Blog Archives

10/29/23

10/29/2023

THE PARK'S FLAG WAS AT HALF-MAST. BUT WHY?

I WAS AT FORT ADAMS STATE PARK in Newport, R.I., yesterday in the closing innings of summer – actually it had been fall for a while, but whispers of balmy weather now extend up to November, most likely because of a treacherously warming climate.
   In any case, the temperature reached an amazing 75 degrees, and the TV forecasters said that this would truly be the final, final day before winter dug its claws into New England. A goodly number of visitors, dog walkers and parents and grandparents pushing baby carriages heeded the forecast. Two huge cruise ships were anchored in the harbor between the park and the more than two-mile arc of the Newport Bridge; sail boats of all configurations darted up and down Narragansett Bay, on their way to or returning from the Atlantic Ocean.
   The world seemed at rest at the giant fortress itself – a massive stone structure whose military claim to fame is that it was never actually engaged in military action since its creation in the 1850s as a guardian of the Bay.
   Instead, since its transfer in 1965 to the state, the 105-acre park has served as the very definition of a swords-into-plowshares conversion. It’s now home to the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, sailing clubs, rugby and soccer matches, weddings, dog shelter fundraisers, antique car shows, shore fishing and mainly a magnet for anyone craving a walk in the park.
   I glanced up at the fort’s huge American flag against the backdrop of an all blue sky, and noticed that the flag was at half-mast.
   Why?

A FLAG AT HALF-MAST means something awful has happened. The symbolism is as frightening as it is mysterious. There’s never a message, a sign or loudspeaker to explain why the flag has been dropped to the halfway point.
   There could be so many reasons.
   Was it the tragedy in Israel and the Gaza Strip? On Oct.7, the terrorist organization, Hamas, had attacked Israel in the most savage ways imaginable, brutally killing mostly civilians, and capturing hundreds as hostages to become cruel bargaining tokens in week and months to come.
   Was the flag lowered in sorrow for the thousands of Gazans, mostly civilians, killed and wounded in Israels punishing air strikes and now by a much feared ground attack?
   Had Fort Adams’ flag been lowered, not in support or opposition to either side, but in protest of war itself?
   Another possibility: maybe the flag was lowered in sorrow and sympathy for what had recently taken place in tiny Rhode Island’s giant northern New England neighbor, where a crazed gunman had slaughtered 18 people in Lewiston, Maine in the latest Big-Number-Murder-by-Gun episode?
   Was the flag lowered because, following the shootings, some terrified Maine residents went on a buying spree, rushing to gun stores so that they’d have something to fight back with?

NOW, MY IMAGINATION was wandering.   Had deep blue Rhode Island lowered the American flag in protest of the election of Mike Johnson as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives? Johnson, a seemingly pleasant and bookish looking Congressman from Louisiana, had been among Republicans working to overthrow the election of President Joe Biden, allowing Donald Trump to override the Constitution.
   Was the flag lowered here in Rhode Island, the birthplace of religious freedom, because Speaker Johnson seemed eager to impose his faith on the rest of the nation. Or because, speaking of the Lewiston massacre with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Johnson had spewed nonsense:
   “The end of the day, it’s — the problem is the human heart,” Johnson had said. “It’s not guns, it’s not the weapons. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves and that’s the Second Amendment, and that’s why our party stands so strongly for that.”
   Was the flag lowered because Speaker Johnson and his fellow insurrectionists would just as soon turn over Ukraine to the invading Russians?
   Was it dropped because of the accelerating pace of man-made global warming that will make the earth uninhabitable?
   Had the Fort Adams flag been lowered to acknowledge the relentless peril facing our democracy, because Donald Trump, a would-be dictator, dressed for Halloween as a clown, stands a realistic chance of winning a second term?

FACT IS, that the flag could be lowered for any hundreds of reasons. That is the peril in which we all live every day, but which we mostly ignore, mistakenly thinking that, as a country, we are immune from all of these multiple catastrophes, and that every day is just a walk in the park.
   For the record, when I got home, I looked on the state’s website, and found that R.I. Gov. Dan McKee on Oct. 26 had ordered flags lowered at state facilities, and to “remain at half-staff until sunset on October 30, 2023 in memory of the victims of the horrific mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.”
   Made sense, I suppose.

