This New England

Photos and commentary by WILLIAM MORGAN

Historic preservation seemed to come of age with the fight to save Pennsylvania Station in New York, back in the 1960s. Penn Station--one of America's greatest buildings ever--was lost to the forces of greed and shortsightedness. As a result, a lot of us--including a Congress that passed major preservation legislation--vowed that such landmarks would never again fall to the wrecker's ball. Naive sentiments, of course.

Yet it is still tragic when places like Central Falls trade such marvelous monuments to transportation and civic pride for the urban equivalent of cheap plastic trash from the big-box stores.

The railroad station is doomed. And while neither Central Falls nor Pawtucket had the imagination or the will to save and reuse this magnificent pile spanning the tracks, the neighborhood got a new CVS. (Does Rhode island really need another 24-hour drug store? )

What this says about us is not very pretty. But then, maybe we get the buildings and the landscape we deserve.

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Sustainable-ocean-fishing certification? How might this affect the big fleets at New Bedford, Poiint Judith and Gloucester?
The London-based Marine Stewardship Council says it has declared a four-vessel operation running out of New Bedford the first East Coast fishery to attain a certification for engaging in sustainable fishing of red crabs. That basically means that they have shown themselves not to overfish.
The operation fishes in waters 2,500 or deeper.
This will put pressure on other fishing folks to do what it takes to get the council's blue "ecolabel.''
The Maine lobster industry, at least in Maine, is looking into getting the same sort of validation. Fisherman, especially salt-water fishermen, are tough and independent operators. That even they are seeking such a label is a marvel of "green education.'' Now if we could just get the foreigners to do the same.

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The public revels in displays of hypocrisy and double standards. And tabloid newspapers love it.
Consider the Boston Herald's field day with Westport, Mass., state Rep. Michael Rodrigues, who was found shopping for tax-free booze at a New Hampshire liquor store -- after voting to raise Bay State sales and alcohol taxes. The New England states, all squashed in a small area, are a particularly easy place in which to drive around and cherry pick places with lower or nonexistent taxes. New Hampshire's wealth is in no small degree a result of this compactness as its sells its lack of income or sales taxes to other New Englanders with more public services but higher taxes, too.
As with U.S. House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, with his serial escapes from paying the taxes he owes even as he presses for higher taxes, it recalls Sen. Russell Long's immortal line about tax-policy fights on Capitol Hill: "Don't tax thee, don't tax me, tax the man behind the tree.''

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Elizabeth Strout's novel (or interconnected stories) Olive Kittredge (named for the woman who is the intersection of the stories) is both a resonant view of families changing over time, but in a mostly oblique way testimony to the beauty, brilliance and melancholy of the Maine coast east and north of Portland.

 Tags  Central Falls Elizabeth Strout Marine Stewardship Council Michael Rodrigues Olive Kittredge

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