It’s spring cleaning season, time to air out briefly a few editorial comments before they get musty.
Our colleague Alex Hanson’s recent profile of John Stomberg, who will retire in June after 10 years as director of Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art, yielded several valuable insights into what makes an administrator’s tenure successful.
One is that he was in it for the long haul, while the job was a stepping stone to bigger things for several of his predecessors. “I was looking for a long run,” he told Hanson. “It takes you four or five years to do anything.” This is a truth both out of fashion and refreshing to hear at a time of constant churn among top managers in municipal government, school districts, nonprofits and businesses. Continuity of vision and implementation is a big deal.
Isn’t there something a little unseemly about the Woodstock Resort Corp., owner of the historic Woodstock Inn & Resort, insisting on demolishing two vacant historic homes in the historic village of Woodstock? Historically poor judgment?
With the Boston Red Sox off to a disappointing start to the 2026 season, fans have taken to showing their displeasure by chanting, “Sell the team, sell the team.” This is directed at principal owner John Henry, a billionaire who is thought to be nickel-and-diming the operation by not investing sufficiently in star free agents to bolster the roster, while the team charges fans among the highest ticket prices in Major League Baseball. Henry was at Fenway Park on one occasion for this bit of unpleasantness, which is likely to get uglier if the losses continue to pile up. Even the uber-rich have rough days.
Speaking of which, the Washington Post reported recently that being a millionaire just isn’t what it used to be. “In many parts of the country, $1 million has become the starting point for the American Dream,” according to the Post. About one in six American households now has a net worth of $1 million or more. But rising costs have eaten into the value of a cool million. It takes about $2.1 million now to be equivalent to what $1 million was 30 years ago. The Post interviewed nearly a dozen newly minted millionaires, and “not a single one said they felt wealthy in today’s economy.”
For context, the story also pointed out that the top 10% of American households hold two-thirds of total household wealth and are worth an average of $8.1 million, “while the bottom half of households, measured by wealth, hold just 2.5% of the total and are worth $60,000 on average.” There’s a lesson in here somewhere about getting what you want and getting what you need.
A member of the Editorial Board recently received a message from Dartmouth Health that he had a new “care procedure” scheduled, the details of which could be found in his “care journeys” on the D-H web portal. Since the procedure in question was a colonoscopy, it can be anticipated that this particular journey will require multiple unpleasant trips to the bathroom the night before. But the larger question posed by the use of the term health care “journeys” is, what’s the destination and estimated time of arrival? Actually, we all know how — if not when — this journey through life ends, and don’t necessarily want to be reminded of it when we seek health care.
Something’s happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear. Numerous jurisdictions in red and purple states are rebelling against the siting of ICE detention centers in their communities, and have successfully scuttled a number of them, as was the case in New Hampshire. The objections tend to be couched in terms of inadequate infrastructure or public safety concerns, but we can’t help but wonder whether even those who support mass deportation of immigrants find the notion of herding them into warehouses repellent.
Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, a Republican, said, “You could be for all kinds of things in principle, but you don’t think necessarily that they should happen right here.”
Our thought is that if you can’t countenance the consequences of your principles, maybe you should change your principles.