Newton Mayor Setti Warren is catching flak from some Garden City liberals for withholding $1.4 million in city-controlled federal money for a ten-unit building in a former fire station in the Waban section of Newton. The so-called Engine 6 project would house nine chronically homeless and an attendant, bringing to the residential neighborhood individuals with a history of …
Continue reading Warren unfairly under fire on affordable housing
My family's return from a glorious week in London shows how salutary it is for a political junkie to purge herself- albeit temporarily - of politics. So before I get sucked back into the nearly unspeakable frustration of focusing on the ongoing national political dysfunction, I want to reflect on the pleasures that lie between the covers of a …
Not much has changed with the Supreme Court ruling that the challenge to Texas' affirmative action policy should go back to the lower court for "strict scrutiny" to be applied. Strict scrutiny means that universities will have to show that non-race conscious strategies were tried to achieve diversity before having to utilize race-conscious policies. So where …
The last time I reviewed a Huntington Theatre production, it was M for miserable. The current play is T for terrific. Run, do not walk, to see Rapture, Blister, Burn, the Huntington Theatre production at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End through June 22. It's a fresh exploration of the …
Continue reading Huntington Theatre ends season on a high note
It wasn't enough to decimate the core of what was Al Qaeda in 2001. The landscape in certain hospitable countries like Yemen and Syria is now dotted with Al Qaeda offshoots and affiliates. And, for the last eight years, the home-grown variety has been particularly vexing. The Sunday morning talk shows were full of attempts to …
Continue reading Muslim community needs to be part of early warning system
Like Punxsutawney Phil emerging from his cave in Pennsylvania, squinting from the sunlight, folks in my hometown emerged from lock-down yesterday morning. On the surface, it was an ordinary weekend morning in spring, a stop at Peet's for coffee, the dry cleaners, drugstore, the usual. But of course nothing was really usual as we started picking up the …
It's hard not to be shaken to the core by the horrific attacks at today's marathon. The deaths, the mutilation, scores of injuries, and fear. The assault on what can only be described as an iconic (yes, I know the word is over-used) event, emblematic of the spirit of Boston. I have never lived more than …
Continue reading Marathon explosions tear at our hearts and community
We left the Calderwood Pavillion in the South End tonight thinking that Ryan Landry's "M" could be by far the worse play we've ever seen, at the Huntington or anywhere else. My husband and I, who love theater and have attended productions of all kinds and quality in cities near and far, have been loyal subscribers to the …
Continue reading “M” is for miserable at the Huntington’s new play
Political correctness run amuck: President Obama felt compelled to apologize to California Attorney General Kamela Harris for calling her "by far the best looking attorney general in the country." Frankly, the only person who might legitimately feel slighted is Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, a "good looking" woman in her own right. But those who …
The Red Sox opening day victory......what could be better? I posted the team's first-place standing on my refrigerator, thinking it might all be downhill from there. But I felt great. Never mind that the dreaded Yankees are broken old men. The Wall St. Journal's estimable sports writer Jason Gay called them "aging and atrophied .... creaky and getting …
Marjorie Arons-Barron 