Uninhabitable

Karen is on vacation. Here is a column from February that you might enjoy again.

Samuel Eliot Morison in The Maritime History of Massachusetts describes our state’s liabilities—tumbling, shallow, un-navigable rivers that could never compete with the mighty Hudson or the St. Lawrence; “long-lying snow,” making for a short growing season; shallow soil too close to the underlying granite for successful farming, few natural resources beyond timber, and then there is the ice. Compared to the old country, Massachusetts presented daunting challenges to its early European settlers.
Morison goes on to credit those settlers with turning their liabilities into assets. Our forebears captured the power of the waterfalls that prevented navigation to turn the mill wheel, enabling them to grind wheat and develop industry. They used the snow’s slippery surface to haul big items, possibly the most famous being the captured British cannons that Henry Knox dragged on sleds from Fort Ticonderoga at the beginning of the American Revolution. He made it to Dorchester Heights, where General Washington trained them on the British fleet, which prudently left Boston Harbor on or about March 17, conveniently giving us a secular reason to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
Finally, landowners, realizing New England’s soil was mostly only marginally fertile, quarried the underlying granite to build imposing architecture, headstones, curbs and now, kitchen counters. With few natural resources of their own, Massachusetts’ early entrepreneurs shipped other places’ goods. Then they sliced the ice from the ponds into blocks, packed them in sawdust in the holds of ocean-going ships, and sold the ice to tropical countries. I’m told that such entrepreneurs also introduced ice cream to show tropical-landers how to use frozen water.
Clever.
Nevertheless, Morison’s description reminds readers of how uninhabitable America was to early Europeans. It still is. New England? Morison spelled it out. But other regions were and are even more challenging.
The mid-Atlantic states, the South and the Midwest? So hot and humid that British diplomats assigned to Washington, D.C. in the 1800s were allowed to wear Bermuda shorts. Texas— same heat, with the added threat of fire ants. South and the Midwest? Tornedoes. The South? Bugs, big ones that bite and give you the creeps, not to mention poisonous snakes and the alligators that would get you if you tried to swim in the fresh-water ponds, rivers and lakes.
Arizona and some of Nevada? October through March is nice enough. But from April on you can’t go outside without collapsing. You will burn your hand if you touch anything outside. I once met a woman who grew up in the state before air conditioning. She said her family dipped their sheets in water before they went to bed and rolled up in them so they would be cool enough to sleep.
Arizonians say you won’t mind the heat because it is dry heat. They say this while sipping margaritas at an air-conditioned bar. They know better than to go outside.
In many other areas of the country you can’t go outside in the summer. That’s one advantage New Englanders have on most summer days. The southern states spend more on air conditioning than we do on heat. What kind of life is that to be forced inside all summer?
Then there is the West Coast, possibly the nicest place in all of America. Unfortunately, California is slowly tipping into the Pacific Ocean. It is wracked with earthquakes, fires and either droughts or floods. Oregon puts up with an active volcano.
With all the threats and challenges to human life in the rest of the country, Morison’s New England looks pretty good. We can still spend many days outdoors in the summer. Winter sports and a cozy fire in a fireplace, if we are lucky enough to have one, keep us going.
Still, we face global warming and sea rise, so that even in relatively livable New England we can expect overheated summers, winters too warm to stop the deadly southern bugs, and the Atlantic Ocean lapping at our doors. According to news reports, we might have to build a sea wall at the entrance to Boston Harbor to keep the rising ocean out.
We might get some solace from the fact the Florida, where the governor refuses to recognize climate change, will soon be a shallow salt marsh. But that also means that New Englanders won’t have Florida to flee to if they can’t stand weather or taxes.
We’ll just have to stay here and face the changes. Grist mills, granite quarries and ice seem pretty benign right now.

A recipe for cooking

Karen is taking a summer break. This column on a remarkable business incubator appeared last January.

