Brookings and the Uses and Abuses of Economic Statistics

A pet peeve of mine is the use of slipshod social science and statistics as a mantle to conceal a weakly supported claim.   I sometimes see this with the output of ideological think tanks, organizations whose dissemination model usually involves getting mainstream publishers to credulously disseminate their “reports,” or press releases.  Sometimes I feel compelled to debunk such reports (e.g., Pittelli, 2016).

This week I noticed an article in the Washington Post Wonkblog (Badger, 2016).  This Wonkblog article reported on an economic analysis from the Brookings Institution.  It claims that a look at the changes in some economic statistics for America’s 100 largest cities over the past five years shows that economic growth does not do much to help the poor and working classes.

To test the validity of this claim, I downloaded the statistics used by Brookings and did some work on them in Excel and Tableau, an excellent visualization program I am currently learning for a course in the Data Analytics program at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU.edu).

The Brookings article pointed out that “On average, the faster a metro economy grew, the more likely it was to experience improvements in inclusion [Brookings’ term for how well the poor are doing]” but then went on to refute a ridiculous strawman: “Yet growth in metro economies did not reliably improve all residents’ economic fortunes.”  Perhaps more important, the article’s headline was “In metro areas, growth isn’t reliably trickling down.” (Berube, 2016)

The Washington Post Wonkblog picked up the story with an even drearier headline (“All the people being left behind in America’s booming cities”).  The article disapprovingly quoted various business and Republican sources claiming that economic growth is the best way to help the poor and working class, told us that the Brookings report shows they are all mistaken, and ended by quoting an author of the Brookings report telling us that the report shows that the key to improving “inclusion” is increased government spending on the poor.

The Data

So what was all this based on?  Brookings took nine economic statistics, grouped them together in three groups of three, and gave the three statistics groups names which sound meaningful and important, namely: “growth,” “prosperity” and “inclusion.”  As these coinages are idiosyncratic, I will continue to put quotes around them.  In addition, Brookings’ and Wonkblog’s pessimistic reading of the Brookings statistics (primarily, that “growth” is not reliably leading to “inclusion”) is overblown for both statistical reasons and because the Brookings’ coinages are not meaningful or well-constructed.  I have three major issues with their conclusions:

First Issue

The Brookings “growth” measure covers the size of each city’s economy, whereas the “prosperity” and “inclusion” measures cover the per capita economy.  Naturally, growing cities attract workers from other cities with slower growth rates, and these workers – failed by their previous cities of residence – also benefit from a successful city’s growing economy.  But the positives of a city attracting new workers are overlooked by most of these statistics.  Indeed, to the extent a city is attracting new workers, its “prosperity” and “inclusion” measures will lag its “growth” measure, but these discrepancies are not a measure of urban failure, but rather of urban attractiveness.

Second Issue

Brookings claims of its “inclusion” statistic that:

Inclusion indicators measure how the benefits of growth and prosperity in a metropolitan economy are distributed among people. Inclusive growth enables more people to invest in their skills and to purchase more goods and services.

But these claims are not reasonably supported by the three statistics in question. 

Two of the parts of “inclusion” are Median wage and the Employment-to-population ratio (the share of all individuals aged 18 to 65 who are employed).  Neither of these measures tell us much about the bottom tier or working class or non-college graduates.  Median wage is a useful statistic, showing how the middle is doing.  Employment-to-population ratio is also meaningful, and it is perhaps troubling that today the level nationally is close to a 30-year low.  But people also can be unemployed due to prosperity, in the case of couples who can afford to have a stay-at-home parent, or people retiring before age 65.

The last of the statistics making up “inclusion” is the “Relative income poverty rate” (RIPR), which is “The share of people in a metropolitan economy who earn less than half of the local median wage.”  If a city saw everyone’s wages double, with no other changes, then RIPR would be unchanged.  But the low-earning people would certainly benefit from a doubling of real earnings, and they would be better able “to invest in their skills and to purchase more goods and services.”  Like other inequality measures, this one shows negative numbers when better off people see growth in their incomes, even when the people at the bottom are seeing the same or somewhat better incomes.  But this measure of inequality is worse than some others because the “well-off” whose income growth definitionally becomes a bad thing are merely those at the 50^th percentile, not some category of rich which is divorced from “the people.”  In essence, as Median Wage is a denominator here, it will tend to cancel out much of the effect of the Median Wage statistic which is ostensibly one of the three parts of "inclusion."  Also, the RIPR statistic only looks at people with earnings, which means that someone going from no earnings (e.g., unemployed, on welfare, or in prison) to low earnings makes their city look worse off.  Further, a low-income person forced to move because he is priced out of, say, San Jose, California, makes that city look better off.

A more meaningful measure of inclusion, or how “benefits… are distributed” to the poor or working class, would look at a group such as the bottom quintile, and would measure whether this lowest-earning portion of the people saw increases or decreases in income (or consumption).  In the absence of such data, the median wage tells us more about the average person’s economic benefits and ability “to invest in their skills and to purchase more goods and services” than does Brookings’ “Relative income poverty rate.”

Third Issue

One cannot say flatly that a rising tide lifts all boats, or that it doesn’t; such a reality falls along a continuum.  I downloaded the three Brookings ranks for each of the100 cities, used Excel to semi-automatically put the tabular data into rows, and made scatter graphs in Excel and then Tableau.  I found that there is indeed a positive correlation between Brookings’ ranks of 5-year “growth” and “inclusion” measures, with a slope of 0.33 and an r-squared of 11%, meaning that one would expect that if one city has a "growth" that is 30 ranks better than a second city, then that first city will most likely have an "inclusion" that is 10 ranks better than the second city.  Further, 11% of all of the variation in the cities’ change of rank in “inclusion” may be explained by the variation in the cities’ change of rank in Brookings’ “growth” measure (P < 0.001).