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10/14/23

10/14/2023

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AT A RHODE ISLAND STREET FAIR,
THE HAMAS TERROR SEEMED CLOSE

NEWPORT'S Broadway street fair, Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023

JON JONES and his mother, Judy, prior to his band's performance.

MY WIFE AND I went to a street fair today in our hometown, Newport, R.I., where “We Own Land,” the band in which our son, Jonathan, is a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, was performing.
   It was just a week ago in Israel - on a previous Saturday that none of us cannot stop thinking about – that the Hamas terrorist organization, which rules the Palestinian ghetto known as the Gaza Strip, conducted one of the most savage atrocities of our lifetime.
   So, as I took pictures of Jonathan and his mother; and as Judy and I walked around the fair, then listened to the band, I reimagined one of the most horrible events that had occurred last week, the attack on the “rave,” in which hundreds of concertgoers were slaughtered.
   What would it have been like if terrorists today swept into Newport’s Broadway on hang gliders, pickups and motorcycles and began machine-gunning people lined up at the food stands, taking my wife hostage as she was getting a gigantic ice cream cone at the Ben & Jerry’s tent, turning their guns on Jonathan and the other We Own Landers, butchering the small children running around to the music in front of the stage?
   One thing that I cannot get my mind around is how each Hamas terrorist, one by one, individually, could bring himself to do such things, to shoot innocents, burn their houses, hunt and destroy babies?
   I know that people do such things. Americans slaughtered its indigenous peoples, lynched and otherwise murdered Blacks, tortured and killed gay people; that it’s true that many, maybe most of us, can and do become savages, given the right circumstances. American soldiers in every war commit atrocities, police who are supposed to protect us, shoot citizens in the back and choke them to death while the cameras roll.
   Still, I ask: Why didn’t you, individually, say, “No, this I won’t do.”
   It’s a question asked throughout history, certainly after the Holocaust and World War II. And there are lots of answers, none of the satisfactory. We were attacked; we were mistreated; we were indoctrinated; we were impoverish; our mothers wanted us to; we are patriots; we were ordered to; we had no alternatives.
   The Hamas assault on Israel will stand in history as an unforgettable, inexcusable horrific outrage.

"WE OWN LAND" on stage at the Broadway street fair. Jonathan Jones is the guitarist at the far left

I AM UNCOMFORTABLE writing about this.
   As a white Protestant, who grew up in Vermont, I have no lifetime insight into what it is like to be a Jew; what it means to be among the most attacked people in history; and I have no real understanding intellectually, emotionally, of what it means to Jews anywhere to have finally established a nation-sanctuary in Israel.
   Certainly, as the son of an Episcopal minister, I was not raised in the tradition of Jewish religion or culture. There is some suspicion in my family that my maternal grandfather may have had Jewish origins. But he had no impact on my life, any more than did my paternal grandmother, who had German roots, and who, my parents hinted, was an anti-Semite.
   Growing up, I was thrilled by the establishment of Israel. It took a while for me to learn that it was not as clear cut as saying that the tiny bit of geography that became Israel was “a land without people, for a people without land.” That, a man who’d served as a tank commander in the Israeli army before becoming a non-violence worker in Rhode Island, was a myth.
   Still, I cheer that Israel exists; and that as a young nation, after it was attacked by its neighbors, who wanted it and every Jew in it, destroyed, fought back, making good on the post-Holocaust pledge of “Never again.” I regard Israel as a place of hope, and believe that its democratic traditions mirror our own severely flawed democratic aspirations.
   I also believe that Israel’s democracy has soured – as has our own – and that its right-wing government dishonors the idealism of the younger Israel. The treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is one of oppression, allowing its people no real rights, leaving them increasingly without hope; the settlement movement blatantly snatches away territory, undermining a realistic promise of a Palestinian homeland.
   None of which excuses what Hamas did a week ago. It remains the very definition of a war crime, especially its brutal attack on civilians and the taking of hostages.

