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Sunday, August 27, 2023 Robert Whitcomb, Columnist View Larger + Robert Whitcomb, Column “Leafteach me to fallon the indifferent earth’’ — From “Late Summer,’’ by Anna Kimienska (1920-1986), Polish

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

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Robert Whitcomb, Column

“Leafteach me to fallon the indifferent earth’’

— From “Late Summer,’’ by Anna Kimienska (1920-1986), Polish poet, translated here by Grazing Drabik and David Curzon

Read the whole poem:

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“So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell.’’

-- John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960), American financier and philanthropist

(It’s easy if you’re a billionaire.)

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PHOTO: File

Law of Unintended Consequences Continued:

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (whew!), or PFAS, for short, are man-made chemicals used in a very wide range of consumer products, including clothing, because they repel water, oil and some other stuff and can withstand high heat. Think Teflon. This stuff was invented in the ’30s, but only widely used since the ’50s.

A very handy and convenient invention! But increasing scientific evidence suggests that PFAS, which can last in the environment a very long time {they’ve been dubbed “forever chemicals”), badly hurt human health, including by increasing cancer risk.

I’ve been thinking of this lately while helping a physician friend work on a book centered on a son’s colon cancer, which killed him at 32. This cancer doesn’t usually show up in people until they’re quite old.

I learned that there’s been a notable increase in various cancers among young adults in recent years. Might PFAS have been a factor? Research continues.

These chemicals have been used more and more over the past few decades because of such consumer changes as the consumption of fast foods, whose packaging tends to be heavily laden with PFAS. And consider water in plastic bottles. (Stick with glass if you can.)

Take a look:

This reminds me of other health hazards associated with things that were long considered boons. Maybe the best example is lead.

Lead paint was very widely used until the Feds finally completely banned it in 1977, long after its dangerous qualities became known. But then, lead paint’s durability compared to, say, latex paint, was much appreciated even as small children ate paint chips and suffered permanent brain damage as a result.

Then there was the menace of lead used in gasoline. Back in the 1920s, lead began to be added to gasoline as an “antiknock” agent to boost engine performance. But evidence accumulated over the decades that lead in the air was a highly toxic pollutant, particularly dangerous, as is lead paint, to children, with their developing brains.

The United States didn’t start phasing out leaded gasoline for cars until the 1975 model year. While by the mid-'80s, most U.S. gasoline was unleaded, leaded gasoline for passenger cars wasn't fully banned in the U.S. until 1996.

But leaded gasoline is still allowed for aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment and marine engines.

Five words come to mind in all this: corporate lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

Toxin Free USA has a list of things you can do to minimize your exposure to PFAS:

Then there was the rage for radium, exposure to which can cause cancer:

This reminds me of a teacher I had in the seventh grade with the wonderful name of Roderick Hagenbuckle. While presiding at the lunch table, he’d tell us, in a jolly voice:

“Eat up! It’s good for you – makes you sick.’’

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PHOTO: Shaun Dakin, Unsplash

It was good to hear that the U.S. Interior Department has approved Revolution Wind’s big (700 megawatts) project, southwest of Martha’s Vineyard. The project could provide electricity for 350,000 homes and create about 1,200 construction jobs.

The department has also approved the Vineyard Wind 1 project, off Massachusetts, the South Fork Wind project, off Rhode Island and New York, and the Ocean Wind 1 project, off New Jersey.

But the regulatory approval process moves at glacial speed, and litigation always threatens to stop such projects in their tracks. Big factors are nimbyism by coastal residents (often led by affluent summer people) who say that they don’t want to look at wind turbines, as well as opposition by some in the fishing sector because of the mostly temporary disruptions in the areas where they’d be installed. Of course, the damage caused by man-made global warming happens everywhere, in varying degrees of severity.

And the supports for offshore turbines act as artificial reefs that draw fish. Wouldn’t fishermen like that?

Installing any energy source creates problems, but let’s make rational comparisons….

The complaints by offshore wind foes are outstandingly hypocritical. Consider that the fossil-fuel burning that wind power is meant to partly replace poses an existential risk to fishing interests by dangerously warming and acidifying the water and disrupting major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream. Fossil-fuel burning destroys food sources of marine animals, including whales.

Then there are those pesky oil spills and the disruptions to marine animals by speeding oil tankers.

When you look closely at opposition to coastal and offshore wind projects, you see money from – you guessed it! – the oil and gas industry.

Take a look

https://electrek.co/2022/04/18/the-first-us-offshore-wind-farm-has-had-no-negative-effect-on-fish-finds-groundbreaking-study/

https://grist.org/politics/republicans-fossil-fuels-the-gop-donors-behind-a-growing-misinformation-campaign-to-stop-offshore-wind/

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Providence Place Mall PHOTO: File

I trust that the owners of the Providence Place mall are aware of a new report.

