The media have taken the measure of the man: Chet Curtis was a prince. Smart, caring, funny, calm and comfortable. No argument there. Chet had many "princely" trappings - a huge salary for the time, what seemed to be an ideal family, a boat, a plane, a Nantucket vacation home. He and Nat were rich and …
Category: Culture
Keep the buffer zone
WBUR cognoscenti contributor Joanne Barker got it right: Eleanor McCullen, anti-abortion plaintiff in the Supreme Court case challenging the 35-foot buffer zone around clinics offering abortions, isn't typical of the individuals trying to deter patients from entering such facilities. Claiming the buffer zone is an abridgement of her First Amendment freedoms, McCullen says sweetly she …
Catching up on movies
For much of the year, my husband and I debate whether a movie is worth seeing on a big screen or relegated to Netflix. But our winter holiday tradition is to binge on in-theater movies during the last 10 days of the year. Friends have asked me what I liked, and so here goes. We believe what …
Hubie: 80 and going strong!
The marquee of the Citi Center for the Performing Arts, still known as the Wang, was lit up on Wednesday evening. In bold colors and a dominating photo it read "Hubie80!" For years now, Boston has known that "Hubie" is Hubie Jones, a man who has made an incomparable impact on this city. He came …
MGM Resorts chief shows the house is in control
MGM Resorts International Chairman and CEO James J. Murren was the house controlling the game in his speech Thursday to the Boston College CEO's Club. As with all CEO's Club luncheons, the event invitation promised remarks plus opportunities for questions and answers, but Murren went on for so long that there was no time for …
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To clap or not to clap
Presidents have their social secretaries to tell them when to applaud during a White House concert. The rest of us, President Obama says, are on our own. But some of today's rigid rules need rethinking. Last Saturday night at the Boston Symphony, Peter Serkin performed brilliantly as soloist playing the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2. The first movement …
Remembering where we were
Fifty years ago today, the woman was not yet a journalist. She was barely 24, a Wellesley College graduate, living in a thoroughly domestic life in a garden apartment in Norwood, getting used to days and weeks totally different from what she might have experienced were she born a generation later. She was surrounded by other, …
Red Sox victory: How sweet it is!
I can't remember ever being happier to be wrong! There will be tons of words written about the first Red Sox win in Fenway in 95 years. None will be enough, nor will mine adequately express our collective joy. As CNN's John Berman, a Red Sox fan, said this morning outside Fenway: worst to first, …
Terezin Music Foundation touches core of humanity
When my husband and I visited the Terezin [also known as Theresienstadt] concentration camp outside of Prague in 1990, we could only begin to imagine the horrors the Nazis visited upon the political prisoners and Jews housed there. The barracks where human beings were packed in, disease rampant, prisoners starved, worked to death or killed, hundreds of thousands kept for months or …
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Bullpen cop not a picture-perfect image
Local writers (e.g., Dan Shaughnessy) have reveled in the image of Boston Police Officer Steve Horgan raising his arms in a celebratory pose as Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter fell over the bullpen wall chasing David Ortiz' grand-slam homer. It was certainly a joyous moment for all of us Red Sox fans in an extraordinary moment …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 