Take one old hot dog factory. Add two big kitchens, eight convection ovens, 12 food truck spaces, several 15-gallon mixers, a frying pan logo, a 1,800 square-foot refrigerator and 45 start-ups. Stir in $15 million of public money, tax credits and donations. Cook for seven years while raising money, renovating the factory, and getting up to speed. Top it off with an executive director who knows her stuff.
Serve it to Bostonians at the Boston Public Market, the Greenway and commercial outlets all over the city.
Enjoy, as waiters say. You’ve just gotten the recipe for the CommonWealth Kitchen, a non-profit company in an old Pearl Hot Dog facility that nurtures start-up food businesses and also cooks for bigger but still personal food businesses that are so successful they can’t do it by themselves.
My friend Sally and I drove out to Dorchester, where the facility is, to see what was happening. I’d heard about this place from people at the Boston Public Market, since CWK, as is it known, prepares pasta for Nella Pasta and foods for other Boston Public Market vendors.
It helps to have the equivalent of a world-class chef managing the kitchens. That’s Jen Faigel. People like her are both commonplace and extraordinary. On the one hand, they’ve done what everyone is supposed to do. They’ve found their niche, educated themselves, gotten experience, grabbed an idea and made a success of themselves and their passion. On the other hand, when you find people like that, they seem rare.
Jen had worked in affordable housing, real estate development and economic development. The Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation was planning to tear down the decrepit factory and build affordable housing. Neighbors said no. “We want to keep jobs here,” they said. “What good is affordable housing if people can’t work?”
That was in 2009. By 2010, Jen, who’d been on the board of the former CropCircle Kitchen in JP, was brought in as a consultant by the Dorchester EDC to help create a food incubator that took advantage of the special conditions the 1910 factory offered. In 2014, Jen became the executive director of CWK, which absorbed CropCircle, and it opened with two kitchens.
One is for folks who have an idea for a food product, but don’t have the facilities or the know-how to make their favorite sauce, pickles or cake into a real business. Those budding entrepreneurs sign up at $35 an hour to use the large equipment CWK provides. Along with the space, they get instruction on crafting a business plan, getting the proper permits, scaling recipes, packaging their product, maintaining food safety, and handling finances, insurance and all the other nuts and bolts of running a small business.
So far, 45 businesses, including the Clover Food Lab, Roxy’s Grilled Cheese and McCrea’s Candies, have gone through the program and grown to the point where they’re on their own.
Forty-five small businesses are now sharing the large kitchen. They include Sweet Teez Bakery, whose owner, Teresa Thompson Maynard, arrived while we were visiting to make her cookies, cakes and cupcakes. “I left corporate on January 16,” she said. “CWK really helped me know what I’m doing.”
She needed the help, she said, since she admitted burning the first cake she baked in the large convection oven.
Grace Connor, aged 17, was also in the kitchen while we were visiting. This tall, thin South End girl was making cookie dough ice cream for Little G, her nascent ice cream venture.
Jen said a Boston police officer makes chutney at CWK, but we didn’t meet her.
On the other side of CWK’s entrance is the second kitchen, devoted to cooking for outside vendors whose facilities can’t handle the volume they need. While we were there, three women were baking cookies and also preparing a bloody Mary mix for Alex’s Ugly Sauce. Owner Alex Bourgeois now has his sauce in every Whole Foods on the East Coast, so he is experimenting with new products.
CWK also makes sauce for Mei Mei Street Kitchen and pumpkin puree for Harvard’s dining services. In the fridge were fifty pounds of cilantro, which shows the volume CWK can handle. Nearly 60 percent of the fresh ingredients are local, Jen said proudly.
CWK has relationships that connects its businesses to lenders when the start-ups need investment to expand. It constantly cleans the fans, floors, drains and equipment. It creates a community of cooks who can keep in touch after they disperse.
CWK has 14 staff members and a $1.6 million budget, with 50 percent from earned income, matched with grants and fund-raising. Within five years, Jen projects earned income will cover 85 percent of CWK’s costs. She has space for more start-ups.
So if you are intent on creating your own culinary sensation and offering it to the world, contact Jen. Everything you need to sign up is at www.commowealthkitchen.org.

