Save the bricks. That was the rallying cry last Thursday for Beacon Hill residents. When neighbors heard the city was going to tear up bricks and install concrete ramps at the neighborhood’s intersections they were, like their predecessors in 1947, willing to sit down on the bricks to keep the city from ripping them out. Mayor Walsh said the construction would take place in the next two weeks.

What the mayor hasn’t learned is that this matter is barely about bricks. Instead it is about a dictatorial public works department that decided to destroy a city’s historic fabric with no consultation with a neighborhood. It is about a mayor who heard only one side of a story.

Walsh said, “This has been going on for two and a half years.”

You’d think if it had gone on for that long, the plan the city’s public works department had for installing ramps would be a wonderful one that enhanced our city.

Instead it is cheap, quick and dirty. There is no evidence that city officials looked at the solutions other cities, especially those with historic neighborhoods, have employed. Neighborhood engineers and architects think the city’s cost estimates are phony. City officials have shut out neighborhood leaders at every stage of the planning, if we could elevate what the city has done to call it “planning.”

Everyone agrees that Beacon Hill should be accessible to everyone, no matter what their abilities are. And it’s a challenge. First of all, Beacon Hill is a hill. Sidewalks are so narrow that no one can get by. Granite steps to buildings protrude onto narrow sidewalks along many streets. The bricks laid in the 1970s were badly installed and have not been maintained. Furthermore, decades of letting the car take precedence over everything else has sacrificed human comfort. Everyone walks in the street. The whole thing is a mess.

With such problems, you’d think the city would bring in experts with long experience in making places accessible. There is no evidence they did anything of the kind.

You’d also think that if two and a half years had gone by, the city would be meeting constantly with neighborhood leaders to find a solution that enhanced the city, not damaged it.

The city of Cambridge provides a good example of how such a process would unfold. Cambridge city officials met twice a month over two years with Cambridge residents, disabilities advocates, engineers, architects and other constituencies, reported a Cambridge resident who sat on the committee charged with solving the problem. Over that period of time, they came up with solutions—some were different from others, depending on the location—on which everyone basically agreed.

Boston’s public works department, however, went about it in a different way. They held only one meeting for the whole city where they told everyone what they planned to do, with no input from residents or experts. Then they went before the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission a year and a half ago. That body told them to return with a better plan. Last November, they again unsuccessfully presented essentially the same improvised plan to the surprise and horror of the neighborhood, then ignored and rebuffed the efforts of neighborhood leaders to helped craft a solution. They made the whole thing an “us versus them” matter, with no sense of collegiality or common purpose. Reportedly, some city officials claimed that Beacon Hill had installed bricks expressly to keep disabled persons out. That someone would believe that or even report it shows how far class warfare still runs this city, not to mention a poor understanding of history.

Make no mistake: there are creative, cost-effective, appropriate ways to solve the problem of making Beacon Hill accessible. Other places with a lot less brainpower have accomplished such feats.

Also make no mistake: Beacon Hill wants to solve this problem, and neighborhood leaders are willing to spend a great deal of time making it happen. So far, however, they have been scorned.

Boston leaders are always worried—is this city really world-class or not? City agencies that operate on a level of cheap, uninspired, unvetted solutions make it clear that Boston has a long way to go before it can be “world-class.”

It’s not just Beacon Hill. All neighborhoods are in jeopardy if city agencies can dictate uninspired solutions without neighbors’ input.

And it was surprising that Mayor Walsh supported such a plan, without investigating further what has gone on, especially since the “plan” was hatched not under his administration, but the previous one. Walsh has been a boy wonder, a fresh burst of energy, a problem-tackler. He seemed to be a person who valued cooperation and win-win solutions. His insistence that a bad plan go forward seemed out of character.

All I know is that good leaders corral everyone to find good solutions. Beacon Hill residents want to be part of the solution. So far though the city has just instigated fights, and Mayor Walsh has now aided and abetted that bad behavior.

As I was reading about the Supreme Court’s decision to allow family-owned businesses to deny contraception to women, I began to wonder—what kind of a person decides he knows better than his employees what is right and what is wrong for them?

