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November 29, 2005
Ditto
At the start of the football season, I wrote an entry suggesting that fans keep an eye on the UNH Wildcats this year. I also made a plug for a new stadium. After Ricky Santos, David Ball & Co. turned in their terrific performance on Saturday (see the Monitor's coverage here, here and here), a reader of this blog found that entry and responded. I've posted the response with the entry ("Are you ready for some football?"), but since few readers are likely to find it there, here it is:
"I feel that if this state wants to keeps its good football team going, it better start forking over some money for a new stadium. I have heard many students tell me how the first thing they noticed was how pathetic our football stadium was and how their high schools had better fields.
"I also disagree with the comment that UNH should build acedemic facilities first because it is currently building a state of the art math center. A new football stadium will bring in more money for the university, allowing new chemistry facilities and other acedemic facilities to be built.
"And finally it is very embarrassing to see that Northern Iowa (the team that UNH will face this weekend in the quarterfinals) plays football in a dome that seats over 16,000 and UNH is just getting by with a stadium that seats 6,500. It is time for our 1940s stadium to be torn down and rebuilt."
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2005
A failure to communicate
The problems older Americans are having determining how to use the new Medicare prescription drug benefit represent a cautionary tale that goes beyond the issue at hand. They remind us that in our computer age the right words are more important than ever.
On today’s Opinion page, Victor Kumin of Warner wrote a short essay decrying the tangle of “information” he plowed through in his futile effort to figure out the prescription drug benefit. He reeled off a litany of dead ends, broken links and clumsy terminology.
Kumin is far from alone in being an intelligent person frustrated by the bottom line of the drug plan. Several people have written or called the Monitor to voice similar frustrations. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how much time you put in, they say, you can’t figure out what plan might be best for you. There is no there.
As a newspaper editor, I feel helpless about this. We’ve done some good local reporting on the prescription drug benefit, but if the companies offering the plans can’t provide clear, helpful information, how can we?
The confusion shows the value of communication skills. There’s a tendency to think the ease with which we can now transmit ideas and messages means it is also easy to get good information. But a smart society – a smart democracy – depends not on the fluidity or the volume of information. Rather it depends on the quality of the information and on the public’s ability to distinguish the good from the bad, the real from the bogus, the assertions from the facts.
We are a nation grounded in commerce. We know the marketplace is chaotic and can even be cruel, but we expect the interests of those selling goods to produce positive results. That is, in the present case, it is in the interest of health insurance companies not only to develop competitive products but also to be able to sell them. So why haven’t they?
There are only two answers. Either their executives did not come up with clear plans or they did but their PR people could not communicate them clearly.
Whichever is true, there are two lessons here that apply on a broader scale. There is a premium in the computer age not just on how to access information but also on how to process it. And in the marketplace of commodities, as in the marketplace of ideas, the ability to communicate is essential.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2005
Still speaking his mind
I miss Warren Rudman. As a U.S. senator from New Hampshire during the 1980s and early ’90s, Rudman was a remarkably candid politician. He had strong views, which were not always party boilerplate, and he wasn’t afraid to express them. After interviewing him or seeing him on the stump, I always thought: This is what politicians are supposed to be like.
I was reminded of that quality last night as I watched Rudman share his views on Frontline, which did a fine investigative piece sorting out who was to blame for the botched emergency response in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. You can see the program on New Hampshire Public Television (Channel 11) tomorrow night (Thanksgiving) at 10, so I won’t characterize the bottom line other than to give you this hint: Brownie didn’t do a heckuva job.
Rudman is quoted on camera several times, usually as a truth-teller after a spin or a moment of ideological claptrap.
One theme of the documentary is how President Bush praised FEMA under Bill Clinton during the 2000 campaign, then, once elected, turned FEMA’s top office into a political plum for unqualified people. The agency was further degraded and demoralized in the post-9/11 reorganization that created the Department of Homeland Security. This, even though one of the three biggest emergency threats in the nation was a terrorist attack! (Another was a Hurricane disaster in New Orleans.)