Thanks, Donnie, for the big reveal

Karen is taking a break. Since we were all recently laughing at Trump when he inappropriately complimented the French president’s wife on the good shape she was in after the age of 60, the subject of this column still seems up to date.

One good thing Donald has done for America is that the regrettable frequency of sexual assault is now out in the open, and it’s not just a bunch of drunk college sophomores committing the crimes.
I had read that women were revealing their own experiences with it to their mates and to other women. Then I landed with several women friends I see a two or three times a year. They started talking and talking and talking. I was observing the disclosures first-hand.
At first two themes emerged. One was that the men who had perpetrated these acts were pathetic, creepy creatures, and we suspected they had small “hands.” Another was that the women felt humiliation years after the acts had taken place.
Then one woman described an attempted rape. C. said that a busboy who’d been serving in her college sorority offered to walk her home, and she was happy for the company. But when they got to her place, he pushed her into her room and tried to rape her. Terrified, she could think of only one thing to do—she made herself throw up, all over him.
Disgusted and distracted, he paused, and she was out of there.
That set me to thinking: how many women have been threatened with sexual assault and prevailed? After an unscientific poll of my friends, it turns out that due to luck, height and clever thinking, many have done so.
Take S.’s experience:
“Some years ago, I was living with a large, chocolate point Siamese cat named Harvey and dating a professor from a local university. One evening after dinner at a lovely restaurant, we came back to my apartment for coffee and conversation. We were standing in the hallway leading from the living room to the bedroom when the professor began playfully backing me toward the open door of the bedroom. Before I realized this was not a game, the professor had pinned me down on the bed and was trying to disrobe me. I virtually bellowed my objection to no avail.
“In response, Harvey, issuing his great hoarse Siamese meows, leapt on the prof’s back and clawed him vigorously. Prof ran out the door with Harvey at his heels.”
Another story that may be more common than anyone realized was P.’s. She said her doctor pushed her against the wall as he was leaving the exam room and kissed her on the lips before slipping out the door. She retaliated by getting a new doctor.
Cleverness sometimes helps, although it’s hard to be clever when you are scared.
One woman told of being in grad school when a young teen approached her on the sidewalk. He was tall and skinny with a sweet baby face. She thought he was going to ask for change, but instead he knocked her books to the ground and tried to grope her. Astonished, she asked, “What would your mother say if she knew what you were doing?”
He stood back, looking really scared, and asked, “Do you know my mother?”
She replied, “Of course I do!!”
He disappeared down the street at record speed.
Having a weapon helps. In one tall woman’s case it was her elbows. She was married to a professor. As she came out of the bathroom at a department party, the head of her husband’s department pushed her back in and tried to disrobe her. This woman is about five-eleven, and she made use of her size, elbowing him and fighting him. She managed to get out. He came out soon after, continued having a good time at the party and never seemed embarrassed at subsequent social encounters with her. She wondered if he even remembered. She certainly did.
Another woman described using her door as a weapon. Some years ago a neighbor joined her as she was walking home through the colorful fall leaves in the Back Bay. He helped carry some of her heavy books. At her door, he returned her books and began to grope her. She pushed him away, but he still had one hand on the door frame. So she shut the door on his hand and kept it there, pushing against the door, as he wailed in pain. When she finally let up, he sprinted away. She laughed, then shook and cried.
Unfortunately, other stories of assault were less satisfying because the women could not get away.
The best news, however, is not that predatory men can be vanquished. It’s that so many men are dignified, caring, loving, respectful, and real friends and partners of women. Those kinds are the real men.

A modest proposal

Karen is taking a break. Here is a column from last fall that needs more consideration.