Mr. Hobby Lobby is characterized as a Christian. But he doesn’t seem very Christian to me. He forgot the Golden Rule. A Christian believes you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In fact, I thought that was the whole Christian message and that all the folderol that some religions claim Jesus meant or didn’t mean has nothing to do with acting as a Christian. Who the heck knows what Jesus meant? The rest of that stuff is all about power (mostly men’s) and money, and, I suspect, fear of sexual impulses, unless it was the founder of Mormonism, and then it was about having several wives. (Ladies, never trust a religion where men have several wives. It’s bound to go badly for you.)

I bet I can predict how Mr. Hobby Lobby would like it if someone higher up tried to deny him an opportunity to control his reproductive life.

There is another problem that bothers me. Mr. Hobby Lobby is certain he is right. He is so certain that he’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court to prove it.

How is it that some people are so certain they are right even though many others disagree with them? ISIS, the Taliban and the other Islamic extremists have this certainty in such abundance that they will kill for it. Christians have been just as bad – think Spanish Inquisition, think the Crusades.

But also think America today. Americans are taught that they can believe and do whatever they damn well please, and impose that belief and action on others, despite how nutty that belief is or crazy their intentions are. We see it play out daily with climate change and evolution deniers. We see it with supply siders, who try to impose their economic “theories,” even though they have been consistently proven wrong. We see it with that bigoted guy in the West who’s grazing his cattle on our land for free. We saw it with Cambridge liberals who, a few years ago, wanted to give immigrants the right to vote. No—those in my family who have green cards can always become citizens if they want to.

Some of these extremes come from extreme people. Extremism is protected in America, and always has been. But ever since Newt Gingrich blustered into Congress and sanctified meanness, our protected proclivity to be as nasty and as extreme as possible has become revered rather than chalked up to some person being crazy.

Mr. Hobby Lobby comes from the prairie. When I lived on the prairie, my neighbors were tolerant and forbearing. You didn’t impose your beliefs on others. You didn’t cause a stir. I can imagine 30 years ago Mr. Hobby Lobby might have said to himself, “I can tell that not all my employees believe like I do, but I don’t want to make a fuss so I’ll just go along.” He wouldn’t have given someone an opportunity to challenge him.

But now, a good number of people carry a gun because they expect to be challenged. People are ready to scream and shout. They’ll deny someone else’s rights all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court, not filled right now with the most scholarly justices who ever sat, will add fuel to the fire.

I have a suspicion about where this all comes from.

America is being “over-run” by the “other,” some people think. Certain Americans believe their habits and their culture are in danger, if not their lives.

Mr. Hobby Lobby may be one of them. He may not be a medieval-style miscreant who doesn’t trust women to manage their own reproduction. Instead, he may be a man who has decided to stand his ground, because his ground has shifted, and he’ll hold onto it in any way he can. He’s just scared.

I don’t know if we’ll come out of this period of meanness, meddling in other people’s business and bedrooms, and the let-no-bill-get-passed-in-Congress because it might help a black president, not to mention the American people.

But I have hope, based on the slim lessons of America’s history, the practices of the most of my current neighbors and my own diverse family, that we can figure out a way to all get along together, that we can allow people to enjoy their own beliefs without imposing ours on others, that we can tolerate shifting ground because there is bedrock beneath.

I could be wrong.

What’s so bad about a bank? They seem pretty benign.

Then why do ten Boston neighborhood shopping districts, including those in the North End and Charlestown, make them or any professional office a conditional or forbidden use on the first or basement floors?

Why did the Boston City Council recently vote to make banks and other offices a conditional use on Charles and Cambridge streets, adding Beacon Hill’s commercial streets to the other ten districts?

So banks and offices won’t further deaden the blocks they are on.

Banks and professional offices deaden their environments in two ways. First, they create long blank walls. Take a look along Cambridge Street where TD Bank and People’s United have taken up large spaces with blank windows and no customers. For an even worse situation, take a gander over to Central Square in Cambridge where several banks make the area look abandoned.

Banks and professional offices deaden environments in a more stealthy way too. They are rich renters. They can afford to pay a lot more than a small retailer. No wonder landlords like them.

But they kill the goose that laid the golden egg. As landlords fill their spaces with banks and offices on the ground floors, shoppers gradually leave to do their business elsewhere and the small shops that keep trying to succeed after the banks move in finally disappear.

A good example of the deadening effect of an office was at the Charles Circle end of Charles Street. For years a law office, with its blinds drawn, occupied a long space in the large garage building. A couple of years ago the law offices moved out and JP Licks moved in. Now the block is lively, even in winter, when you’d think ice cream would be less desirable.