SHOULD I HAVE AN OPINION, living so far away, lacking the history that is personal, visceral and immediate to every Jew?
   Maybe, as a ordinary person trying to fathom evil, imagining the what-ifs as I attended that Newport street fair and concert; and perhaps as a nominal taxpayer of Israel’s greatest champion, the United States.
   But I’m concerned about what seems - at least to me - our country’s lop-sided approach to what the hideously persistent Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has outlined as a response to the Hamas war crime: Bomb the smithereens out of Gaza; shut off its electricity; turn off its water; starve the Gazans; “warn” them to leave their homes, pending an imminent land invasion to exterminate Hamas, without offering them a practical way to relocate.
   What Netanyahu is orchestrating is also a war crime.
   I have no idea what the “appropriate” Israeli response should be. As President Biden says, the country has a right to defend itself. If Israel does nothing, it surely will perish. And every attempt at “peace” can be foiled by terrorists who can do so much damage with just a bit of advance planning. There are Palestinians who absolutely hate Jews, and Jews who absolutely hate Palestinians. And young men can and will do unspeakable things.
   I’m stuck with this belief:
   One war crime can’t be cured by a second one.
   There is always a third way. I just don’t know what it is.
   All that I know is that today I went to a street fair, and I couldn’t get the Hamas evil out of my head, or the fear that Israel means to do something, perhaps on a larger scale.
   We left our son’s performance and the street fair early. Not because machine-gunners arrived by hang gliders, pickups and motorcycles, but because it had started to rain.

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10/3/23

10/3/2023

2 Comments

VACATIONING IN A TINY PLACE
WHERE THE LANDSCAPE HAS BEEN SAVED
AND DEMOCRACY IS ON THE AGENDA

THE BLOCK ISLAND TOWN HALL, October 2, 2023

MY WIFE AND I don’t take many vacations, but when we do, one must activity includes going to a meeting the town council of the place where we’re at, depending on whether the local government’s and our schedules coincide.
Luckily for us, the Block Island town council (legally, the New Shoreham council) was meeting on the second evening of our one-week stay on what is a spectacular, tiny chunk of rock and sand 12 miles off the Rhode Island mainland.
   We made sure that we had an early supper, so as not to be tardy; in fact, part of our adventures earlier in the day had been to check out the parking situation at town hall, ensuring there’d be sufficient room for a car arriving with two off-islanders.
   Everything went as planned, and when the meeting ended – it SEEMED like two hours later - some of the council members cheerfully quizzed us as to whom we were and why we were there. In a town of some 1,000 year-round residents, strangers at a council meeting warrants an investigation.
   We told them that’s just what we do on vacation.
   What we didn’t tell them was that this year the story was more complex, and had everything to do with Donald Trump, who had spent HIS day in a New York courtroom, insulting the judge and prosecutors who would determine to what degree he has been a business cheat.
   It would have taken too much time to explain the connection between Defendant Trump and the Block Island council, and even if we’d tried, it would have sounded as batty as the desperate, deranged times in which we all are trapped.
* * *
THE MEETING ITSELF, to put it mildly, was insufferably routine, especially given recent dramatic happenings on a island where extraordinarily generous landowners and philanthropists have conserved nearly half of the island’s stunning landscape as forever-open-space, but where, for the most part, only the Superrich can afford homes that run into the millions of dollars.
   A big event had happened Aug. 18, when one of the town’s landmarks, the Harborside Inn, was destroyed by a fire so fierce that crews and equipment from mainland departments had to be brought by ferry to assist island firefighters. No one was killed, and nearby wooden buildings were largely spared. The cause may have been connected with grease buildup in the kitchen exhaust system, and there was controversy about whether the place was appropriately inspected.