Below is a scatter graph I constructed in Tableau using the Brookings rank data.  It shows the same dots as the scatter graph shown in the Wonkblog and Brookings articles, but with the addition of city names, where Tableau found room for them (note that the scales are reversed, as 100 is the worst score, and 1 is the best):

A quick glance at the scatter graph does not show any obvious pattern of correlation, and Wonkblog describes it as a “weak relationship.”   The article goes on to say that “This non-pattern is notable precisely because the rising-tide theory remains so alluring, particularly among Republicans.”  Those foolish Republicans!  It may be reasonable to describe a slope of 0.33 and a correlation of 11% as a weak relationship, but it is certainly not a “non-pattern,” not evidence with which to refute people who discern the pattern, and in particular not evidence that some other policies would work better than policies aimed at improving economic growth.

Note on Nonparametric Statistics

The cities are listed and graphed above by rank, not by the actual underlying statistics.  A list of ranks by definition has rank or ordinal scale, but not interval scale (i.e., adjacent cities always have a rank difference of one, but are not equally far apart from each other in terms of the underlying statistics.)  For normal statistical measures, such as those underlying the ranks, one would expect something close to a normal distribution, and that the interval between two adjacent cities which are ranked very high or very low would generally be greater than the interval between two adjacent cities near the middle of the distribution.  (Imagine that we have 100 people chosen at random, arranged by height; we are almost certain to see a greater height difference between the tallest person and the second-tallest person than between two adjacent people near the middle of the line.)

Because a rank difference of one does not rigorously translate to any particular difference in the data underlying the ranking process, a correlation of ranks is not as rigorous a measure as is the correlation of the underlying data.  Likewise, with ranked data, the associated scatter graph will have the appearance of a square which is relatively full of data points, right up to the edges of the square.  For these reasons, a correlation based on ranks could show significantly different values than a correlation based on the underlying statistics.

So given only rank data, a mathematical purist should prefer to use nonparametric statistics.  A person coming at the problem from the opposite standpoint – that is, with little knowledge of statistics – might also prefer the simplest or crudest of these nonparametric methods to determine correlation.  Looking again at the preceding scatter graph, it is visually divided into 4 quadrants, with 50 cities on either side of center, and 50 cities each above and below the center.  Each quadrant will have 25 cities if there is zero correlation by this measure.  But in fact, the quadrant counts are:

UL = 18	UR = 32
LL = 32	LR = 18

With 64/36 times as many cities at bottom left and upper right than at upper left and bottom right, there is clearly a positive correlation between the two variables.  The (simple and crude) quadrant count ratio is n(LL) + n(UR) - n(UL) - n(LR) all divided by N, and gives a number similar to r (the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient), ranging from -1 to 1.  In this case: (64 – 36) / 100 = 0.28, which is, at the least, on the stronger side of “weak relationships.”

Further, one can see in the scatter graph that there are no cities very near to the upper left and bottom right extreme corners of the whole graph, while there are a few cities very near the bottom left and upper right corners.  In other words, cities with a poor ranking for “growth” also have a poor ranking for “inclusion,” while cities with an excellent ranking for “growth” also have an excellent ranking for “inclusion.”

Alternative Methods

All of the preceding correlations analysis is based on the assumption that the Brookings “growth” and “inclusion” statistics are meaningful and well-named constructs.  But as I noted in my First and Second points above, this is not the case.  So how would I show the relationship between economic growth and benefits to the people?

From the Brookings report, I obtained the nine separate statistics for each of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.  These are all rates of increase/decrease for the last 5 years, the period emphasized in the Wonkblog article.  Note that I will use the Greek delta symbol Δ to denote change in a statistic, in this case change over the last 5 years expressed as a percentage (e.g., if a statistic increased by 10%, then it was multiplied by 1.10).

After cleaning up the data and putting it in row format in Excel, I noted the Pearson coefficients and r-squared figures for the pairings of these statistics.

So how much does economic growth in a city help the poor?  Just looking at the cities’ Δ Gross Domestic Product (GMP) as the proper measure of economic growth, we see:

·         an r-squared of 0.67 with Δ Aggregate Wages

·         an r-squared of 0.56 with Δ Jobs

·         an r-squared of 0.32 with Δ Average Wage

·         an r-squared of 0.25 with Δ Median Wage

I switched to Tableau at this point because it makes it easy to create a calculated field combining statistics and then to check a correlation with the calculated field.

Aggregate Wages is by definition equal to Average Wage * Jobs, which means that (1+ Δ Aggregate Wages) = (1+ Δ Average Wage) * (1+ Δ Jobs).

In other words, if a city’s Average Wage increases by 10% while its number of Jobs increases by 5%, then its Aggregate Wages increase by 15.5%.  (We multiply a 10% increase in one statistic by a 5% increase in a second statistic by multiplying 1.10 by 1.05 = 1.155 = an increase of 15.5%.)

