Page 32 - Robert Whitcomb News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Gina Raimondo and Dan Mckee Good luck to new U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a smart former venture capitalist and Rhode Island governor who was most successful in the pre-pandemic part of her term, and her successor, Dan McKee, a soft-spoken former Cumberland mayor, education reformer and businessman. He’s taking over at a difficult time, of course, but, knock on wood, he’s probably escaped the worst crises of COVID-19, now that vaccinations are rapidly accelerating and the economy, in fits and starts, is reopening.   Mr. McKee, like Ms. Raimondo, is a moderate Democrat, which pr...

Lifespan and Care New England The plan for Lifespan and Care New England (CNE) to merge, if regulators approve it, would probably make Rhode Island health care more efficient. It would do this through integrating their hospitals and other units. That would do such things as speeding the sharing of patient information among health-care professionals and streamlining billing. Further, it would probably strengthen medical research and education in the state, much of it through the new enterprise’s very close links with the Alpert Medical School at Brown University, which, indeed, has pledged t...

and dry leaves –a sound you would not believe unless you’ve held your breath and heard it.’’ -- From “Snow,’’ by Elizabeth Tibbetts, a nurse and a Maine poet   “If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.’’ -- P.D. James (1920-2014), English detective novelist famous for her acute knowledge of human behavior and motivation and her sense of place.     View Larger + While driving on Route 95 early on Feb. 9, I was struck by the grayness of the sky and the salted road, the off-white of the snow on the roadsides and the lack of...

  “When the capital development of a country becomes a byproduct of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” -- Economist John Maynard Keynes in remarks on the stock markets in 1936. See the GameStop frenzy. It has been comforting to see the hedge funders unhappy and confused.     I’ve noticed  in the past few days far more Christmas wreaths still hanging on front doors than last year at this time, and holiday lights are lingering later, too. A way to ward off evil spirits or at least viruses?   View Larger + Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), the nature essayist...

a family aloft through hazy fall and hardy winter into sopping spring.’’       “Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.                 When things in the world in general and/or in your own little world in particular seem almost intolerably tense, you can’t beat wandering around in nature without an itinerary for relief.  I remember that fondly from my boyhood in a small, still partly rural, town on Massachusetts Bay. Alone, or with a pal or two, I’d go “exploring’’. And it was a good place to explore.