AFTERMATH of the fire that destroyed the Harborside Inn Aug. 18

By the time we arrived, more than a month later, demolition crews were hauling away the last piles of debris, including, bizarrely, a giant mound of bicycle frames and parts, all that remained of a bike rental outlet that had been next to the inn.
   And the week before we got there, ferry service to and from the island was suspended for several days because of rough water caused by an ocean storm most of us weren’t paying attention to – a disruption that was especially difficult for island businesses dependent on tourism and for which every summer day counts on the bottom lines of their fragile balance sheets.
   None of which was discussed at the particular town council meeting we attended Oct. 2.
   Nope. The agenda was spectacularly mind-numbing, of the sort that makes you wonder why five presumably sensible men and women would want to serve on the council in the first place, much less seek reelection once they got a of taste of what local government is really about.
   The Block Island town hall is a modernistic, squeaky clean building, and the council chambers are comfortable but spare, the council members seated behind a long desk at the front, facing rows of chairs for the audience, reminding me of the profound simplicity of early New England meeting houses. An ultra-modern addition is a giant TV screen on one wall, so that much of council business can be conducted remotely over the Internet, a holdover benefit of the Covid years.
   Indeed, much of the “action” this evening included on-screen presentations from consultants, who might have been on Mars, advising the town about reconstruction of its school building and an ongoing upgrade of the municipal website.
   The town planner, who could have been on the moon, explained the convoluted process of harmonizing town zoning ordinances with recently enacted state laws.
    A big chunk of discussion had to do with Agenda Item 11 , labeled: “Discussion and act on requesting the Recreation Board and Staff to create a short and long term recreation strategy/plan regarding new and potentially retrofitted assets (courts, fields, etc.) on town land.”
   As it turned out, what this was really about was pickleball, in part whether the town’s sole outdoor basketball court, and one or two of its tennis courts, might be converted into pickleball courts. I’m guessing here that that the obscure wording of the agenda item, whether deliberately or not, avoided the tiny town council chambers from being overrun by pickleball fanatics, tennis and basketball players worried they might be shoved aside by the pickleballers, and neighbors panicked by the prospect, real or imagined, of noise, traffic and parking conflicts. No decisions were made, other than to have the town staff look into present and future recreational needs in a place where land and resources are finite and precious.
   Toward the end of the agenda was something I thought might provoke some controversy. When I used to cover local town councils and school committee as a newspaper reporter, I always hoped some end-of-the-meeting subjects might result in an outbreak of “trouble,” a commodity otherwise known in the trade as news.
   In this case, the town manager was proposing that a long-serving lieutenant be named interim chief of the police department following the sudden resignation of the former chief. I wondered whether such an appointment might stir up debate, given the sensitivity of the post in a town often swarmed by alcohol-infused tourists, plus the possibility that an interim appointment might lead to a permanent one, much to the chagrin of other chief-hopefuls. Nope. Both the council and the lieutenant were delighted with the idea and the meeting quickly came to a close.
* * *
SO WHY DID A FUN COUPLE from off-island spend a precious evening of a short vacation at the New Shoreham R.I. town hall?
   In previous vacations, we’d found that sitting in on a town council meeting is a way to get a flavor of the place we’re visiting. We did so once at the West Tisbury select board’s meeting on Martha’s Vineyard, although it was so long ago that I don’t remember what exactly we learned.
   Many years ago, during another Block Island visit, we went to a council hearing on a proposal to build a wind turbine at the town rubbish transfer station, an attempt to cut notoriously high electricity costs for municipal buildings. It was the first time we got a taste of how controversial wind power can be. Indeed, the proposal failed, although ironically, five giant turbines later were installed off Block Island, setting the stage for larger offshore projects off New England.
   But the reason this year’s vacation visit to a town hall was different: it was both personal and emotional.
   Donald Trump, the most evil and vile president in U.S. history – a racist, liar, a rapist, insurrectionist, defendant in numerous court cases and a would-be autocrat – stands a real chance of regaining his office in an election just 12 months from now, an event which will mean a catastrophic collapse of democracy in every corner of America.
   So, what better way to spend part of our vacation than in a place where democracy is practiced in its most primal and immediate form?
   Don’t get me wrong, small town governments are far from perfect. Cheating, stealing and ineptness are as alive and well at the grassroots as they are in state and national capitals.
But most men and women who work at the town level give up big chunks of their lives to make their communities work. They worry about limited recreation “assets” in the face of a national pickleball craze, and whether the municipal website can be improved to give the public a better idea of what they do. They care about the quality of construction at their kids’ school. And whether a man who has given 20 of his best years as a police officer might finish his career as his department’s leader.
   All of which may disappear in an election now just a year away.
   But last night it felt good to be in a beautiful place, where democracy was in full swing and was the most important item on the agenda.

THE NORTH LIGHT, Block Island