It is no surprise that again looking at the cities’ Δ Gross Domestic Product (GMP), we see:

•          an r-squared of 0.67 with Δ Average Wage * Δ Jobs – exactly the same as for Δ Aggregate Wages, as we should expect
•          an almost-as-high r-squared of 0.61 with Δ Median Wage * Δ Jobs

Furthermore, the beta or slope of the regression line is 0.82 for Δ Average Wage * Δ Jobs and 0.85 for Δ Median Wage * Δ Jobs.

In other words, if one city has a GMP increase that is 10% higher than a second city, that first city will have Aggregate Wages growing on average 8.2% higher than the second city, and 67% of the variation in the growth in the 100 cities’ Aggregate Wages will be explained by growth in GMP alone.

Now, Average Wage can go up substantially just because the top 1% saw huge gains, so to see the improvement in wages of the typical person, we use the Median Wage.  And when one city has a GMP increase that is 10% higher than a second city, that first city will have (Median Wage * Jobs) growing on average 8.5% higher than the second city, and 61% of the variation in the growth in the 100 cities’ (Median Wage * Jobs) will be explained by growth in GMP alone.  Note this scatter graph of change in (Median Wage * Jobs) vs. change in GMP:

So it seems to me that the best way to describe the way in which relative growth in a city’s GMP correlates to relative growth in Wages and Jobs is “quite reliably.”  Sometimes there is more growth in Wages and sometimes more growth in Jobs.  But as noted above, when the number of Jobs has increased in a city, the people in that city have also benefited, either because the Employment ratio is higher than it would otherwise be (a factor which Brookings attempts to add separately), or because some of the people in that city are migrants who came to the city for a job and situation which is generally better than they could have gotten in the city they left behind (a factor which Brookings ignores).

Conclusion

The Brookings authors used questionable methods to combine and create statistics when there are singular statistics which are more meaningful and give more meaningful correlations.

The more complicated a statistical measure, the easier it is to fool oneself (or others) about the meaning of the statistic.  More complicated statistics also allow for more options for comparing the statistics, and more chances of finding what you want to find in a correlation or other comparison.  In this case, Brookings was looking at correlations of the statistics which they termed “growth” and “inclusion.”  Each of these statistics was formed by:

•          Ranks,
•          of Sums,
•          of differences from the three different Means,
•          divided by three different Standard Deviations,
•          of Rates of change in,
•          underlying statistics which were themselves, in some cases, the quotient of two statistics (i.e., one statistic divided by another).

These manipulations of the statistics could be defensible if the statistics were used for other purposes, but the manipulations (particularly the use of Ranks) made Brookings’ use of a scatter graph and related claims about correlation untenable. 

Why did Brookings convert absolute values to measures of standard deviation from the mean?  If one merely multiplies together different statistics (or 1+ Δ statistics), then the statistic which has more volatility has more effect on the compounded measure than does a statistic which has less volatility.  For some manipulations it may be helpful to eliminate these differences between the measures so they are equally weighted in effect.  But for the purposes of making up a “growth,” “prosperity” and “inclusion” measure, it would have been preferable to combine the three statistics without resort to the standard-deviations-from-the-mean manipulation.  If one statistic is close to the same for all the cities, then that statistic is indeed a less important contributor to any meaningful measure of a city.  If all cities are within 1% of each other in some measure, then that is a reason to note that the measure in question does not vary much and so is not an important way to distinguish the cities.  It is not a reason to multiply that measure’s contribution ten-fold because we are combining it with some other measure which varies by 10%.

But all in all, the biggest problem with the Brookings “inclusion” measure is that it has little to do with “how the benefits of growth and prosperity in a metropolitan economy are distributed among people” and even less to do with how able the cities’ people are to “invest in their skills and to purchase more goods and services.” A correlation of more straightforward statistics shows that a city’s Growth (ΔGMP) in fact reliably drives (slope = 0.85; r-squared = 0.61; P < 0.0001) its ΔMedian Wage and ΔJobs.

References

Badger, E. (2016, February 2). All the people being left behind in America’s booming cities. Washington Post Wonkblog. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/02/all-the-people-being-left-behind-in-americas-booming-cities/

Berube, A. (2016, January 29). In metro areas, growth isn't reliably trickling down. Retrieved from www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2016/01/29-growth-isnt-reliably-trickling-down-in-metro-areas-aberube

Brookings. (2016). Metro monitor. Retrieved from www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2016/01/metro-monitor#V0G37980

Pittelli, D. (2016, January-February). Cambridge 02138 – Letters to the Editor. Harvard Magazine. Retrieved from http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/12/cambridge-02138

Sullins, B. (n.d.). Enterprise business intelligence with Tableau Server. Pluralsight. Retrieved from https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/enterprise-business-intelligencetableau-server/table-of-contents

NY Times Says Circulation Holding Up to WSJ Assault

That's the headline in a Bloomberg story of June 4 based on an interview with New York Times CEO Janet Robinson.

"We are definitely not seeing any effect in regard to the circulation," Robinson is quoted. But if you read to paragraph 7 of the story, you learn that "The New York Times’s nationwide circulation fell 8.5% to 951,063 in the six months through March, while circulation at the Journal, which includes paying Internet readers, rose less than 1% to 2.09 million, data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show."

How can such a juxtaposition earn the headline "NY Times Says Circulation Holding Up to WSJ Assault" instead of something like "NY Times Official Puts Desperate Spin on Plummeting Circulation Figures"? (Which would itself be a pretty soft way of calling her a liar.)

