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January 2009 Archives
6:44 PM Fri, Jan 30, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb  Email
New Englanders, who use Amtrak much more than most people in America, need to get the next issue of Trains magazine (March) and read Rush Loving Jr.'s very important article, which starts: ''Trains' formula for fixing Amtrak: Memo to......
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5:21 PM Fri, Jan 30, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
The Boston Globe suggests that Fidelity Investments might be for sale. That some new senior executives haven't yet deigned to move to the Boston area from Greater New York, along with some mysterious musings to The Globe by Ned......
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4:28 PM Thu, Jan 29, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Something to fly you through the winter. See Festival Ballets's A Thousand & One Nights, at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, in Providence, Friday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 pm; Saturday, Feb. 7, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, Feb. 8 at......
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5:32 PM Wed, Jan 28, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
In John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick, apparently based on Wickford and East Greenwich, R.I., he describes a storm over Narragansett Bay: "The wind stiffened, and the sky toward Providence stood revealed as possessing the density of some translucent,......
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12:09 PM Wed, Jan 28, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Pope Benedict XVI has a new YouTube channel and that's fine, but he makes the following warning to those who think that friendship on a screen is the same as friendship in person: "The concept of friendship has enjoyed......
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6:45 PM Tue, Jan 27, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
''Snow at Louveciennes'' (1874), by Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), painted before they worried about power outages in little French towns. XXX John Updike, a longtime North Shore person, wrote brilliantly about New England, though without quite the lyrical beauty (and......
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7:55 AM Tue, Jan 27, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Amazing! Brandeis plans to close its Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection. That a famous university would do that is a sign of just how bad the economy is. The decision also reflects losses caused by Bernard Madoff,......
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6:48 PM Mon, Jan 26, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
There's been a lot of interest lately in the golden age of Madison Avenue, as entertainingly misreported by Matthew Weiner in Mad Men, the smoke-, sex- and booze-rich TV series. Unfortunately, Mr. Weiner was born in 1965 and wasn't......
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6:45 PM Fri, Jan 23, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Many people younger than a certain age may not know that the father of the famed and recently deceased painter Andrew Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth, was a fine artist, too, though undervalued by being called an "illustrator.'' (Of course, Andrew's......
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4:49 PM Thu, Jan 22, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Two happy bits of news. Despite the ennui-ridden economy, the New Bedford Whaling Museum exceeded its fundraising goal of $410,000 by $52,000, took in more than $300,000 in attendance fees and lured 100,000 visitors last year. The institution, by......
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4:24 PM Wed, Jan 21, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Too giddy about the Obama inauguration, so excited you can hardly sleep? Gaze at the above -- Broad Street, Providence -- and assume a more nuanced attitude about our immediate prospects. Then sell anything you have left and move......
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5:31 PM Tue, Jan 20, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Obama's inauguration speech was very well constructed and wonderfully delivered (after the mildly amusing snafu with Chief Justice Roberts on the oath), and there were some good phrases throughout. But no single line jumps out. Maybe he can get......
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7:48 AM Tue, Jan 20, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
All those interested in the Kennedys' opposition to Cape Wind might want to look at the following Web site and press release: See http://www.fourcornersfreepress.com/news/2008/120804.htm And: -- For Immediate Release -- January 13, 2009 cameron@navajochapters.org CONTACT: Rayola J. Werito, Community Services......
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10:02 AM Fri, Jan 16, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Simulated view from the nearest point on Cape Cod of the Cape Wind project. (Cape Wind Associates picture. So Cape Wind, the most tortured power-plant project in American history, has received federal environmental approval, 7 and 1/2 years after......
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5:49 PM Wed, Jan 14, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
According to a story in Cape Cod Today by Timothy Gillespie, the energy-hungry Nova Scotia government wants to end its cooperative (with the U.S.) ban on drilling for oil and gas on the Georges Bank, which the two nations share......
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5:52 PM Tue, Jan 13, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
You have to give Massachusetts Gov. Patrick a lot of credit for taking the long view. In the midst of a recession, with all those desperate demands for help, he realizes that the state must deal with its grotesque......
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9:18 AM Sun, Jan 11, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
At least one backer of a movement to get Vermont to secede from the United States and create the Second Vermont Republic, in a "Genteel Revolution,'' suggests that the state start circulating a paper trade token with implanted gold......
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3:15 PM Fri, Jan 09, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Recessions tend to shove environmentalism and aesthetics aside. (The very affluent, feeling themselves more secure than the rest of us, push environmental concerns more than jobs, especially if it means keeping land near their big houses undeveloped.) Consider Vermont......
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8:40 PM Tue, Jan 06, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
By New York poet Christopher Foss Morning Glory Physical memory rings true Even now with slow-dimming Mind and sight and the sloughing Off of undeniable touchstones - The held moment of a kiss Or dawn's crescendo warming old bones......
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5:55 PM Tue, Jan 06, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal still wants to ban smoking at Connecticut's two mega-casinos -- Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun. Given the way the addictions of smoking, drinking and gambling reinforce each other, this could be a financial disaster......
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6:20 PM Mon, Jan 05, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Given the uncertainies about the ethics of Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi, and some imminent legal activities, the House should postpone the vote on another term for Mr. DiMasi from tomorrow (Wednesday) at least until next week. xxx As......
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2:20 PM Sun, Jan 04, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
"A Winter Eden,'' by Robert Frost A winter garden in an alder swamp, Where conies now come out to sun and romp, As near a paradise as it can be And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.......
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6:06 PM Fri, Jan 02, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Interest among some New England towns in starting their own municipally owned electricity companies is spreading. The Associated Press reports that some residents of Hampton, N.H., want the town to explore the idea, in the wake of complaints about......
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2:55 PM Thu, Jan 01, 2009 | Permalink |
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By Robert Whitcomb Email
Claiborne Pell, with his aristocratic eccentricities, his passion for the arts and scholarship and his internationalism, always seemed to me someone who could have served comfortably in the British House of Lords. Consider his bizarre interests, such as in......
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