Anyway, back to Rudman. Post-9/11, everyone realized that the greatest need in emergency preparedness was better communication systems among first responders. But even with buckets of money to dole out, Homeland Security failed to make grants to cities and states contingent on creating such systems. On the Frontline piece, after Tom Ridge, the first boss at Homeland Security, tries to defend this failure, which was a huge problem in New Orleans after Katrina, reporter Martin Smith asks Rudman for comment.
Well, says Rudman, of course the federal government can attach strings when it doles out money. Of course Homeland Security could have made up-to-date communication systems the top priority and made sure they were in place.
The uninitiated might think such candor comes only because Rudman is now a senior statesman (he’s 75!) rather than an officeholder. But we who have been around awhile know that Rudman has always had a refreshing – and rare – habit of saying just what he thinks.
Oddly enough, the voters always liked him for it, too.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:49 PM | Comments (1)
Blessings
Ten things I’m thankful for:
1. America’s women and men in uniform. May they come home safe and soon.
2. Family. Let us lift a glass to the generations, old and new.
3. Our new refugees and immigrants, who have joined us to share in the American dream. May we learn from them and appreciate the new perspectives they bring to our communities.
4. Susan McLane and Beverly Leo, who will be missing from their families’ Thanksgiving tables for the first time this year. Both lived exemplary public lives. May others pick up their torches.
5. The prosperity that has blessed Concord and New Hampshire for so many years. May our generosity swell to match it.
6. Our schools and our teachers. May we see them for the gift they are.
7. The woods, the mountains, the lakes, the streams. May we be their worthy stewards.
8. Books. Share one soon with someone you love.
9. Art and music. May we pause from our cares to let them lift us.
10. The plenty of our tables. To borrow a line from an old movie whose title I forget: Good food, good meat, s’getting late, let’s eat.
Those are my blessings. Feel free to add yours . . .
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:31 AM | Comments (1)
November 22, 2005
New York, New York
Each year since the planes flew into the World Trade Center, I have made three business trips to New York City. The latest was last week. I don’t want to overstate the case, but these sporadic visits have given me a window into the city’s rise from its trauma.
During my times there the year or two after 9/11, there were new things to appreciate. Every time I saw a cop on the street or passed a firehouse, it was impossible not to experience awe, sorrow and gratitude. But a terrible solemnity had befallen the place, and a visitor could see and feel it. It was like a thick fog.
Then, on a trip last winter, my wife and I stopped at a street vendor’s cart on 5th Avenue where pashminas were on sale for $5 each. It was a frigid day, but women mobbed the cart and raided the colorful stacks. When one woman found the pashmina she wanted, she asked the salesman if it came with a box.
“Lady,” he said, “if you want a box, go to Bloomingdale’s.”
You may think it odd, but it was at this moment that it first occurred to me that New York might be emerging from the fog.
Two months ago, when I made my reservations for last week's trip, I had trouble finding a room. Oh, there were rooms, but being a country bumpkin, I gagged on the rates. To be honest, even with my employer picking up the tab, the $190-$250 rates of the last few years have made me feel guilty. But suddenly, well in advance, the hotels I usually book wanted $400 a night. At that price I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Eventually, I found a deal – or what passes for a deal in New York – on a cheap-tickets web site. But during our two-day stay, I quickly saw the good side of these high prices. They meant the city streets were crowded and vibrant. The cash registers were buzzing. Theaters, restaurants, department stores and museums were packed. New York was New York again.
Americans who lived through 9/11 will never be the same. Those who lost loved ones that day will live with the scars forever. But surely there is something to celebrate in the revival of culture and commerce on the streets of Manhattan.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2005
A walk along Casco Bay
This past weekend, we visited our son and his fiancée in Portland. It was not quite Indian summer, but as we walked the streets in light jackets, we felt the sun on our faces. On Sunday we window-shopped and stopped at Emerson’s, a store with books, old maps and prints. Then we headed for the waterfront.