It's part of a pattern which could make left- and right-wing talking heads on Fox News look objective. Take a similar article from April 26, which includes this:

Diane McNulty, a Times spokeswoman, attributed the lost print readership to a focus on “quality circulation and high retention rates,” saying the newspaper has kept most readers who have subscribed for two years or more. In an e-mail to employees today, New York Times Co. Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson and Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said that “readers and advertisers are very loyal.”

The Journal “will soon discover the intensity of that dedication,” they wrote.

So they haven't this year lost more than 50% of "readers who have subscribed for two years or more"? Is there anyone who would guess that things could be worse than that?

The Times and sister-paper Boston Globe, like many other newspapers, are going down the tubes; demonstrating that they are run by fantasists certainly can't help matters, even if they have Bloomberg headline writers and the Obama Administration eager to bail them out.

Best Chicken Ever Goes Down

Sadly, I must report that yesterday as I was driving down Summer Street in Adams, I saw that the Jolly Butcher shop has signs in the window saying "We Are Now Permanently Closed." So another tasty establishment has gone down the tubes. Their pressure-fried chicken was beyond compare (OK, it was a bit like KFC, if KFC used better chicken and had consistent quality control). They also had good raw meat. (See "It’s all about the Ribeye.") Apparently, they just didn't have enough customers.

The problem with depressed retail in Adams and North Adams is of course a lot broader than one shop or even retail in general. And for Summer Street, the relative absence of through-traffic and of out-of-towners adds to the difficulties. Since our main street (actually named Park Street, aka route 8), while busier, also has empty store-fronts, I'd think the longer run solution for this town is for most of the Summer Street shops to move to Park. Of course, if I owned real estate on Summer Street I'd probably feel differently. Hopefully, the new Topia will entice some new customers and businesses to Park regardless.

I haven't had any connection to the retail business since I was in college. And I can't think of any retail concept crying out for a presence here. Except possibly for a bike shop with espresso and ice cream, since the Ashuwillticook ends right at the center of Adams. (However, there is a good bike/outdoors shop a couple miles away.)

Apart from a casino, does anyone have a retail wish, or an idea for something they think could do well in Adams or North Adams?

Wake Up! There’s Been A Slaughter Here.

While gardening, I tend to listen to my iPod. As in my car, most of the time I’m listening to the Grateful Dead. But when I’m slaughtering weeds, especially if with my weedwacker, I listen to The Doors. Today I wacked the Aegopodium, as seen in this photo. Of course, that and the earlier Roundup treatment won’t be sufficient to kill it. But it’s been weakened a bit until I cover it with newspapers and mulch, or a hideous blue tarp.

In other news of plant slaughter, last year I cut down two medium-sized trees in this garden. But I had a third tree, a fairly large Norway maple with about a 20” trunk diameter, which was crowding two other trees, and was awkwardly positioned on a steep slope looming over the street and some lilacs.

So yesterday I had some local arborists over. People I play cards with were agreed that I’d get the best price, at least among businesses with insurance and proper safety equipment, from these guys:

It was pretty impressive how quickly they could climb up, cut down and clean up a hardwood tree.

Of course, there are divots in the lawn where pieces of trunk were dropped from high above – that’s inevitable.

In a fairly normal snafu, the bulk of the tree got a bit out of control on the slope. It was stopped by a heavy rope (and 5 guys), but not until damaging a lilac by bending it to the ground. I lopped off the larger, split trunks of the lilac today, leaving several younger canes; this pruning might have been a good idea anyway.

Here you see the difference between one of their saws and my little (16”) McCulloch, which has almost exactly half the engine displacement.

I can’t imagine using such a large saw while up in a tree. Size apparently isn’t the only difference. As the climbing guy explained to me, professional and home-use saws differ subtly in the construction of their chains, such that an amateur who buys a professional saw is apt to have it bite and kick into them, sometimes with catastrophic injury. I could not fathom exactly what advantage this saw blade of death had for him.

Should You Buy Shrubs At The Supermarket?

The local supermarket in Adams (Big Y) has put out a display of shrubs for sale. The specimens look healthy, and prices are right, at $13 for a 2-gallon pot. However, I expect that most of these plants will not meet their buyers’ expectations. Why is that?

First, most of the plants are in the Ericaceae, the heather family, and will only be healthy in acid soil. These include several Rhododendrons and azaleas, and a couple cultivars of Pieris (as seen in this picture), also known as Andromeda. However, most everyone’s soil around here rests on limestone bedrock, and is mixed with limestone pebbles. As such, it is almost certain to be alkaline, not acid, except in raised beds built up with peat moss, in places with deep humus-rich forest soil, or where people have used acidifying chemicals, such as sulfur or Holly-tone fertilizer.

This is not a mere hypothetical problem. Compared to those in the suburbs of Boston, Rhododendrons and their acid-loving cousins almost always look sickly in this region, and even some that are apparently healthy often have the subtle distress signs of chlorosis, such as leaves yellowing, with green veins (second picture, taken in North Adams).

Another plant with a large display at the Big Y (Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer’) is shown on its label with bright blue flowers, but it will probably be pink (and perhaps chlorotic) in most people’s gardens, again because the soil is not acid. The fine print on the Hydrangea label does state this color effect, but for the rest of the acid-loving plants, only some of the labels inform us that the plant needs acid soil, and some don’t.

Besides, the Big Y is not a specialty plant nursery. It is an impulse purchase point for people who are generally not very garden-knowledgeable. It is not reasonable to expect this broader public to know whether their soil has a high (alkaline) pH. Even if everyone did know this, it still makes no sense to offer a limited display of plants, the majority of which are unsuitable for the local conditions.