The noise is always a surprise. Your cab stops in the street to let you out. The driver can’t pull over because parked cars line both sides of the narrow street. A short time passes while you pay and get ready to climb out.
Before you have time to count out the money for the driver or swipe your credit card, the guy in the SUV behind you lays on his horn. With him, it’s me first, all the time. Who are you to stop in front of him? Who do you think you are to delay his trip?
You know who you are because you live here. You know that streets must be shared. This means sometimes we have to wait, and we usually do it willingly because we understand the situation.
The guy laying on his horn in his gas guzzler is probably from the suburbs and doesn’t know how to behave in a city, you think. That’s the most insulting thing—being from a suburb, the “S” word—that long-time city dwellers can think of. It’s obvious because we know in the city, we must share all kinds of things, including time on the streets.
But there has been good news recently on the sharing front, on the behavior that says, “not just me first, but everyone that is in this with me.”
Take the World’s Greatest University, as a Boston Globe writer used to call it and others still do. A couple of weeks ago Harvard said yes to its dining hall workers, agreeing that all should make at least $35,000 a year, that their health care costs will not go up and that the university will provide compensation for workers laid off in the summer months when fewer students need a dining hall. Whew.
Perhaps Harvard capitulated to its dining hall workers because it looked in its heart and saw it was the right thing to do. It is also possible that it couldn’t take the criticism after the world learned that its portfolio managers were earning from $5 million to $8 million a year for performances well under those of their counterparts at other wealthy universities. Whatever the reason, Harvard shared.
The MBTA isn’t doing so well at sharing. Janitors at its stations have faced reduced hours, which not only means lower pay but also reduced health and other benefits. Privatization may reduce costs for government, but it can also end up making life miserable for employees.
I’m not defending the MBTA’s counting house privatization, since it seems as if workers there were not up to the job. But the janitors seemed to be doing their jobs just fine.
When we cut spending, does it have to be on those most vulnerable? What if we simply took a lesson from Harvard and shared more?
For example, that playspaces on the Esplanade are beautiful. The Esplanade Association and other local people raised the money to have those places built, and they were sorely needed. Good for them.
Wouldn’t it have been nice, however, if, as they raised funds for the Esplanade, they also raised funds for a playground in some park in the DCR system that is not surrounded by wealthy residents who can build their own playgrounds?
The Friends of the Public Garden could also afford to share. They have done a superb job of supplementing the city’s efforts to keep the Common, the Public Garden and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in fine shape. They are a lovable organization. Taking care of other parks is not their mission. A newer organization, the Friends of Christopher Columbus Park, is also a lovable, successful organization that has become good at raising funds and caring for a park.
But there are 157 park friends’ groups and 331 public green spaces in Boston, according to parks spokesman Ryan Woods. What if the more successful friends groups partnered with a friends’ group with fewer resources? It might be in work days. It might be sharing funds. If contributors knew their checks would be going, not only to the park next door to them but also to a needier Boston park, it might increase fund-raising for the more successful friends’ groups. Some people probably don’t write the biggest check they could, figuring that downtown friends’ groups have many resources already.
The idea of pairing an entity with more resources with one with lesser came from a series of meetings a couple of years ago with local parents who were trying, still unsuccessfully, to get a new school for downtown kids.
They seemed excited about mixing it up with kids of all races, ethnic origins and income levels. They asked, why not pair a successful school with an unsuccessful one and see if the two together could make headway in giving all children a fine education? They were ready to give it a chance, putting kids together and busing them between schools because they thought that kind of busing would be worth it. So far nothing has happened.
This could be Pollyanna talking. But after today, when this hate-filled election will be over, we should reach for something more, something that speaks to our better selves. Sharing is a good place to start.

Infrastructure. Investment. Interesting.

Karen is on vacation. Her column from September, 2016 is still relevant.

Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Boston boldly invested in itself. It cleaned up the harbor, spending $3.8 billion on the Deer Island Treatment Plant alone. It spent from $650 to $850 million, depending on how you count, in state money for the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, said spokesman Nate Little. Fifteen billion dollars of federal and state money went to the CA/T project, aka Big Dig, which buried the Central Artery and created the Ted Williams Tunnel.
These efforts, mostly completed by 2004, have paid off in improving Bostonians’ quality of life. We can swim in Boston Harbor without worrying about the “floatables” that sailed past when a friend of mine finished first in the 1977 Boston Light Swim. While our underground automobile trip through the Financial District is little faster than when we took the overhead road, neighbors no longer have to see or hear the stalled traffic. Instead we can take a beautiful walk through a maturing Greenway. Boston turned around and became the waterfront city it had been and was meant to be
Charlestown gained two lovely parks instead of the overhead tangle where I-93 and Route 1 leading to I-95 once met in possibly the most difficult intersection ever on an interstate highway. (We taught a daughter to drive by guiding her there from Leverett Circle, theorizing that she’d better know how to drive like a Boston driver.)
North End and Waterfront residents are no longer cut off from the rest of the city by an overhead road. And the rest of the city can now get to those neighborhoods with pleasure.
In anticipation of the Big Dig, utility companies relocated and upgraded underground connections, giving Boston a competitive edge over other older cities, recalls Bob O’Brien, who lived through it all when he served as executive director of the Downtown North Association.
The whole thing has provided an astounding boost to Boston’s economy. The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, along with the Back Bay’s renovated Hynes, will contribute $750 million in benefits in fiscal 2017, said Little. The BRA calculates that projects approved since 2005 in the Seaport District total more than $6 billion in investment.
I’ve made my own calculations along the Big Dig with O’Brien’s help. In the dozen or so years since public projects were completed, private real estate investment totaling about $15 billion has built buildings or has them under construction or planned around the buried Central Artery. That figure includes such projects as the InterContinental Hotel, built around a tunnel vent tower, the proposed Haymarket Hotel, and the condominiums at Boulevard. That project, which adds the phrase, “on the Greenway” to its name and incorporates one standing wall from an original Bulfinch building is one of several projects not starting from scratch. Minor changes—cutting windows into the side of buildings that once lay next to the highway, changing doorways so outdoor restaurants now spill out toward the Greenway—are small contributions to the economy that I’ve not included in my tally.
How much can be attributed to the Big Dig? A good economy and the fact that Boston’s industries are the ones thriving everywhere today have helped. Nevertheless, O’Brien said, in the Downtown North area, alone he calculates that the Big Dig is directly responsible for more than $5 billion of investment. This includes parcels built on land freed by removing the elevated highway’s underpinning—the rental apartments on Canal Street, The Victor, Related Beal’s affordable housing on Beverly Street. Larger development sites at the Nashua Street Residences and the Boston Garden would have been less appealing if the overhead road had remained, he said.
“The depression of the Central Artery, which created the Rose Kennedy Greenway, was a major factor in the revitalization and redevelopment of the downtown waterfront district from the North End though South Station and it was unquestionably a major catalyst for renewal and redevelopment of both Downtown Boston and the West End,” O’Brien wrote in an email.
Not even the Great Recession slowed investment much.
Don Chiofaro said his team bought the Harbor Garage because of its location between the harbor and the Greenway. Tom O’Brien said HYM’s project from Cambridge Street to the Greenway was based on the aftereffects of the Big Dig. “It is absolutely true that the Big Dig made projects like ours conceivable,” he wrote in an email. “In fact, I would say the Big Dig helped turn the entire downtown into a residential neighborhood.”
Other projects along the Greenway may have gotten built whether or not the road was buried. Perhaps the Seaport District would have occurred without the Ted Williams tunnel and the other two public investments, but I doubt it, and so does Chiofaro.
Chiofaro has been around a long time and sees the Seaport’s growth, in particular, as directly related to them.
Everyone is impressed with the speed at which the Seaport has developed, but it wasn’t speedy at all, he contends. “The fact is when I got out of high school in 1963, someone took me to Pier 4 and said this is the next great real estate opportunity,” he said. “I looked at the steel nets and asked, ‘What are those?’ They were the nets we used to close Boston Harbor during World War II.
“In 1968 when I got out of college, I was told that district was the next great real estate opportunity. Five years later I got out of business school and was told it was the next great real estate opportunity.
“Long story short is it didn’t happen fast. It took the momentum of the depression of the Central Artery and the cleanup of the harbor,” he said.
So now, when we’re complaining we don’t have enough money to build the Green Line extension, the train to the South Shore, the North-South Rail Link and other big projects, maybe we should look back at the 1980s leadership that got Boston into its happy situation today.
We’re a richer city and state than we were then. To say we can’t afford to make big investments in infrastructure is to not notice where it has gotten us before.