Tiny Beacon Hill, about ¼ mile on each side, now has six banks, up from three only about three years ago.

The new banks probably attract a few customers chasing miniscule increases in CD rates. They’ll attract a few students and young working people who live nearby. But the big moneybags on Beacon Hill aren’t going to change their banking habits.

The conditional use applied to offices is not a completely done deal—the BRA and the Zoning Commission still must approve it, but that looks promising. Josh Zakim, the district’s new and young city councilor, kept a close eye on the initiative and probably gained some seasoning in doing so. The only question left on this matter is why did it take Beacon Hill so long to get the protection other neighborhood centers have already had?

Questions on another zoning matter were addressed by the city council too. For some reason, art galleries are not an allowed use in some areas of the city, including the Back Bay. You would think that art galleries are just what you’d want in a commercial district, pulling in customers and adding to the mix of retail. This strange situation was pulled into the limelight when the Pucker Gallery in the Back Bay, which has dozens of art galleries, many on the ground floor, tried to move and was denied permission. That matter has been resolved, but the city council decided it needed to look more widely at what are and are not allowed uses throughout neighborhood centers in Boston. Zakim and City Councilor Ayanna Pressley were behind this effort.

Who knows what will result from this exploration, but one would hope that the zoning code will better reflect uses that enhance communities, street vitality and appeal.

It is surprising that Bostonians are such a fearful lot.

West Enders have so effectively communicated their fears about crossing on foot at Leverett Circle to their local politicians that we’re going to waste millions of taxpayer dollars building a pedestrian overpass that will, unless you hit every don’t walk sign, take longer to walk over than the crossing at street level. Never mind that this intersection never shows up on a list of Boston’s dangerous ones. Most pedestrians feel as safe here as they do crossing any other street. But the overpass’s replacement was a Big Dig promise long before urban planners realized that such overpasses make the crossing at grade level more dangerous. The good news: the overpass will look good since local architect Miguel Rosales will design it. The bad news: few will use it.

Parents are also afraid. Who puts 10-to-14 year olds on the subway or a bus to go to school?

Well, actually I did. And so does my daughter who lives in New York City and has children who just turned 12 and 14 years of age. Our grandchildren’s classmates are all traveling by subway too. When did traveling on public transportation become something

middle schoolers couldn’t handle? Some of our favorite city councilors voted against the mayor’s budget, which cut school bus funding, because their constituents apparently got to them with their terror. Some parents said they were afraid of the gangs. But the gangs could just as well be on the school buses too. Come on, parents, be brave, and teach your children how to get along in a city.

Fears of density are curious too. Recently the Chiofaro Company presented its plan for the Harbor Garage site on the Greenway to a generally pleased, perhaps even delighted, audience. One woman, however, said she feared the numbers of new residents, office workers and hotel guests who would become part of the neighborhood if this project goes ahead. “Density affects the quality of life,” she said. “Go to New York City and see that people have paid a huge price for it.”

Funny, I hadn’t noticed New Yorkers thought they were paying much of a price except for their living quarters. Most New Yorkers love the density. They seem proud of being in their situation together. There is an unusual spirit of cooperation along their sidewalks that must be partly the result of density. The benefits of density are also that every product and service you will ever need are within a few minutes walk from your front door. Density saves time, energy and gas, since you don’t need a car and won’t be stuck in vehicle traffic when you live in a dense neighborhood.

The Chiofaro Company’s presentation rarely mentioned Harbor Towers, but many of those buildings’ residents were in attendance. Since I’m a great fan of the waterfront, I walked around the area a bit before I went for dinner at one of the outdoor restaurants there. The Chiofaro Company’s plans trade height for open space with sight lines to the sea. The plan is to welcome the public on all four corners, as well as through the middle of the site.

What a contrast with Harbor Towers. Along Atlantic Avenue, the Harbor Towers site is walled off with a big, unfriendly, impermeable wooden fence. (I think the residents’ swimming pool is behind the fence.) Is the fence there because of fear? Privacy concerns? That doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of the waterfront.

Although you can walk around the towers along the HarborWalk, there is no connection between the Greenway and the harbor at that point, as there would be in Chiofaro’s plan if it is approved and as there is at the Rowe’s Wharf rotunda. It’s a curious situation.