A walking and biking trail rims the peninsula along Casco Bay. You leave the restaurants, bars, fisheries and lobster pounds in the wharf area and soon encounter less dense residential areas. A narrow-gauge railroad track runs beside the trail, and the train that runs on it stops at a railroad museum. On this fine day, men were hauling yachts and lesser craft out of the water for storage.
Before long, in some stretches, the built universe fell away, and it was possible to regard the elements with few distractions. Two old forts lie in the harbor, the Homeland Security of a past age. The bay itself was still, not at all like the rock-crashing symphony that enthralled the aged Winslow Homer and other artists out along the coast.
As we reached the tip of the peninsula, we looked uphill to East Promenade. Beyond the grassy expanse of a park where a young man was struggling to launch a kite decorated with the skull and crossbones, the rooftops of large houses all in a row peeked over the horizon. The scene beckoned us upward. Walking along the promenade itself, we satisfied our curiosity about the grand old New England houses to our right and the panoramic view of the bay to our left. As is our habit, we stopped to read the historic markers, including one on a bench, a memorial to a man who loved to sit on that spot and take in view.
Our son pointed out the widow’s walk on one stately mansion; on another, he showed us where the widow’s walk had once been. I wondered if it had been removed because it outlived its usefulness or because a new owner disliked its morbid connotation. Or maybe the elements blew it ro ruin.
Soon we were headed down the hill and back into town. It was a long, lovely walk, and it made me think about our hometown, Concord on the Merrimack.
The river is accessible in some places in Concord, and there are walks along it. But these are nature trails. Because an interstate highway runs between downtown and the river, you could walk down Main Street and never know Concord was a river town (or an old railroad town, for that matter). The idea of creating river access from downtown has been mentioned during long-range planning sessions for highway expansion, but it seems impractical.
Our walk in Portland reminded me of the great benefit of connecting a city’s commerce, history and living space with its natural environment.
Of course, that was only one thought as we rested our tired bones in a seafood café. Another was whether memories of this stroll in the sunshine would carry us through winter.
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:43 AM | Comments (3)
November 16, 2005
Q & A
We have received plenty of feedback about the new look of the Monitor. A couple of readers responded to this blog, some wrote notes that we published and a few made comments not for publication. There were questions embodied in many comments, and here are answers to a few of them:
The paper has more to see and less to read. Haven’t you dumbed down your content?
That certainly was not our intention. The driving idea behind the redesign was just the opposite. We wanted to create an environment that allowed good content to sell itself. That is, we wanted the words, pictures and information graphics to take predominance over color and graphics used in an ornamental or decorative way.
We have encouraged editors and reporters to present information in new ways, but we’re trying to do two things at once: allow busy readers to get more from the paper at a glance without sacrificing the in-depth reporting on state and local issues that only a local newspaper can provide.
Why don’t you put important national and international news on the front and most of the local content elsewhere in the paper?
We pay a lot of attention to national and international news, but as a job candidate once said in a critique, and I paraphrase: It’s clear from reading the Monitor that page one is a showcase for local and state news while Bush and Saddam can duke it out on page A-2 or even further into the A section.
We hope our nation-world report is smart and extensive. For a small newspaper, we devote a lot of space to it. We are also quick to move nation-world stories out front when the news warrants it. But local and state news remain the Monitor’s franchise.
Why so much focus on disease and death in the first week of the redesign?
Our redesign is content-driven. We have created three new beats after speaking with readers and assessing our content. The beats are aging, health care and the environment, subjects that seemed under-covered in our local report. We planned several stories for the first week of redesign – last week – to highlight our new beats. Meanwhile, Beverly Leo, whose decline we had been following in a continuing series, died the day before the redesign debuted. This, I think, led to the impression among some readers that we had too much “gloomy” news on the front page during the week.
