This New England

New England may not be a big enough market these days to support all its colleges. Thus the Franklin Pierce Law Center exploring a potential merger with the University of New Hampshire is a reasonable idea. Franklin Pierce is the Granite State's only law school. (Would Dartmouth want a law school? Probably not.)

Why anyone would name anything after Franklin Pierce, a notably bad president, even if from New Hampshire, is beyond me. Better to name it after the respectable Sen. Judd Gregg, now to be commerce secretary as President Obama seeks to present his administration as ecumenical.

Sadly there are already too many things in the state named after the brilliant, if ethically challenged, gourmand Daniel Webster, another distinguished drinker, like Pierce.

Meanwhile, many of the the region's social-service agencies are rushing to merge to stay alive. The cannibalization of services has been too much.

And in Vermont, state Rep. Patricia O'Donnell has filed a bill that would require nonprofits that get 50 percent or more of their funding from the state to impose 5 percent salary cuts for employees who get 50 percent or more from their funding from the state.

All over, in small and large ways, the winner-take-all psychology of the American economy is eroding as the recession roars on. It may be a bad couple of years for CEOs and executive directors.

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Two bits of good news!

Muckey's Corp. will take over the Out of Town newstand in Harvard Square, and keep it going as a place to buy newspapers and magazines. The company already runs newstands in Greater Boston.

Reading on paper and reading on a screen are not the same thing. A neurologist will tell you that. It's comforting to know that a few people are fighting to save the pleasures of reading on paper in very public places.

And newspaper people are pushing to re-energize their trade. One of their tools is the brand-new newspaperproject.org.

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The boaters think of scenes like the above, a cliff overlooking Second Beach on Aquidneck (Rhode) Island.

-- Photo by Jerry Landay

Then there's that attendance at the Providence Boat Show grew 10 percent this year, despite the recession. That suggest that pent-up demand for boats is growing. That's good for the New England economy, when the recession ends in --- 2010?

It also suggests that there's a good market for escapism in this dreary winter. Movies are doing well, too, as they did in the '30s.

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It's remarkable that Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd has gotten such a pass on his sweetheart mortage from the late, not so great Countrywide Financial.

 Tags  Franklin Pierce Law Center Jerry Landay newspaperproject.org Out-of-Town Newstand Patriot News

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