This New England

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 to Mauritius. Some of our winter settings can make Edward Hopper look euphoric. (Photo by William Morgan)

While it's good news for patronage at the Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show, Feb. 19-22 at the Rhode Island Convention Center, it's still very sad that Boston's annual New England Spring Flower Show, which has been held in March, is being cancelled

after 137 years because of financial problems at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and because of the general economy. Among other woes, the society, a marvelous relic of old Boston Brahmin Boston, spent $850,000 putting plants on the Big Dig's Rose Kennedy Greenway -- out of a $4 million budget.

This show has drawn 100,000 people from all over New England and beyond and the very prospect of attending it has been a surge of oxygen for winter-weary New Englanders. It would have been a particular tonic this year, with a depressed economy and already too much snow.

The society says it plans some smaller events, but it won't be the same.

Next stop: Putting condos in the Old North Church, turning the Somerset Club into a health club and the St. Botolph's Club into an adult-entertainment shop. And The Atlantic Monthly has already decamped for Washington...

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Good for Massachusetts Education Cmmissioner for demanding that localities hold fast to the state's minimum 180-day school year, despite weather emergencies. American kids spend less time in school than their counterparts in Europe and Asia already, and the result is visible in testing results. (It is true, however, that the Bay State has been doing well in the past few years, or at least most of it has.)

A number of local superintendents have sought exemptions because of the expense but skimping on class days is not the way to do it. Public education is a basic service of government, and the bridge to a prosperous future, especially in high-tech New England.

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That a record 29,000 people have applied for spots in next fall's Harvard freshman class (and we're sure there will be records at other Ivy League schools) is being partly atrtibuted to the fact that still rich Harvard can hand out copious financial aid even in this economic disaster. So more and more the top, say 20, richest colleges lure the students, leaving the others to struggle for enough applicants who can pay the full freight. It may sound unfair, but you'd have to say that it's brutally meritocratic, in a way.

By the way, Obama went to Columbia College, not Harvard College, as has been misreported in some places. Then he was on to Harvard Law.

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There have been many economia for Sen. Claiborne Pell. Even I was surprised at how many came from those who directly benefited from the federal cash that Mr. Pell recommended be given to new or expanded federal programs.

Few things can elicit as much affection as getting a check or a job.

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Why do bureaucrats continue to believe that if they say they are "utilizing'' something that they're more important than if they are "using'' something?

 Tags  Claiborne Pell New England Spring Flower Show Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show Somerset Club St. Botolph's Club

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