It says that contrary to the general gloom and doom, many malls, especially those catering to the affluent, are doing very well in the post (maybe) COVID world.

But Providence Place has an unusual local market mix of low-and-middle-income shoppers and affluent shoppers. It’s near both a rich neighborhood (College Hill) and poor ones, such as South Providence and Olneyville. So, how much of the report applies to it?

Most people, including the young, who have grown up with online shopping, still like to see (and, in the case of clothing, try on) stuff in person that they might want to buy – and not just rely on screens. And malls have become perhaps America’s most important meeting places, or, for some, especially teens, just a hangout, which can lead to trouble….

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It’s sad that the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is pulling its College of Visual and Performing Arts out of downtown New Bedford, where it has been since 2001, in the old Star Store. The UMass operation has helped make the Whaling City an important arts destination. The New Bedford Whaling Museum and the New Bedford Art Museum have been key draws, too.

The UMass announcement came with little warning.

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Efforts are intensifying to replace the Massachusetts state seal. The current version was adopted in 1900 and shows a Native American under a disembodied arm holding a sword, by implication held by British colonists, who seized control of New England starting in the first third of the 17th Century. I’ll take the risk of being called politically correct and call the seal racist.

For a new seal, how about including images of a hill (as in the Berkshires or Great Blue Hill) and a lighthouse (symbol of the coast, knowledge and inspiration).

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A bright side of all the rain we’ve had this summer: Biologists predict that fall foliage will be more vivid than usual. With accelerating global warming, what will foliage look like in 20 years?

Global warming has added low-lying autumn color in New England: Poison ivy, whose leaves turn vivid colors in late summer – before most other foliage -- has been growing faster and bigger in our region, and much more toxic.

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Vladimir Putin PHOTO: Russian News Feed

Czar Vladimir Putin is well-practiced in killing real or suspected foes. Having them poisoned or pushed out windows (“suicide!” “tragic accident!”) are favorite means. And now we have the apparent fiery end of Putin’s fellow mass-murderer Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary army (the Wagner Group), who led a failed mutiny in June. The small plane in which he was traveling crashed Wednesday near Moscow.

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China’s deepening economic woes were probably inevitable given the rigidity of its one-party-run economy ruled over by dictator Xi Jinping. It lacks the flexibility to respond to complicated changing domestic and international conditions. The desire to maintain control trumps even the desire to preside over prosperity.

Look in Our Mirrors

“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.’’

-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and scholar

Some of those who watched/heard the festival of brazen lies, obfuscations, evasions, ignorance, hilarious hypocrisy, Kremlin-style disinformation, demagoguery, sycophancy to the party’s caudillo, and desperate ambition copulating with moral cowardice (with a few very brief edifying exceptions, mostly involving a dignified Nikki Haley) that was last Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate may remember this typically banal remark by the unctuous Mike Pence to the glib hyper-narcissist Vivek Ramaswamy, who is trying to position himself to be the obese orangeman’s running mate.

“We {America} don’t have an identity crisis, Vivek. We just need government as good as our people.”

But what’s so “good’’ about the American people, tens of millions of whom worship a traitor, thief, con man and pervert and many millions more who are too lazy to vote? For that matter, if the American people were so “good,’’ why would the contenders in the debate be so bad? Rather than blame the politicians, blame the voters, including those who vote by not voting.

The GOP/QAnon presidential-primary contest, in which some candidates compete to promote Trump’s vast lies and even come up with some new and highly creative bogus conspiracy theories, increasingly resembles a movie about organized crime.

Yasser, That’s Our Baby

Why has the four days’ beard become so popular among young men? It’s as if they can’t decide whether to have a real beard or be clean-shaven, so they end up with something that looks like someone splattered pebbly dark paint on their faces. They remind me of Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), the Palestinian president and occasional terrorist famous for his scraggly beard. He said a skin condition made it painful to shave. (Indeed, it can be.)

Meanwhile, will there be an eruption of tattoo removal in the next few years? I hope so.

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As I well remember, schoolyard fights, mostly among young boys, are often the first introduction to physical conflict, including agonizing about whether to punch or back off (and be considered a coward). Those bloody noses are very educational. Violence, after all, always lurks.

Maybe only neurologists can explain precisely why such early memories come flooding back in our “golden years’’. Oh, yes, then there’s getting your skin sliced from going down badly maintained slides and narrowly avoiding (or not) a spinal injury from falls in a jungle gym. But personal-injury lawyers weren’t lurking so close in the ‘50s.

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal, and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.