Renaming Yawkey Street next to Fenway Park as Jersey Street, its original name, should be a no-brainer. The reputation of the Boston Red Sox under the leadership of the late owner Tom Yawkey reinforced the sense of Boston as a racist city. In the 1940's, City councilman Isadore Muchnick had to pressure the team to …
Category: Culture
Vietnam through New Eyes, part 2. A kaleidoscope of images
Coming from Boston, you’d think we’d be used to crazy traffic and pedestrian behavior. Boston is an Eden compared to Vietnamese cities, where the intensity of the traffic takes your breath away. Most people ride motor bikes (due to the high cost of cars and huge taxes imposed on the purchase). Many wear face masks …
Continue reading Vietnam through New Eyes, part 2. A kaleidoscope of images
Headlines I’m looking for in 2018
My New Year's gift to you is a list of headlines. I have precious little expectation that we will see them atop newspapers, magazines, newscasts or on social media in 2018. Please send your own in the comments section below. I won't do something snide like: President receives heart transplant, develops empathy and humility. Perhaps the …
RoyMooreDonaldTrumpHarveyWeinsteinAlFrankenKevinSpaceyMarkHalperinRogerAilesLouisCK,Etc
Yecch! Al Franken was a boor. A jerk. A pig. A sexual assaulter. Not like serial offenders Roy Moore, Bill Clinton or Donald Trump, but on the sexually offensive spectrum nonetheless. In 2006, on a USO tour, a photographer took his picture mugging for the camera and appearing to grope the breasts of entertainer Leeann Tweeden, …
Guns and other insanity
So, the consoler-in-chief has visited Las Vegas in the wake of a mass slaughter at a concert there, and, unlike yesterday's shameful performance in Puerto Rico, he stayed on script. He called the gunman "sick and demented, " but he refused to be drawn into discussing solutions to the mass killings. Don't look to Donald …
Slouching to November 8th
I voted early yesterday. Ten minutes before the City Hall polling place was to open a line was forming. Quickly 50 or 60 people joined the line. The stream was constant. To the extent that there was conversation, it was in dribs and drabs about this exciting new opportunity to cast ballots before election day. …
Refusing to stand for the National Anthem
Some fans are burning jerseys to protest San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to sit and not stand for the National Anthem to protest inequitable treatment of blacks in America. He wants to call attention to racial injustice and police brutality. He wants to add to the national debate. So here we are. Maybe it makes you …
Last days of summer reading, pt. 2
With Labor Day around the corner, I'm indulging in reading rather than writing. In my last blog posting, I shared some of the fiction I've read this summer. In today's blog are some non-fiction suggestions, a mixed bag. Early this summer, I plowed through Spain in Our Hearts, by Adam Hochschild, a history of the Spanish …
Ballparks, books and last days of summer
Campaign 2016 has become intolerable, even for this confirmed political junkie. I won't go into why. You know what I'm talking about. So, in the interest of sanity, it has become increasingly important to savor the baseball, books and beauties of the last days of summer. Today, the Red Sox have a tenuous hold on first …
2016 Olympics a gold medal disaster
Whatever happens in individual games over the next two weeks, this may be the most depressing Olympics since Berlin in 1936 and Munich in 1972. And it makes me happier than ever that Boston came to its senses and dropped its 2024 bid. The opening ceremony said it all. Unremitting commercials interspersed with some tape-delayed …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 