The other big problem is some of the plants are of questionable hardiness for our Zone 5 climate. To go back to ‘Endless Summer’ – this is a Hydrangea macrophylla cultivar. Most H. macrophyllas are rated hardy only to Zone 6. While there is some controversy on the matter, this cultivar is probably bud hardy in protected (nonwindy) areas in warmer parts of zone 5. But there aren’t a lot of places around here which don’t get much wind. (The cold wind is the other reason Rhododendron and Pieris often suffer hereabouts.)

The plant will survive our winters, but it will likely have significant die-back – including most of its overwintering flower buds – in many if not most winters. Yet this shrub’s label simply says that it’s hardy in Zone 4. It also claims that the plant will bloom throughout the summer, first on its old wood (i.e., on overwintered flower buds), and then on new wood. This reblooming feature means it should in fact bloom here in late summer on its new wood, but again, the earlier blooming on old wood is highly questionable in a zone 5 garden. (Because of dieback, it also probably won’t attain its expected size of 4 to 6 feet.)

Finally, one of the plants was a cute “Alberta Spruce.” Generally this variety of the white spruce species (Picea glauca var. albertiana) is sold in its ‘dwarf’ form. People are often surprised that these dwarves eventually grow to 15 feet tall. But in this case, the plant isn’t a dwarf at all. It is expected to grow up to 60 feet tall and 20 feet wide. Fortunately, this fact is on the plant’s label, but I question whether it makes sense to include such a tree, because most people are not out making impulse purchases of 60-foot forest trees, and at least some people who buy this plant probably aren’t going to notice that that’s what they’ve got, especially given its name and similar appearance to the popular dwarf spruces. Of course, it is a lot quicker and cheaper to grow a non-dwarf spruce to the 2-gallon size than it would be to use a real dwarf cultivar.

I don’t expect the Big Y to have dedicated shrub buyers, but you’d think they could find somebody in the headquarters who has done some gardening and has given some thought to what grows in the area. It’s not like they’re down in Bentonville, Arkansas or something.

Pregnant? Scared? Welcome to North Adams!

Have you noticed, when you drive into North Adams, that almost all of the billboards are Ad Council offerings? Coming in on Route 2 from Boston, we have long been welcomed by this billboard. Of course, it’s a good thing that pregnant single women have places to get counseling (although as I understand it, most such counseling places have one agenda or the other with respect to abortion), but is it good for North Adams that this is the first big sign one sees upon entering the city?

As it happens, that particular billboard has now been replaced by the “asthmatic fish,” which while useless at telling us anything we didn’t know about asthma, at least doesn’t make us look like victims of dysfunction in need of counseling. On that score, other recent billboards have urged us to personally not engage in gun violence (“when you do a gun crime, your whole family serves time with you” or some such), to talk with our 8-year-old (or thereabouts) child about drinking alcohol, not to scream at or beat our spouse in the presence of our pre-school daughter, and to contact Joe Kennedy 4 cheap Oil (not sure if this last one is a freebie).

As I understand it, advertisers give space (or TV time) to the Ad Council when they couldn’t otherwise sell the space to a paying client. So, as would probably be apparent to many people, an Ad Council ad is always evidence of a moribund commercial market. Making the ads so pathos-invoking is just icing on the cake, so that everyone who is moving to (or opening a business in) the area, will feel like slitting his wrists.

The few commercial billboard ads don’t do too much to counter this notion. Apart from area banks and a couple restaurants, we see mostly ads for liquor (what the hell does “New Green in the Hizzy” mean in conjunction with Teapartay, anyway?), and in the summer for cultural festivals as far afield as Manchester, Vermont, but rarely for those in our own area.

Obviously the owners of the billboards are getting little or no rent from them, but they at least are expressing some hope for the future, in that they are paying to keep them up at a loss, rather than tearing them down or seeking to donate them. Still, the billboards can’t be worth much to them. Perhaps some of the people spending money and time designing ways of improving the local image can buy up the billboards, to use or even tear down, or at least rent them to advertise local events, such as art exhibits at MOCA and the Clark (they did a few last summer), or to promote MCLA or such events as the Adams Fair.

I can’t complain that such moneys aren’t being spent, since I’m not exactly ready to step up to the plate, but in the absence of such sums, couldn’t the owners of the billboards at least donate their space to local events and nonprofits, rather than making them icons of desperation?

Used Bookstores - The Opiate of the Bourgeois Masses

Since I just moved to the Berkshires last summer, I’m still figuring out where all my haunts will be. I’m pretty up on playgrounds and museums and such for preschool children – my most frequent need given my “job” – but I haven’t been entirely satisfied with the used-bookstore situation.* I am addicted to nonfiction books, in the past mainly theology and fishing, but for the last 5 years mostly books on ornamental horticulture.

I find the used bookstores to be more exciting because I never know what I’m going to find, and because I’m cheap. (Garden books are pricey. Say I see the latest by Tracy Disabato-Aust; I’m just not going to feel good about myself in the morning if I have to lay out $40 to get her.) Of course, most used book stores are pretty useless for my purposes. Half the stores must be excluded because they have almost nothing but trashy novels, or their stock looks like it’s been stored in a damp basement for 10 years. Maybe 20% or 30% have enough gardening books to allow a 30-minute browse.

