Halfway through his first term, the Mayor of Boston and the city are looking good. Both Marty Walsh and the city have grown significantly over the past two years, as reflected in his State of the City speech on Tuesday. Walsh's laundry list of accomplishments is real: record housing starts, including record affordable units; violent crime …
Category: Culture
Some headlines for 2016
Each year, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial page editor Tom Waseleski prepares for the New Year an aspirational list of headlines. Each year, I shamelessly borrow the idea and herewith present my own suggestions, with precious little expectation that we will see them atop newspapers, magazines or teasing newscasts in 2016. Please send your own in the comments section below. …
Year-end movies stir annual debate
It's that time of year: movie time. The industry wants its best products out before the New Year to compete in the Oscars. The only question for my husband, my sister and me is whether to go to the theatre or wait for the video to come out. I'm not Ty Burr or Joyce Kulhawik, but …
Cellphones and cars: a lethal mix?
Not long ago, I was exiting Route 128 for Route 30 on the Newton/Weston line. Cars merging into Route 128 are supposed to yield (note to Massachusetts drivers: that means give the other driver the right of way). My path was about to cross that of a paneled truck belonging to a Portugese bakery. Not surprisingly, …
Tom Brady weasels out on important issue
Tom Brady, who can execute with finesse virtually any move a quarterback could dream of, apparently can't make the most basic of all moves, standing up and taking a position against domestic abuse. Asked in his weekly WEEI interview about Dallas tight end Greg Hardy's beating up his girlfriend, Brady executed that famous insider sidestep, telling …
Globe short-changes National Hall of Fame honoree
Today's Boston Globe reports on the naming of former Olympic Gold Medal winner Tenley Albright to the National Women's Hall of Fame. Albright's is a wonderful story of accomplishment, from polio victim to champion ice skater to Harvard Medical School-trained surgeon to brilliant innovator and tackler of societal challenges in health and medicine. (Plus, she is a …
Continue reading Globe short-changes National Hall of Fame honoree
Name the victims; shame the Congress
Slain WDBJ reporter Alison Parker's father, Andy Parker, has become the latest grieving parent calling for gun control. We are all seduced by the notion that simply understanding the impact on real people of the failure to create meaningful universal background checks will somehow lead to a rational response by Congress. We were certain this …
Summer reading: there’s still time, pt. 2 – fiction
Summer reading 2015 would not be complete without Go Set a Watchman, the book that Harper Lee reportedly wrote before she published To Kill a Mockingbird. It is told from the perspective of Atticus Finch's daughter Scout (now Jean Louise) some 20 years after the time frame of To Kill a Mockingbird. The Guardian and other critics …
Continue reading Summer reading: there’s still time, pt. 2 – fiction
Summer reading: there’s still time, pt. 1 – non-fiction
A late Labor Day and temporary physical disability have extended my usual orgy of summer reading, with both non-fiction and fiction offerings to share with you. Because time is running out, I'll keep the list short. In the first category, the book Frank seeks to answer the question of "how did a disheveled, intellectually combative gay …
Continue reading Summer reading: there’s still time, pt. 1 – non-fiction
The Holocaust through a child’s eyes
In 1990, my husband and I visited Prague, including the old Jewish section - the synagogue, the cemetery, and the tiny adjacent museum displaying drawings done by Prague children during their imprisonment in Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp outside the Czech capital. The children signed the drawings, and scribbled their ages - nine or 10 years …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 