The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly…this week in Rhode Island

The Good

A mid-week Christmas

Giving most of us an extended time off, we think re-engaging with family and friends could not have come fast enough. And time to refresh and renew, right along with it.  The rituals of holiday preparation, the “wax-on, wax-off” of kitchen preparations and clean-up. A mid-week holiday followed by one next week should give us all time to pause, take a deep breath, and plan our 2020 path.

The Bad

Mayor Jorge Elorza for Governor?

Mayor Jorge Elorza, Mayor of Providence, gave some indication about running for Governor to the Boston Globe. Providence has more challenges than it ever has; challenges that can’t be solved with a bigger and better PVDFest or washing machines in schools. Or spending time talking about pie in the sky, unworkable, bus tunnels under Kennedy Plaza. The Mayor admits he did very little to address the school crisis in Providence, and this year lost administration of the schools to the state of Rhode Island. The Mayor who admits he can’t afford to pay for daycare, and that is why he takes his young son (no longer a baby) around with him; meanwhile thousands of people who make far less do not have an option like this – and have to figure it out. Providence seems to us to be moving backwards. And that does not mean the next path for this sub-performing Mayor is to Governor of Rhode Island.

Buildings without parking

Not everyone walks during their work day. Nor are scooters an option for most of us. Building new buildings, and incorporating great tax incentives, while having NO parking provisions are not the path to success. Witness the CIC (Wexford building) with two unrented top floors.  An informal – would you move your company to this building – survey at a recent business event was unanimous in concern about parking for their clients and customers, even if they could figure it out for their employees.  Law firms have moved out of Providence because workers don’t want to work in an increasingly dangerous city  to walk. With low unemployment, it’s not just how much can you pay someone, but is it convenient to my life? Can I come and go easily – fetch my kids, go to a class, a meeting, get in and out of the city for lunch, etc. Building a Xanadu on an island that you can’t get to from here, is proving – not just speculating – to be bad business.

The Ugly

Despair

The diseases of despair are reflected most in dependencies – alcoholism, drug addiction. But despair also reflects itself in mental illness. When a mother, as we believe as of this writing, takes her children from the safety of their car seats and flings them off a parking garage roof, and then follows them to their death, there is no explanation that fits. Despair? Murder of little children – your own? How could there have been no other options that this mother could see?  But you see, there is no rational explanation for this. People will focus on Northeastern’s parking garage danger, or how stressful motherhood is, or how no one saw this coming, though there will surely be warning signs, how maybe even she was engaged with a system to help her. We don’t know all the details. And we will never know what turns a person’s mind towards a moment of utter hopelessness and despair – with no way out.