So anyway, I think I have just found the best used bookstore in the area. It’s The Book Barn, at 200 Troy Schenectady Road (Rte 2), in Latham NY. From the center of North Adams, take Route 2 West, set your trip odometer as you crest the upramp out of town (just before the first cemetery) and when it hits 40 miles, you’ll see the store, which takes up the bulk of a small strip mall, on your left.

It’s a bit far to go just for books, I suppose, but surely one can find an excuse to visit Albany. (I was on the way back from Jeepers in Albany, which is sort of like Chuck E. Cheese, but for some reason this “Seed of Chucky” doesn’t fill me with the same dread as the original.)

Why do I like The Book Barn?

• The store has 100,000 books.
• Neatly arranged by topic. Naturally, it has a lot of books in a lot of topics (“124 categories,” according to their business card).
• More gardening books than any used store I’ve been in except for the largest few in Boston and NYC.
• The owners skillfully buy their stock and can quickly find things.
• No crap. No old, festering useless tomes, no glut of ancient houseplant How-Tos or general books with titles like “Gardening” or “Gardening for Special People.” The hokiest stuff there was the old Time-Life Encyclopedia Of Gardening series, but those are actually fairly well done (albeit dated) books, and these copies were unusually complete and pristine.
• The strip-mall may be an architectural wasteland, but my books don’t smell like mildew, as they often do when bought out of marginally heated, sprawling farmhouses.
• Low prices. Most brick & mortar stores are still stuck on selling for half the cover price. That’s acceptable for a new remainder, and of course an antique can be worth a lot more than Gertrude Jekyll was selling it for, but in the days of Amazon I don’t know how they can expect to get that for the typical used book. At any rate, I bought five beautiful and interesting books, with $17 to $50 list prices, for $5.50 to $6.95. (One had a gift inscription, often the case with gardening books, but which doesn’t bother me or even register as a demerit from otherwise very good condition.)

For what it’s worth (OK, to the sane and skeptical reader presumably more than is my opinion) the store has won awards from Albany media sources in categories like “best used book store” and “best used bookstore (selection and price).” It’s open M-F 10-8, Sat 10-6, and Sun 11-5.

Does anyone have any other bookstore tips?

* There are indeed some pretty good bookstores around in Shelburne Falls and along the Connecticut River / Route 91 towns. They generally charge half-list, or about as much, as does the smallish but very interesting place on the ground floor of the Eclipse Mill (I drop in after art openings in the Mill’s gallery; I always find one thing I can’t resist, which is good because I’d find it very awkward leaving a one-man store, in a guy’s house yet, without buying something).

It’s all about the Ribeye

I live in Adams Mass., near the “Big Y” Supermarket. It’s a small chain, with 27 stores in Mass. and Connecticut (launched in 1936 in Chicopee, MA at a “Y” intersection, as I learned at bigy.com). It’s convenient for me, and I buy close to half my groceries there, but sometimes it feels like I’m going to a casino, not knowing if I’m going to get a good price, or pay perhaps 50% more than a good price. Further, in order to get the good price you may have to bring not only the members’ card on your keychain, but also their big, plastic, color-coded discount coins.

So when I have the time and I’m driving by, I go to the big Stop & Shop on the North Adams / Williamstown border, or the Wild Oats, for baked goods and produce; and I also feel like I should stop by Wal-Mart every couple of weeks, getting everything I need which they have there, cheaper. So my convenient supermarket, isn’t.

On a related note, I try to buy things in small, local shops in Adams and North Adams when practical. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still largely about the Benjamins. I won’t eschew the leviathan from Arkansas just because it’s the leviathan from Arkansas (or because “it’s like Hitler,” as my mother helpfully pointed out), but at the same time I’m willing to give a little place some business if the service justifies the price. It often does: Service is great around here, precisely – I suppose – because the business climate is so difficult; and often the prices are great too.

One such place I’m happy to shop in several times a month is The Jolly Butcher Shoppe in Adams. I haven’t tried the deli items, but the raw meat is great. It’s open Wed-Sat 10:00-6:00 at 90 Summer Street, an area that’s neck-and-neck with Eagle Street in North Adams for the prize of Most Struggling Retail District in the Berkshires. (I also get haircuts and furniture on Summer Street.)

So how does it stack up? I’ve taken Jolly Butcher’s printed price list to the Big Y a couple of times. (I was surprised at how paranoid I felt with my “Jolly Butcher” price-list, as if a couple goons wearing bloody “Y” aprons were gonna throw me out of the joint.) And Jolly’s meat prices were almost always better than Big Y’s. I’m not going to get into specifics, because prices fluctuate, but I entered prices into a spreadsheet,* and Jolly averaged about 24% lower than Big Y’s regular prices. When items had a “Sale” promotion at Big Y, Jolly Butcher was still 8% less expensive. It was only the “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” deals at Big Y which were cheaper than Jolly’s prices. They’re great if you happen to luck into something you want, and you want 2 of them, but they’re not reliable sources of savings unless you’re completely flexible about what’s for dinner, and yet can pack away a lot of the same cut of meat before age or freezing enter into the picture.

My favorite piece of meat is probably the Ribeye steak. Jolly always seems to have it, cutting up a big boneless one every week. (I wouldn’t mind the bone, too, if the price were cut slightly to reflect that.) Usually I fry it in an almost dry, very hot pan for 2 minutes on a side, remove the steaks and turn the heat down to medium, then put in a couple tablespoons each of butter, chopped fresh ginger or garlic, and soy sauce, and return the steaks until medium-rare. The ultimate in meaty goodness!