We hope readers won’t judge us on the basis of any particular week’s content.
What happened to the Sunday political column?
Capital Beat remains a staple of the Sunday Viewpoints page. At the moment we are between State House reporters. Dan Barrick, who covered the State House, has been promoted to a local editing position. Eric Moskowitz, our Concord reporter, is moving to the State House. Sarah Liebowitz will cover the city. Eric will soon be reporting and writing Capital Beat. Sarah will take over Eric’s City Limits column.
p.s. More questions welcome, here or at letters@cmonitor.com
Posted by Mike Pride at 10:09 AM | Comments (2)
November 11, 2005
Real men (and women) don’t use leaf-blowers
At my house, one of the rituals of autumn is the raking of the leaves. The older I get, the harder it is on my arm and shoulder muscles, but part of me looks forward to it. One pleasure is in remembering raking with each of my sons, now off living their own lives.
This year, like nature itself, I was late. Weekend trips and guests, other chores and last weekend’s rain had kept me from the leaves. This would have been no problem except that in Concord the truck that comes around to suck up the leaves at the roadside comes only once, and you can never be quite sure when. At least I don’t know.
Yesterday, my wife Monique spotted the truck in the neighborhood. She had today off, so I enlisted her as my helpmate in a first-light assault on the leaves. We’d hardly begun when we heard the leaf truck one block over. I raked furiously while she lifted the piles of leaves into trash cans. Together we ran the cans to the curb, dumped them and headed back to the golden blanket of leaves in our back yard. All the while we listened for the truck and tried to gauge how near it was, how soon it might arrive.
Because of the speed with which we raked, I missed my normal reverie in this task. I missed concentrating on the sound of the leaves, although I smelled them in the sun and smelled their dampness in the shadows. There is always something interesting under the leaves, but today I paused only once over a discovery.
Near where we keep the trash cans, I was suddenly raking what I thought was broken glass. I called to Monique, asking if she knew what might have happened. Then I realized it was not glass but ice – a sheet of it that had formed on a trash can lid after the last rain and then slid off into the leaves. The work had heated us so that I was shocked it had been cold enough to freeze water and keep it frozen.
Of course, the ice sent the same message as the bare black maple branches pointing to the morning sky: It’s coming. Winter is coming.
The leaf truck was coming, too. We went in and made coffee, and when Monique looked out the front window, the leaves were gone.
It all went so fast.
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:29 PM | Comments (1)
November 10, 2005
Missed opportunity
As a military veteran, I’m in a small minority. At work, in town, most places I go, it is a rarity to run into another veteran.
I am proud to be a veteran, but I don’t belong to veterans’ groups or participate in veterans’ causes. Nevertheless, every year when Veterans Day comes around (Memorial Day, too), I can’t help but feel resentment.
I feel other things: the loss of friends and acquaintances from the Vietnam era, a reverence for my father and his fading generation, and gratitude to all Americans who lie in soldiers’ graves.
What I resent is that for nearly everyone, Veterans Day is just a day off, part of a three-day weekend. It doesn’t help that it is just another day at the office for me, but that is beside the point – or beside my point at least.
Veterans Day shouldn’t be a day off, especially for schools. Columbus Day (another bogus holiday) is just past, and Thanksgiving and its four-day weekend are coming soon, so it’s hard to argue that the kids need a break.
Schools could make Veterans Day meaningful by inviting veterans to history, geography and social studies classes and to general assemblies. The veterans could tell their stories and talk about what service to the country means to them. The students could ask questions and learn something about an aspect of life that few of them will experience but all of them should respect.
From my youth, I remember many encounters with old veterans. A contingent of World War I soldiers marched in Memorial Day parade, and my grandmother bought me a plastic poppie to wear in my buttonhole. As Cub Scouts, we once had a visit from a leather-skinned man in his 90s who had fought the Indians. This might not be a politically correct memory by 21st century standards, but for me it is a vivid connection with the past. As a boy, I often pestered World War II veterans for their stories, and was brushed off at least as often as I was rewarded. Many veterans lock their soldier past away.
