This New England

New England has a lot of small towns, and a lot of colleges. So maybe a Middlebury College class called "Portrait of a Vermont Town'' will be replicated elsewhere in the region.

As a story in the Dec. 4 New York Times ("Vermont Town Turns to College in Bid to Guide Change'') relates, the Town of Starksboro asked the class, led by Prof. John Elder, to interview residents about how they see the town -- what they most value about it, and what troubles them about where they see it going as it faces such issues as sprawl development.

The students have made themselves experts on the town's history, governance, social groupings and geography.

The idea is to use the information to help townspeople in that very rural and rather fragmented community maintain what most of its residents want, such as working farms, and to strengthen residents' sense of common purpose, which is a bit attenuated, in part because there is no real center with a village green and because many of the residents commute to such places as Burlington and Montpelier. American anomie in a quasi-Currier & Ives setting.

Maybe the fresh eyes of college students (many of them hailing from far away from Vermont), can discover things a professional planner wouldn't about the town, and similar rural communities. Maybe they could hire themselves out to some suburban communities, too, where the angst can be pretty bad.

Kudos to Tom Sgouros for his fact-filled and very thoughtful commentaries on Ocean State matters in Rhode Island Policy Reporter. I especially like his comparative stuff with the rest of the country. The state looks at itself in a far too insular way --- more national context is needed.

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Will ordering the rejiggering of mortgages to help those facing foreclosure actually be illegal, and will it make things worse rather than better by discouraging banks, etc., from making residential mortgages and scaring away other mortgage investors?

Bill Frey, president of Greenwich Financial Services, and some other investment honchos, are challenging the legality of such curious reinterpretations of the sanctity of contracts.

See:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2008/db2008121_173068.htm

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And readers might listen to this from Ben Fishel of Media Matters on radio talk shows:

http://clips.mediamatters.org/static/video/embed/radiomontage-20081113-2.mov

Two works from the NetWorks 2008 show. Above, "Fizzy Laughter #5,'' graphite, gouache on paper, by Jacqueline Ott. Below, "Pig,'' engraved copper, by Jonathan Bonner.

The show has three venues:

1) The Newport Art Museum -- http://www.newportartmuseum.org
2) AS220 Project Space -- corner of Washington and Matthewson
3) 5 Traverse Gallery -- http://www.5traverse.com

See other artists below.

The artists, besides the above:

HOWARD BEN TRE
UMBERTO CRENCA
RUTH DEALY
WALTER FELDMAN
MARK FREEDMAN
SAL MANCINI
XANDER MARRO
DENNY MOERS
LIZ PANNELL
TIM PHILBRICK
ANGEL QUINONEZ
CW ROELLE
JIM WATKINS
TOOTS ZINSKY

That Patrick Purcell, who runs the Boston Herald, is taking over as head honcho of Rupert Murdoch's Ottaway newspaper chain, which runs the dailies on Cape Cod and in New Bedford, might presage some kind of advertising deal and even some news-sharing by the papers and their Web sites in eastern Massachusetts. Purcell is an old pal and former employee of Mr. Murdoch.

That Mr. Purcell will remain as chief at the Herald also suggests that the press lord might want to get back into the Boston media world in a big way --- perhaps with a Herald-local-TV-station combo, federal regulations allowing. (Purcell also has some alluring real estate -- the tract at the entrance to downtown Boston where the Herald sits. When the economy comes back, it could be a bonanza.)

(My friend Walter Brooks's commentary on such media matters in CapeCodToday.com is well worth following. He knows most of the cast of characters.

In any event, the news is probably not good for the beleagured Boston Globe, which The New York Times would probably like to sell ASAP. Someone would buy it, but not at what The Times still apparently needs for it. (The Times would also like to close down its International Herald Tribune unit. I'd guess they'd do it within the next year or so.)

Another plant not here

To slightly adjust Mark Twain's line about congressmen:

"Suppose you're an idiot, suppose you're a {fill in the blank}, but I repeat myself.''

Volkwagen's decision to put its new U.S. auto plant in Chattanooga when Quonset Point, with its location, transport facilties and space, would on the face of it be much better for the facility, with its high-paying jobs, recalls just how inept our region has been in obtaining and keeping manufacturers, even though we'd seem to have so much going for us on paper.

Quonset's wasted potential is at world-historical levels.

It is, I guess, a failure of leadership, or a triumph of fatigue or of Rhode Island's tribal politics.

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New Haven goes higher

New Haven used to be a nice middle and lower-middle class town. Then stupid urban renewal and the general decline of cities turned much of it into a menacing slum. But it is gradually getting better, as I discovered when I toured it a few weeks ago before a funeral. Investments by Yale and some gentrication by refugees from the suburbs (including economic refugees -- Connecticut suburbs are outrageously expensive) are making it look like it's got a spiffy future.

One sign: A $180 million redevelopment of a former store at 360 State St. began Monday in what might be the largest development project in the city in more than 20 years. The project will include 500 apartments, including 50 affordable units, a grocery store (they didn't forget!), other retail, a parking garage and an early-childhood education center. Not bad for a recession.

Which isn't to say that New Haven couldn't use a couple of new factories, too, to provide the jobs with which to pay the rents...

Here's a nice piece of work by my acquaintance Christopher Foss, a New Yorker

'State of Play'

By Christopher Foss

A year of this
and that, and before we know it,
lines streak our faces.
Telling the artfully arranged
mask from the real thing
is no longer the game it once was
for us sojourners veering now
so close to the road's edge
at every turn. And as we drive on,
the scenery on either side -
forests of recrimination, plains
of derring-do, pre-glacial remnants
of hope - grows opaque, as our attention
is drawn to the vanishing point ahead.

Day breaks
and that helps matters. Children
rustled off to school clutching
a beloved toy, secretly relish the routine
despite endless foot-dragging.
In the playground, playful yelps
impose a state of distraction
and this in turn begs the question:
distraction from what?
The main thing
is to hold the line against itself;
scan the digital persiflage, messages
in aim but not much else. Then:
look up from one's handheld
to acknowledge - or even admire! -
the state of play, new sights
along the road, and of course to locate
the vanishing point's reassuring shift
yet further up ahead.

Christopher Foss writes poems; he's plied his trade in advertising and corporate communications, but for several years now he has stated he "Will Work for Bud" if it also means helping companies with their social and environmental performance. He's done this kind of thing for the likes of IKEA and Coca-Cola.

Conflict of interest to the Nth power.

Astra-Zenecar, the maker of the statin drug Crestor, paid for a study hyping the very expensive, high-profit-margin drug (which has severe side-effects in some people). Findings appear in the (gullible?) New England Journal of Medicine.

The lead author of the study, Paul Ridker, a relentless businessman as well as physician, holds the patent on a lucrative medical test that would be very widely used if this drug takes off as much as the maker hopes. Already loaded, he'll make piles more.

The swelling problem of conflicts of interest in pharmaceutical development and marketing is a health problem in itself, as well as a major cause of spiraling health costs.

And the initial hype and lack of skepticism about this study may reflect the decline in the number of rigorous medical journalists -- and of rigorous journalists in general. Many of them of course have been laid off.

By Penelope Manzella, from ''Lost in Pawtucket series,'' 2008