuit of Johnston double murderer James Harrison – a chase that ended with police killing him after he brandished a gun.
PHOTO: File
Put It on Our Credit Card
Under Trump, Republicans voted three times to raise the federal debt ceiling without conditions – no spending cuts demanded, unlike current GOP/QAnon demands — as the deficit swelled partly as a result of huge tax cuts that favored big GOP donors. Then came the Biden administration’s big pandemic/recession relief bill called the ($1.9 trillion) American Rescue Plan. I’ll let economic historians argue about whether it was too big. Mr. Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure law, however, was clearly overdue.
When looking at the current standoff on the debt ceiling (as of this writing) consider, first, that raising the debt ceiling lets the government finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties have signed in the past.
Then consider what could be done to address ongoing federal deficits, which require ever more borrowing. For example:
Tax private-equity fund partners’ income — called “carried interest’’ — as earned income (which it is!) rather than, as now, at the lower capital-gains rate. Eliminate some big tax loopholes for real-estate operators. Raise the very low estate taxes. Such erosion of sweetheart deals for the elite would bring in a lot of money to help pay for the stuff the public says it wants, and would quickly reduce the deficit.
And look at the big federal subsidies for politically powerful economic interest groups, such as agribusiness and the fossil-fuel industry.
Most political donors now usually fight any cut in their after-tax income, though since the Reagan administration they have been swimming in tax cuts. Indeed, they demand even more cuts, which would give them even more money, and thus political power, to press for even more sweetheart deals for themselves on Capitol Hill. But in any event, the suggested changes above would not lead to a decline in big donors’ luxurious lifestyles.
Current federal tax law greatly privileges those who (at this point including yours truly) who derive most of their money from investments (making money from having money) over those most of whose income comes from wages and salaries.
Campaign donors, especially those who run big companies, do have a point when they complain that some regulations (environmental, health, anti-fraud, etc.) are too cumbersome, citing their abstruse wording. So some argue that the regulations should be done away with. But usually the better approach (for the public) is to make them clearer.
What’s most chilling about the debt-ceiling crisis is that many GOP/QAnon politicians want the government to default in order to create chaos and a deep recession to give the GOP/QAnon the presidency and total control of Congress.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) PHOTO: Facebook
It will be interesting to see how well Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s curious voice and manner – trying to sound maximum macho but saddled with a prissy voice — works around America as this very smart guy campaigns for the GOP/QAnon presidential nomination promising tax cuts and the death of “woke’’. Do DeSantis’s and Trump’s mega manly manner suggest a deep insecurity, or simply arrogance?
Speaking of arrogance: There are people who reject the idea of leaving their big jobs despite their advanced age because they’d like to think of themselves as indispensable and because their identities are far too wrapped up with their work.
Right, Mr. President? And some members of the Senate?
As the old line goes: “The graveyards are filled with indispensable people.’’
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Congressional Republicans’ debt-ceiling negotiation demands include work requirements for poor people getting Food Stamps and Medicaid. Okay, but how about work requirements (say public-service jobs?) for bank and other corporate executives bailed out with federal money?
Reminder of Olden Days
We attended part of Yale University’s commencement last Monday at the School of Music, where a young friend of ours was getting a doctorate. We were struck again by how these ceremonies are some of the few remaining events connecting us to Medieval and Renaissance times – the robes draped with various university’s colors, the floppy velvet caps, the smattering of Latin, not to mention Yale’s famous Gothic Collegiate architecture, constructed with early 20th industrial/robber baron money and made to look very old – recalling Oxford and Cambridge and befitting an institution aimed at nurturing America’s Anglophilic ruling class.
But some of the degree recipients’ sandals and tattoos were reminders of where we are now.
Commencement speakers, both officials from the university or college itself as well as speakers from outside, affect an old-fashioned earnestness, if seasoned with successful or failed stabs at mild humor. Irony is heavily rationed at these things. It conveys a kind of theatrical innocence.
All students admitted to the Yale Music School go tuition-free, with the exception of those who have earned equivalent funding from other sources, thanks to a gift from an alumnus mogul called Stephen Adams. The marriage of big money and art. The Medicis, the leading bankers and art patrons of Renaissance Florence would have approved.
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Tina Turner (1939-2023): Very loud, very loud. A valiant queen of the Age of Cacophony.
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.
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