At every public meeting, Boston’s industrial, civic, financial and real estate leaders and even members of the audience mention the words “World Class.” We’re never going to be “World Class” until we get braver that we now appear to be.

Recently when long-time friends, all Bostonians, gathered for dinner, a question was posed: What are the best buildings built in Boston in the last 50 years?

Everyone had a hard time coming up with an answer. Three were acknowledged to be okay—the John Hancock Tower, the Federal Reserve Bank and Rowe’s Wharf.

But the buildings that were considered awful were numerous. Anything by Philip Johnson was judged an insult to the city. The “pregnant” old First National Bank of Boston building was among the disliked. Harbor Towers? Awful, although that duo got credit for bringing people to the waterfront at a time when no one wanted to be there. Three of the friends had worked in Boston City Hall, but no one liked it. Nor did they like its neighbor, the JFK Building, which actually seems an insult to that man.

It didn’t matter whether the buildings were high- or low-rise. We couldn’t think of many good ones.

The friends were also critical of buildings being built now, especially in the Seaport District. All of them are the same—squat boxes filling up blocks too long with undistinguished design. There is little variation in style, materials or height.

There wasn’t much love either for the buildings being built now or those that should break ground soon elsewhere in the city.

So what makes us love a building?

It helps if it solves a problem. HYM Investment Group’s project at the Government Center Garage will get rid of a Brutalist eyesore, uncover a street and contribute to the edge of the Greenway.

Millennium’s project at Filene’s will preserve the old Filene’s façade and fill in the hole created by the demolition of that sorry mid-century addition to the old building.

John Rosenthal’s Fenway Center will cover the Mass Pike, an outcome that has been hard to achieve since Copley Place was built about 30 years ago.

Real estate developers and city officials always tout how many construction jobs a project will create. That’s good too.

But soon the number of jobs created and the problem a building solved is forgotten. Then it has to stand on its own.

Usually new buildings stand tall. Regular readers of this column will remember I am not antagonistic toward height. The neighborhood groups that persuade a developer to lower the height so a swath of land gets 10 minutes more sunlight on October 23 don’t seem to me to have gained much.

It is more important to concentrate on what a building looks like from far away, what it contributes to the skyline, and how it enlivens and enhances the street.

I have seen cities that look great from far away. San Diego displays a rainbow of color if you’re on a boat in the harbor or a passenger in a landing plane. Panama City gleams white, appropriate in a tropical country. New York wins hands down for the best skyline. The reason is in its older buildings—the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and now the “Freedom” Tower—that have beautiful, pointy tops.

The buildings in the works now are not going to help with how the city’s buildings look from far away, nor will their tops contribute to the skyline. When the new buildings are complete, we’re still going to look like Hartford. (Sorry, Hartford.)

One has more hope for how the new buildings will enhance the street, but so far there doesn’t seem to be much new there either.

It seemed like a novel idea when Don Chiofaro put tables and chairs on the small plaza outside International Place, and, in fact those tables are filled with people at many hours of the day in nice weather and lay an atmosphere of conviviality over the corner of High and Oliver streets.

Restaurants continue to be a good idea for the ground floor of big buildings and so do retail shops, especially if they are divided into small spaces with many doorways and a varied streetwall so a passer-by doesn’t feel as if he’s next to a long blank wall.

But the city would benefit from more imagination here. Chiofaro at one point considered a canal along a building he wants to build on the harbor, although I’m not sure that idea is still viable. But that’s imagination. Chiofaro also has installed a small museum in his harborside garage building, a use that nicely expands from retail.

But surely there are additional ideas that would bring a little magic to a building that could help make it loved. For example, I’d like to see arcades lined with small shops connecting blocks through the middle of buildings. Such arcades in London and Paris are charming and successful and break up the monolithic nature of big buildings. Artwork or imaginative historic plaques embedded in the façade of a building or its sidewalks are also welcome. Think of the Boston Bricks bronze inlays on Winthrop Lane or the Boston Public School mosaic on School Street.

But I’m a columnist. My imagination is usually limited to telling other people’s stories. Builders in our city need to expand the possibilities for our delight if they want their buildings to be loved.

Downtown Boston residents, do you feel insulted? Mayor Walsh has backed off for now, but he wanted to change Boston’s residency requirement for department heads. Apparently he’s having trouble filling important jobs because his picks don’t want to move into Boston.