I’m not suggesting that every kid will, or should, make the connections I did. But Veterans Day, like Memorial Day, is a lost educational opportunity.
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:59 AM | Comments (9)
November 08, 2005
Our new look
An invitation to those of you who’ve seen today’s Monitor: Please let us know what you think about it by posting messages on this blog. You can write letters to the editor or e-mail me at mpride@cmonitor.com, but I’d be glad to take comments here as well.
Today’s paper is the first based on a content-driven redesign we began more than two years ago. Both the content and design aspects are still works in progress (all the more reason for you to get in your two cents’ worth), but we know readers will see today’s paper as new because we’ve changed the typography. The last time we did that was in 1990.
Here are links to my Sunday column and Mark Travis’s column in today’s paper explaining the changes.
Hope you like the new Monitor.
p.s. Whether you've seen the paper or not, you're welcome to have a go at the contest we announced today. All you have to do is click on the icon at the upper right of our web site and write a caption for the Mike Marland cartoon you'll find there. The best caption wins the original cartoon, in color, with the caption inked in by Marland -- not to mention the eternal glory of having the cartoon and caption appear in the Monitor. The competition will be tough, I should add. By this afternoon, we had a dozen contenders.
Posted by Mike Pride at 09:20 AM | Comments (2)
November 03, 2005
Not ready for primetime
I suppose it is a sign of the grumpiness of a geezer, but for all his promise, I don’t think Seth Cohn, the Free State Project candidate on Tuesday ballot for the Concord School Board, is ready for the job.
I’ll admit the board is too plodding and homogeneous. It has too many lawyers, and too many of its members live in the same neighborhood. The board could use an iconoclast like, say, John Stohrer, who used to challenge the status quo.
Maybe Cohn would do the same thing. During his interview with our editorial board, he did not come across as a bomb thrower – someone who wanted to abolish public schools, as some libertarian extremists do. He seemed smart, earnest and articulate, committed to Concord, serious about serving. And he was anything but conventional.
In years past, I’ve occasionally pushed our editorial board to endorse such a candidate, but several things stopped me here. The main one was the wrong assumptions behind many of Cohn’s solutions for Concord schools. To cite just one example, when we asked him about all-day kindergarten, he said that kindergarten was “day care in a lot of ways” and suggested that he might favor a charter school approach because it would cost less.
There are aspects of day care in kindergarten, but they’re minor compared to the main mission. Kindergarten is a year for acclimating children to school and assessing their needs, and it is vital to public education. Every study I’ve seen shows kindergarten makes a huge difference in making successful lives. Some kids come from families where the house is full of books and they are read to regularly; some have never heard of Goodnight Moon. Most need some formal school to prepare them for first grade. If I ruled the world, I’d institute two-year half-day kindergarten for 4 and 5-year-olds over one-year, full-day kindergarten. The point is that Cohn, who has no children, seemed cavalier and dismissive about kindergarten.
Like him, I like the idea of charter schools. But so far they have proved to be impractical in New Hampshire, many of whose politicians have embraced them without figuring out how to pay for them. Before he proposes charter schools as an answer for Concord, Cohn needs a plan for financing them. He says they’d be a cheaper alternative, but that is neither a self-evident truth nor a primary argument for them.
If Cohn loses on Tuesday, I hope he’ll do some homework. He’s already been diligent and perceptive in finding out about Concord schools without ever having gone to one himself or sent a child to one. But he needs to know more. And he needs to ground his political philosophy – more personal liberty, more individual responsibility, less government – in the actual circumstances of the city’s schools and the state’s tax structure.
With a little work, he could become the iconoclast the school board needs.
