Here's today's political quiz question: What do these five states — Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, California and Maine — have in common? Yes, they are blue states ruled by Democrats, but that's not all. These are the states that use the least amount of coal — 2 percent or less — for electric power.
In fact, almost all the states that are politically liberal and vote unfailingly Democratic are low coal-use states. For instance, Washington, New York, Oregon and New Jersey are also in the top 10 states least reliant on coal. Only conservative Idaho is a red state with low coal consumption.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has been standard high school reading for decades. In the novel, Hester Prynne, the adulterer forced to wear the scarlet "A" as a sign of her community's disapproval, and her daughter Pearl, the product of the adulterous affair, are ostracized by 17th-century Boston society as punishment for Hester's violation of Puritan social mores.
The novel serves as a vehicle for high school students to discuss societal and religious values, whether sin can be forgiven, and whether a community's sometimes formalistic definitions of who is "good" or "bad" accurately reflect reality (Prynne spends her life helping the sick and the poor, but nevertheless spends a lifetime isolated from the church and her community).