First, one wonders why, in this city of smart folks, the mayor can’t find enough qualified people who already are residents. Second, what’s so wrong with Boston that these appointees don’t want to move here? Norwell can’t be that good.

To help Mayor Walsh persuade potential top officials that living in Boston would be desirable, I’ve prepared some talking points for him about why Boston, especially downtown Boston, is an ideal location for a residence. He can present this list to the outsiders he is considering.

• Living in downtown Boston is more convenient than where you live now. We can walk everywhere. Even if you choose an outlying neighborhood, the T still takes you mostly to where you want to go.

You’ll save time doing your errands. You won’t have to drive, park and negotiate those large grocery stores where it takes two hours to drive your cart down every aisle. Our stores are small, but they have everything you need. Some of them deliver.

• You’ll save time commuting. Almost 100,000 people come into Boston every day, many by car. No longer will you be stuck in traffic on I-93 or the Pike. If you live downtown, you can, like about half of us, walk to work. Your work place will be city hall, which no one likes, but is still in the center of town.

• You’ll have better city services. I’ll wager that your trash and recyclables don’t get picked up for free twice a week, a benefit several downtown neighborhoods enjoy. Our library system will beat the one in your home town any day. Most American cities would kill for the private civic institutions we enjoy. You get to have the MFA and the Children’s Museum and the Aquarium practically at your doorstep. Your kids won’t have to take a field trip to enjoy them. They can go there every day.

• You won’t need a car since you won’t have to take your garbage to the town’s “transfer station,” the downtown shops deliver to your home and you will walk to work. In fact, more than half of the households in the downtown don’t own any vehicle, according to the city’s transportation department’s “Access Boston 2000-2010.”

According to AAA, owning a car costs on average $9,000 a year. I’m betting, however, that you have more than one car, since every person I know who lives outside of Boston has one car for each person in the household. Think of how much money you will save by ditching your cars.

• You’ll need the extra money because downtown Boston housing isn’t cheap. That means your Boston home will probably be smaller than your suburban home. But you have too much junk anyway. Get rid of it and the obligations to clean that junk and store it. As an experienced parer-downer of possessions, I can attest to how much easier life is with only the basics. Besides, Mayor Walsh has promised to create more affordable housing. Maybe he could start with housing for the team he wants to attract.

• You’ll have better scenery, especially when compared to Norwell. In Charlestown, the North End and South Boston, you’ll live next to the ocean. On Beacon Hill, in the West End and in the Back Bay, you can enjoy the river. We’ve got good parks in the center city. What’s not to love?

• You might not want to give up your grass, but some parts of the city—think JP or West Roxbury—have detached housing surrounded by yards. If you still want to get out the mower, you can do so in those communities. But you might find that grass is over-rated. Most of us downtown Bostonians don’t miss it at all.

• The schools aren’t that bad, despite the fact that they stopped serving salad without telling anyone. Well, maybe compared to Newton’s they aren’t so good, but you probably don’t live in Newton anyway. Mayor Walsh has promised to improve the schools, and he might start in the neighborhoods in which he expects his staff will live. So we really want you to move here, since we have only a couple of downtown schools, and they are oversubscribed. If you’re here with us, we might get more good downtown schools faster.

• You don’t want to leave your friends and neighbors? We understand that, but we’re not the haughty, insular, grumpy people Bostonians are often assumed to be. We like people moving in. It confirms our good judgment that we chose to live here. Welcome to Boston.

Listening to or reading the news can make you pretty depressed. We’re forced to learn that Congress, for example, doesn’t want us to have good roads, nor do they want children to have healthy meals in schools, and they’d rather we suffer from asthma than regulate coal emissions. You might think we’re living in a parallel universe that isn’t the good old America you thought you were in.

But then you notice a few small steps that we’re taking here in Boston that should make our lives better.

A good leader, John McDonough, at least for now, heads the school department. Our new mayor seems to be finding his groove. And the best news in the city’s cleanliness department is the change in recycle and trash pick-up.

Starting in July, in much of the downtown, we’ll get two chances a week instead of only one to recycle our bottles, boxes and papers. That will help us keep the inside of our homes tidier.

Even better, trash will sit on our sidewalks for fewer hours. The city, urged on by neighborhood groups, will pick up trash only two days a week—the same days they pick up recycle items—instead of the three days that some neighborhoods have endured.

