This New England

"Mount Mansfield, Vermont,'' by Sanford Robinson Gifford (1859).

Vermont knows how its bread is buttered. Despite the recession and numerous state budget cutbacks it will spend $6 million on improving its state parks this year, even as many other states and federal parks have cut way back. Vermont lives to no small extent on its natural beauty, and it understands the necessity of maintaining it, especially where the public most expects it -- in the parks.

The National Park system will eventually get some federal stimulus money, which should help reverse years of underfunding and neglect. And the federal money should wend it way into state parks later this year and next.

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Did Dartmouth College pick President-elect Jim Yong Kim, a Harvard medical poobah, in part because it thought he could ramp up the institution's reputation as a medical center (with all the federal and private money that means)? The Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center are already fairly big deals. Maybe he's charged with making them even bigger.

Certainly Dr. Kim, a physician, has made no secret of his desire to keep intensely involved in medical matters.

Among other things, he's expected to continue major involvement in Partners in Health, the global health organization he co-founded.

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New Englanders are big on global climate-change issues, so they'll be glad to know that the occasionally reliable Drudge Report has linked to Politiken.dk, which reports says that the Copenhagen sex industry did a banner business during the recent World Business Summit there. Global warming indeed!

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