This New England

Economic crisis may be all around, but state legislatures manage to spend time on, well, issues that are not exactly urgent.

Consider a bill in the Maine legislature that bans using "squaw,'' or any derivation of it, in Pine Tree State place names because some see it as offending Native American women. Consider, for instance, Squaw Mountain, the ski area.

As with attempts to eliminate part of the full name of Rhode Island -- the "Providence Plantations'' part (in a silly confusion with Southern plantations and slaves), we seem hellbent in pasteurizing and homogenizing the rich, history-laden brew called language. That doesn't seem very healthy. Not that many people are that interested in history anymore.

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In better legislation, Rhode Island is mulling making you pay the state's sales tax on items bought online, as The Providence Journal's Neil Downing details in a Sunday column. The current arrangement, heavily defended by cash-bearing lobbyists from online marketing, has seen most people online avoiding the sales tax because the online marketers ignore the duty to collect it.

This gives a big unfair sales advantage to online vs. bricks-and- mortar establishments, and deprives the state of money it desperately needs these days. It's a form of tax evasion that all of us who pay taxes are penalized for.

Now Rhode Island, using a New York law (called the "Amazon law,'' after the online marketer best known for book sales) as a model, will crack down on this unfair advantage. Let's hope that other states will follow suit, and we see their fiscal crises shrink a bit in the process -- and their "real stores'' get a boost. It might be especially timely for independent bookstores, many of which operate on the thin margin of survival most of the time.

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Many thanks to native Rhode Islander Charissa Stuart, founder and CEO of Peeky Toes (in New York), who sent me the cashmere and silk socks she designed and that her company makes in cooperation with such fine outfits as the Autism Society and Goodwill Industries and in support of women entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately for me, any period in which I would have wanted to use this product because of a desire to easily and neatly paint my toes without taking off my socks quickly passed; indeed, i can't remember such a time, despite the obvious allures of androgyny, as sometimes represented here by the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley. (At left, though, is detail from Rene Magritte's "The Red Model'' (1935) that would appeal to Ms. Stuart's toe-liberation politics.)

In my old newspaper days in Boston and New York, people used to send me cases of beer or scotch, which I would have to return, or, if I feared offending the senders, buy. In Paris, you'd generally get wine, or, if you were unlucky, brandy. And you were expected to drink it within the year. (Is nail-polish sniffing still a serious public-health menace?)

These are obviously healthier times, at least offline.

 Tags  "Amazon law'' Charissa Stuart Maine online marketing Peeky Toes Squaw

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