Some people have complained that it’s a bad idea to reduce a city service from three to two times a week. Others have questioned the premise that fewer trash pickups will make for cleaner streets. It’s not really counter-intuitive. It’s logical, and it all starts with the added recycling day, which means the city is not reducing a service, just swapping an old one for a better one.

Most of us now have little trash. But we have lots of items that can be recycled. On too many days, materials that should be recycled are sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for the trash trucks only, presumably because residents living in apartments or small houses don’t have room to store such items until the one day a week on which recyclables are picked up.

With the new schedule, we’ll be able to rid ourselves of the recyclables twice a week, reducing the need for storage. Recycling is a boon to city coffers, saving the city money—sometimes even making a bit of money on each ton delivered to the recycling companies.

Household trash sitting on the sidewalk legally is one of the reasons Boston seems so trashy. And the longer the bags sit on the sidewalks, even if they are the proper bags, the more time the rats and trash pickers have to get into the trash and strew it about. Right now trash can sit on sidewalks on Beacon Hill and in the North End for more than 51 hours or 30 percent of the week, since trash can be put out at 5 p.m. the night before pickup and the trucks come by on average about 10 a.m. the next morning. (Sometimes they come much later.)

With the twice-a-week schedule, trash will sit on the sidewalk only 20 percent of the time. While that is still as much as 34 hours a week, it’s better than no change. We should see an improvement, if not perfection, in cleanliness and a reduction in the number of rats chewing on discarded chicken bones.

The chicken bones are still part of the problem. A major composting program, such as San Francisco offers, could help with the rat problem, but it doesn’t look as if Boston will get that soon. We won’t get same day pickup yet either. Restricting the hours trash could sit on the sidewalk from 6 or 7 a.m. with a pickup after 10 a.m. would dramatically reduce rat opportunity, not only with a shortened time span but also eliminating over night, when the rats are the most active.

But we’ll take this interim step. It will take a few weeks for residents to learn the new schedule. Nevertheless, I’m expecting a cleaner Boston after July 1.

It’s not news that the book publishing world has changed. Authors say their books attract no interest from the big publishers unless their name is Stephen King. A look at the web pages of the major publishing houses confirms this. Actress Cameron Diaz’s beauty book is the top feature at HarperCollins. Not exactly literature.

Surprisingly though, readers are benefitting from the timidity of the big publishers. A slew of alternatives to the big houses are springing up. Some authors are self-publishing their own books. Small publishing houses are being created, often run by frustrated authors themselves, in which authors and publishers cooperatively fund the design, printing and marketing of the book. Other independent book publishers have found ways to package their output in ways that appeal to readers.

There are still some books that are unreadable—like the ones that came off the “vanity” presses of old. But, if you’re a reader, you’ve put down plenty of books from Random House or Knopf because some of them were badly written. With so many authors turning now to small or independent presses, the percentage of readable ones have increased exponentially. Here are five books, all by local authors or about Boston, that you might want to poke your nose into this summer

Linda Cox of Beacon Hill went the self-publishing route in 2010. Her “Lone Holdout,” tells the true story of her experience on a jury in the drug trial of a young Hispanic man in Boston and her subsequent struggle to help him win justice. Cox’s book has been chosen for reads by book clubs and received good reviews—the Boston Globe called it gripping.

Ari Magnusson of Charlestown went the self-published route too. His story, “Bitopia,” is about a sixth grade boy with a backpack who fears bullies, a timely anxiety about which much has been written. The book also contains an imaginary world, another trendy trope. Magnusson’s book too has received good reviews, plus it was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ best books of 2012.

The next three books take place in Boston. Books with a strong sense of place often collide with readers’ own strong sense of place. For example, Cedar Street doesn’t exist; it is always West Cedar Street. And why does that college girl drive all the time around Boston rather than taking the T or a cab? In real life she’d be towed or ticketed.

But never mind. A strong sense of place is fun, especially if you know the place. “That Year in Boston” is a novel by West End resident Gail Spilsbury. Two people fall in love, things go well at first, and then they don’t. The 2013 Boston Marathon plays a role in the story, but it is not heavy-handed. Spilsbury’s pacing is good in the book, and she writes authoritatively about the inner workings of a book publishing house.

