This New England

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 son, Jamie, a loyal Mainiac, is also a famous artist.)

Consider N.C.'s 1909 work here, "Winter.'' The pictures he painted for many books in the first part of the 20th Century form a nexus of high and popular art. The images, many drawn for young readers, are certainly a lot more memorable than what you see on TV.

XXX

Pawtucket's Slater Mill has long been barely held together with baling wire by a brave private foundation that has frequent emergency meetings to try to keep the place open.

The fact is that the place should be a National Park, assuming that you agree with its standing as "The Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution'' -- or, as its boosters more extravagantly, if inaccurately, say, "The Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,'' period, as if Britain, whence the plans for the mill were swiped, didn't count.

For one thing, it's a genuinely important place for a nation as characterized by its economic might, technological ingenuity and engineering as by its political ideals. For another, it's a stone's throw from Route 95, the big Main Street of the East Coast. Lots of potential customers.
But would the river's occasional floods scare off the National Park Service?

XXX

The exit of lunch from that iconic (and expensive) Boston restaurant Locke-Ober bespeaks not only a tumbling economy even for the well-heeled folk who have frequented it. It also is a sad reminder of how the leisurely lunch is disappearing in America, stolen away by lives made ever more frantic by electronic messaging and economic anxiety.

You want the boss to see you eating a sandwich while typing at your work station, not disappearing for an hour to rest and recuperate from the morning's labor and humiliations.

The "slow-food'' movement from Europe finds it difficult to make much headway in America. Maybe the coming double-digit jobless rates will help it along, although the slow food might be fried Spam.

Our standards of living decline as our electronic gizmos proliferate.

XXX

Bravo for the Falmouth Enterprise company for deciding to start a weekly newspaper in Barnstable, the Cape's largest town -- a move reported by Jim Kinsella in CapeCodToday.com.

It sounds contrarian, but weekly papers are still being started up. They're cheap to start and run and, if run well, they get a lot of local mom-and-pop ads. And it's still a lot easier to read stuff on paper than on a screen.

XXX

Joe Kennedy is having a tough time with windmills in Arizona. See Jan. 22 Boston Herald piece "Joe Kennedy tries wind grab: Navajos: 'Stop interfering' in Arizona energy project.''

Also see:

http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2009/01/22/kennedy-wies-indians-mad-at-joe-jr-carol?blog=109

I wonder if Joe will ultimately find that the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that his "nonprofit'' Citizens Energy pays him is not worth the controversies. Well, probably not. It's still a terrific money and PR machine for him and his family.

My God, it's even more lucrative than running Central Falls's Wyatt Detention Center! Maybe Mr. Kennedy could do a leveraged buyout of that institution, under a new spin-off company called Citizens Convicts.

XXX

Will that Carlos Slim, multi-billionaire Mexican wheeler-dealer, is to own 18 percent of The New York Times affect coverage of, well, Mexico?

 Tags  Carlos Slim Ed Singer Falmouth Enterprise Joe Kennedy Locke-Ober Navajos Slater Mill

---