The Jolly Butcher has also recently added cooked chicken on the bone [pressure-fried] sold a la carte. When the owner told me he was going to be spending $13,000 to install a cooker and vent for chicken and fish, I resisted the temptation to shout, “Good God man, haven’t you noticed this is a depressed mill town?” Well, it’s fortunate he ignored the advice I did not presume to proffer, because it’s better than any other fried or roasted chicken I’ve ever had.

* (prices for Hamburger 90% lean, Hamburger 80%, Filet Mignon, London Broil, Boneless Ribeye, Chuck Roast, Boneless Breast and Pork Tenderloin)

Gideon’s, RIP?

I just learned today that Gideon’s is in dire straights. According to its phone message, the restaurant was closed last weekend, but hopes to reopen on Wednesday January 24^th. Apparently EGL (formerly Gideon’s Nightery), which was being spun off from Gideon’s and lately under the management of Vaal London-Kane, is in similar straights.

Well, this is horrible news. The first dinner my wife and I had in North Adams, when she was interviewing for her job as Web Communications Director, was at Gideon’s. The fact that we could get a meal as good as at any foodie restaurant in Boston was a significant factor (OK, a not insignificant factor, at any rate) in making us comfortable about moving out here; the relative ease of getting a reservation, and prices about 30% lower than in the city, was icing on the cake. And apart from our own comfort, the prosperous-seeming restaurant crowd also made us a little more comfortable about North Adams’ economic trend being up now, rather than down as in previous decades. The fact that Bill Gideon’s resume (among others) showed that he could make it anywhere, but he chose to come here, was also a good sign.

Gideon’s was always busy when I was there, but perhaps that was only on Saturday nights. Busy Saturdays are necessary, but not sufficient, for success in the business, so I guess I was “part of the problem” despite eating there every month or two. EGL has been less crowded; it was a great bargain for lunch or a light dinner; my wife gave them a fair amount of lunch business and raved about the food; its chef, Joe Mezza (spelling?) had been sous-chef at Mistral in Boston, a widely acclaimed French restaurant which we had never gotten to, mostly as they were on the high end of our price range.

There is still, of course, Gramercy Bistro, which is close to and similar to Gideon’s. And I understand that Milan at 55 Main is quite good; I have not eaten there. (Although my Italian grandmother has now been dead for several years, I still feel a bit guilty about getting Italian food anywhere else.) But between Jae’s closing up its restaurant in North Adams, and now this, I am not happy about recent trends. (I did finally get to Coyote Flaco on the far side of Williamstown last weekend; it’s unusually good Mexican for New England, and very reasonably priced, but not so convenient from Adams.)

So what to do? I will try to follow the situation with Gideon’s and EGL, and eat there on a weeknight if I get another chance.

Does anyone have any details about what happened? At one level, I’m sure it’s a problem of not making enough money, but how did the problem go down, and what does that mean for the prospects of reopening?

UPDATE: Having heard from a couple of reasonably well-connected (but not directly involved) sources, I believe that Gideon's had plenty of business but was mismanaged to the point its bank felt the need to shut it down. EGL, while apparently less of a going concern, may be slightly more likely to make a comeback. I never did "Drinking Liberally" which has been hosted there, mostly because I'm not a liberal (except in the classical sense), but I see such events as important to the success (cultural and otherwise) of North Adams' continued revival. An arts community needs reasonably priced places for refreshments and entertainment that can attract pinkos, artists, students, dilettantes and groupies, and gays and lesbians, and North Adams doesn't have a surfeit of them.

UPDATE 2: Gideon's phone message no longer says they're hoping to reopen tonight (Wednesday). Also, EGL does not look likely to reopen as such, at least any time soon, although Vaal, its manager, would appear (unlike Gideon, can't say more) to remain viable in the local business community. She just took over the now-shuttered restaurant a couple months ago. EGL was to now, I believe still "owned" by Bill Gideon, not Vaal (that is, to the extent it was not owned by the bank which lent Gideon considerable sums).

Who's Wearing The Pants Now?

With the gardening season effectively over for the next 5 months in Zone 5 – barring an early spring for such bulbs as Galanthus (snowdrop), Eranthis (winter aconite), and Crocus – I’m going to talk about something almost completely different: Pants and where to get them.

I’ve been looking for flannel-lined khakis or blue jeans, because I don’t find separate long underwear very comfortable (it always seems a bit stuffy in the manhood department). We haven’t used our furnace yet, just a gas fireplace to warm the living-room some mornings (this economizing due to the prospect of paying heating bills on a 3,000 square foot Victorian with 10-foot ceilings). And somehow 60 F, if it's indoors, feels F'ing cold!

I went to the new Peebles in North Adams on opening day, and I suppose they do a pretty good job trying to provide every kind of garment, from men’s suits to little girls’ pajamas, in a modest space, but it’s just not possible. They have a Carhartt section for work clothes, but no lined pants; thankfully a salesperson did tell me that Tractor Supply Company, in Bennington VT or Pittsfield MA, would have a wider selection.

A subsequent visit to the mall in Lanesboro proved fruitless, so I went to Bennington yesterday, where TSC had all kinds of utility and casual clothes at great prices (like 100% flannel shirts for $12), including lined blue jeans for $45 (Carhartt) or $30 (TSC’s own C. E. Schmidt line, which I found especially comfortable and well-fitting), both of which appear to be pre-washed and very well made.