Douglas Trevor, who no longer lives in Boston, has written a book about a sort-of love affair with a great title: “Girls I Know.” A man about to turn 30 is having trouble finding his way in life. He endures a troubling event, meets a troublesome woman, and finally, in helping a troubled girl, sets his life on its presumably successful course.

Both of these books were published by small presses—very small presses, Green Writers Press in Spilsbury’s case, and 617 Books in Trevor’s.

Finally, in the genre of books worth reading are the publishers who’ve found a sure thing and keep repeating it. “Boston Noir” and “Boston Noir 2,” put out by Akashic Books, are short stories filled with characters you wouldn’t want to meet at noon on a sunny, busy street, much less in a dark alley. They are creepy. But a good writer can weave a terrific story around such folks. Dennis Lehane is listed as the editor of the Boston books. The series includes dozens of cities and places—“Tel Aviv Noir” and “Wall Street Noir” are two such titles. These stories take place in neighborhoods you know well, and that can drive a reader crazy as well as entice him or her, but the read is worth it.

Readers won’t desert Houghton Mifflin (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) but they’ll have a lot more enjoyment with these small, unique presses that are willing to branch out from Cameron Diaz to someone who can really write.

Remember when “Do it yourself” meant getting out the wrench and fixing the faucet yourself instead of calling the plumber?

Now, we call the plumber.

That’s because we’re too busy doing it ourselves in every other realm of our lives.

I think it started with banks. It was a relief. Instead of standing in a long line to deposit money into an account at what was then the First National Bank of Boston, one learned how to punch a few buttons with a password at a thing called an Automatic Teller Machine. That name has now gone by the wayside. The ATM has become a word like radar, with the original meaning forgotten.

Some people complained about the loss of personal contact. But who wanted personal contact with tellers who changed every time you went to the bank? Saving time was worth that do-it-yourself activity.

No longer does do-it-yourself save time. Instead it mostly increases the time it takes to solve even basic problems or complete simple transactions.

Try addressing a problem with your phone bill. If you can find a telephone number to call (shouldn’t phone companies have telephone numbers?) the voice will tell you to visit their website. Shouting “agent” or “representative” into the phone, won’t get you a person. Neither will punching zero. In fact, the nice recorded lady will probably tell you, “Good-bye.” Then you’ll have to call them up again, etc. etc. etc. Maybe you will solve the problem, but you also may decide it’s worth a few extra dollars not have to go through the telephone tree. There is a probably a line item on Verizon’s income side for excess charges accepted by customers who can’t bear tackling the problem.

More chain stores than I can count now sell many items only online rather than in their brick and mortar shops, so you’re on your own making purchases too. Even if it would help them sell an item more quickly, those stores are hard to contact with questions. So you spend extra minutes searching the web site for an answer to a question that is almost never addressed in their “frequently asked questions” page.

Comcast wants you to install your television box yourself. Airline tickets, train tickets, even theatre tickets are now do-it-yourself, and if a website doesn’t work properly or it is complicated, it is easy to make a mistake. And even with hundreds of thousands of Delta miles, I couldn’t book tickets online from Boston to Rome without traveling through New York, Atlanta and Detroit. (Actually, once I got a person, it was the same route too. But that’s a different problem—the old airline scam.)

I recently filled out a form so that, in theory, I can go through a passport line more quickly, since I’m old, never cause trouble and follow all rules. But at the Miami airport last January, the signs said to scan your passport, and once it was cleared, go through the turnstile without having to stop before an agent.

I scanned my passport. It said the passport was not acceptable. The scanner told me to step into a long line and take everyone in my party with me. So we cooled our heels in a snaking line for about 45 minutes. When we got to the passport control officer, he looked us up and we sailed through. I still don’t know what was wrong with my do-it-yourself passport, except that it was do-it-yourself.

A couple of years ago my daughter was trying to move, electronically, a check from the U. S. State Department in Kazakhstan into her account. (It’s a long story, but the reason doesn’t matter.) Against my advice, she had established her account at a Very Big Bank run by a Very Big Boss from Massachusetts. It took her days, mostly because she had trouble reaching a person through the bank’s telephone tree. No options existed for the problem she needed to solve.

I’m not expecting to solve my do-it-yourself problems at all—except in the place where it all started. I changed banks. It’s a smallish bank, local, that never got into the bad mortgage, derivative-whatever mess. There are three tellers and I go to them because I like them. If I need a more complicated service I call the bank manager, who answers the phone himself.

Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.