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:22 PM | Comments (4)
November 02, 2005
History's echo
I’ve been reading The Secret Man, Bob Woodward’s short book on Deep Throat, the source who helped Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the scandal that sank Richard Nixon. W. Mark Felt, the FBI’s No. 2 man at the time, ended Washington’s long-running mystery early this year when he disclosed that he was Deep Throat.
The Secret Man is a good refresher course on how the scandal unfolded. It is also a fascinating account of the relationship between Woodward and Felt and of the factors that might have motivated Felt to help break the coverup. Some of his motives were noble, some weren’t.
I was already a newspaperman during the Watergate scandal. For a decade afterward, I read a Watergate book each year. There was no way anyone could keep up with all the memoirs and histories that rolled off the book presses, but I saw the scandal from many perspectives.
For me, the main thing new in The Secret Man is how central Mark Felt was to Woodward. He wasn’t just a source for the Watergate stories; in many ways he was their foundation. He was near the heart of the FBI's investigation of Watergate. Although his survival instincts could make him cryptic, he provided Woodward, Bernstein and the Washington Post with the assurance that their pursuit of the Watergate story was no wild goose chase. For months, it was a lonely, tedious, sometimes dangerous pursuit. The glory and the glamour came only later.
There was also a moment of resonance in reading The Secret Man. It was amazing to remember that Woodward and Bernstein were breaking stories damaging to Nixon right up until the 1972 election. In response, the White House denied the truth, threatened the Post and called the reporters liars and toadies for the Democratic Party. The coverup worked. Nixon won a landslide re-election despite all the despicable things he and his minions had done.
I heard an echo of this when I read E.J. Dionne’s column making the same point about the 2004 election campaign. The Bush administration did all it could in those months to cover up the unraveling of its case for going to war in Iraq and to slime those who were calling that case into question. The indictment of Scooter Libby last week was one result of the coverup. The first line of Dionne's column was: “Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?”
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:51 PM | Comments (1)
November 01, 2005
Why endorse?
During the last couple of weeks, the editorial board of the Monitor has interviewed 23 candidates for Concord’s city council and school board. Beginning Thursday, we’ll run editorials endorsing five candidates for the council and three for school board.
People often ask: Why endorse? Shouldn't elections be purely the voters’ prerogative, without the Monitor seeking to influence the outcome? Aren't endorsements obsolete – a throwback to the days when newspapers were party organs and any city of Concord’s size had at least one newspaper for each major party?
I think endorsements are a logical extension of what we do each day in the editorial columns: render opinions on matters of public interest. We are indeed trying to influence the election, but our editorials always seek to guide public opinion. Readers, of course, are free to skip or ignore the Monitor’s advice. They often have.
Our most important preparation for the endorsements is the interviews with the candidates. These are getting-to-know-you conversations that focus on the major issues facing the city and the schools. We are trying to determine whether the candidates, many of whom have never held public office, have the potential to grow into the job and why they hold the views they do.
One of our most important functions as an editorial board is to follow the council and the school board closely on an ongoing basis and to comment on their actions. Regular readers of editorials know our biases. For those who might not, we try to spell them out in the endorsements.
This year, for example, we’re wary of city council candidates who oppose the Langley Parkway. We think the appropriation for the parkway is likely to come before the council again in the future. In our view, the project is vital for the city and for two of its important institutions, Concord Hospital and St. Paul’s School. The years of delay caused by a few last-standers should not be rewarded with a council that will undo the super-majority necessary to make the parkway happen. We have editorialized in favor of the parkway for years, so this position should come as no surprise.
For both the council and the school board, Concord is blessed once again this year with a good field of candidates. There is little glory in these jobs – they are truly voluntary public service. Voters citywide will choose from among seven candidates for two at-large council seats and seven for three seats on the school board (the eighth, Pasquale Alosa, has dropped out). Wards 1, 2 and 7 have contested races for the council.
Whether or not city voters agree with the Monitor’s endorsements, they owe these candidates a good turnout next Tuesday.
Posted by Mike Pride at 11:59 AM | Comments (2)