They’re not the very heaviest of pants, but they’re a lot warmer than unlined jeans or khakis. They have a checkered blue lining, which seems a lot more sensible to me than my old L.L Bean khakis with a checkered red lining, which I’m never sure whether to wash with the reds or with the neutral colors.

While there I noticed a couple of the women’s garments, which seemed a particularly outré example of Western kitsch, perhaps suitable for Halloween, but I wasn’t really paying attention to whether any of the women’s stuff would appeal to ex-yuppie women for their casual clothing (sorry wife, but I did have two pre-schoolers antsy to get to the Bennington McDonalds with the indoor playground).

In short, for any man looking for clothes for gardening or weekend wear, or for a casual work environment, I heartily recommend a trip to Tractor Supply Company (or www.mytscstore.com).

Note that I have no financial connection whatsoever to TSC or its agents, but if they wish to pay a bribe for my bringing my legions of fans to their doors... let's just say that "prices are low." I do not currently own their stock (Nasdaq symbol TSCO), but I may look into it one of these days as they seem to be a well-managed firm with more potential for growth (and reportedly better employee relations) than, say, Wal-Mart.

Three primula bought at Home Depot for a total of $4.00. See story below.

Home Depot: Godsend or Evil?

In my opinion, Home Depot offers us a dilemma of cheap products sold with a caveat emptor attitude. Here’s some of the Good, the Bad and the Nonexistent:

The Good

I started buying primroses at Home Depot in February, keeping about 3 pots at a time in my dining room window for as long as they bloomed. At $1.49 each for 4” pots, and sometimes $0.99 for slightly older stock, I figured that at worst I was still getting flowers cheaper than the doomed ones from florists. Most of the plants had no label, but the odd pot would have a plastic marker saying “Primula acaulis Danova Mix.” Probably most or all were of this type, although that’s hard to prove with a variable seed-sown strain, and a few were more of the ‘candlestick’ type in shape. As each plant’s blooms got ratty I moved it to my cellar under lights. I put 8 plants out on April 22, most in a wooded strip above the aqueduct path that will be mostly shaded once leaf-out is largely complete at the end of May. Seven of the plants still have fairly healthy looking foliage, and 2 are still blooming, which is pretty impressive considering the plants were forced into growth and bloom well before their natural period in this climate.

The Bad

The glossy boxes of Peonies and Phlox, on sale this March, showed a color photo of what to expect, but provided essentially no information about the plants, except for estimated heights, the fact that the peonies were double and might need staking, and that the peonies and phlox were each in assorted colors (i.e., nothing on cultivar or even species). A Google search also yielded nothing on these “Growing Colors” products. But at 4 peonies for $9.96, or 8 phlox for the same price, I figured if even one of each survived and proved worth keeping, I was at least breaking even compared to buying potted growing plants. I know that peonies are best planted in fall, but some sources I checked said that planting was also acceptable in the spring as soon as the soil could be worked – rather vague, I know. (The box said to plant the peonies after the ground warms to 50 degrees F.) I planted all of both species on April 22, about an inch deep, watering them in well, and conditions have been mild and moist since then. The peony buds had elongated to 3” spears, so I left 2” above ground, so the crown and base of the buds was an inch or two deep. Perhaps it’s too early to tell, but 25 days later I haven’t seen any growth from any of the phlox or peonies. Other people I know report losing bare-root plants as often as not, but 0 for 12 is ridiculous. Also, it wouldn’t cost them anything to have some more information on varieties or ancestries on the glossy box and whether to bury all of the elongated growing points, and it wouldn’t cost them much to have something on the web from the mysterious “Glowing Colors” firm which the package lists only as a P.O. Box in Lakewood, New Jersey.

The Nonexistent

While Home Depot has a large selection of deadly pesticides and herbicides, they have not offered any of the organic pre-emergent herbicides made from corn gluten. The Home Depot employee I asked had heard about such products, and had no answer for why they didn’t carry them. So I got it at my local garden center, Windy-Lo Nursery (Natick, MA). The product seemed to work. At any rate, the lawn improved a lot where I spread it (a sunny area where annual grasses had dominated in the lawn’s newly seeded first year), although I can’t prove it wouldn’t have otherwise. Tests I’ve seen on the web indicate an 80% to 90% reduction in lawn weeds, a 10% Nitrogen component, and as one would expect for corn gluten, complete safety even for food plants. I’m no purist about being organic, but why spread deadly chemicals all over a lawn if you don’t have to? (Maybe it’s because I just don’t care all that much about lawn perfection, because I will spray poisons to get rid of poison ivy, or pests in my perennials, but I think the difference to me is that the lawn is large and exactly where my kids are playing.)

Conclusion

I’ll continue to shop at Home Depot for hardware, and I can’t resist checking out their plants whenever I go, but I’ll do far more of my horticultural shopping at:

Windy-Lo Nursery (the closest to me, and a lot larger than it looks from the street)

The Saturday farmers’ market on the Natick Common (fresh, often field-grown plants)

One-time events at nonprofits like schools or the Mass. Horticultural Society in Wellesley (I find that plants in a well-managed one-time sale are timed right, not underdeveloped and not pot-bound)

Russell’s Garden Center (more comprehensive selection)

In the parking lot of the Building 19 on routes 9 and 27. (I never would have expected lumpen-retailer Building 19 to have decent plants, but then one of my clients told me that it was a family business not really part of Building 19, and I checked it out regularly last year. Their product is great, at least when it first comes in, and none of the bargains have been disappointments.)