North Country life cycle

I spend several days every summer in the North Country. The weather is always typical for New England, both warm and cold, dry and humid, sunny and rainy—all the contrasts that summer brings in our region.
Plenty of rain this year has ensured that the color green is pretty much overwhelming. The rain seems to have served up more insects and seeds for birds, because I’ve never heard such a chorus in late July.
The mountain trails are full of hikers. The ponds hold swimmers, canoe-ers and kayakers. The state campground down the road is full. Motorcycle flotillas roar by. Hot dog stands and clam shacks do a robust business. Some locals make their annual trek down to Boston to see the Red Sox play. Even the smallest towns have bike races, weekly farmers’ markets and outdoor concerts.
This summer we have much entertainment from Washington too. We were at a restaurant where the patrons were in stitches imagining Mexicans throwing bags of drugs over a border wall and hitting Americans on the head. They went on to laugh about a president’s lawyer whose name is Ty Cobb and the drama of a meeting with Russians—a meeting, one wag said, that appears to have had more people in it than attended the inauguration. Even Steven Spielberg would have trouble imaging all the weird things going on.
As summer progresses, though, it’s clear that this season stands out from the rest in its unique activities and leisure. It’s not like the joke—at least I think it was a joke—in the movie La La Land, in which each season introduced a section of the movie, and yet nothing changed.
New England’s summer progression is most apparent in the plants. Plants mark time passing as they can’t do in winter. It seems a metaphor for a life span.
Summer’s promise in the North Country is heralded in April by deep green skunk cabbage, bursting tree buds and the bright happiness of daffodils, almost like the anticipation of a newborn baby. Soon those beginnings give way to the solid structure of forsythia in gardens and along the roadside hobblebush, apple blossoms and painted trillium, more like a toddler. Tulips and then lilacs can seem as overwhelming as loud children at play.
By the time the mountain laurel appears in June, the summer is nearing teenage status. Peonies, columbine and gas plants (do you realize gas plants can actually catch fire?) are showy garden plants much like those teenagers with their dramatic appearances.
Lilies decorate the Fourth of July as does the abundant feverfew and are as dependable as college graduates going out to work.
Late July is rather like people in their forties. The show on the roadsides is in its prime and well settled in. It is as diverse as it will get before being taken over by goldenrod, a native plant, and Queen Anne’s lace, an alien I like, although some states have designated it invasive. Those August plants signify you’re on the downhill slide into fall.
In the neck of the woods I frequent most often, the most dramatic sign of fall is the proliferation of Michaelmas daisies, also known as wood asters. They last until the woods turns bright yellow with the native witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, which unlike the early spring Asian witch hazel, puts out its best show in the fall. To create the skin antiseptic with the same name, Native Americans taught the early European settlers to boil the stems of this plant.
After those bright October days, the last item left standing is the winterberry, a native holly that lasts for only a couple of weeks in November since the birds eat all the small red fruits. Once I put winterberry in my window boxes only to attract sparrows, which wiped the stems clean in a few minutes.
After this, it looks as if life shuts down, even though it will come again in the spring. Unless it turns out we can be reincarnated, that’s where the metaphor for human life ends.

Following up on the HarborWalk walk

A few weeks ago seven friends and I explored the HarborWalk from Lovejoy Wharf to Congress Street.
We were dismayed by the blind alleys, signs pointing in the wrong direction or no signs, parking lots and the sad condition of parts of the walk.
Now I’ve investigated what’s being done. The prognosis is mixed, but Boston Harbor Now’s plans over time could make a difference.
Before delving into the fixes, I must apologize to the condominium owners at Union Wharf, which was developed into housing before the walk was created in 1984. They pointed out that they had paid attention to the HarborWalk more attentively than other older wharves, and they are right. I’m sorry to have defamed them when they didn’t deserve it.
As to the fixes, one difficulty is that dozens of different public and private owners are responsible for the HarborWalk along its length. A Friends of the HarborWalk does exist. It comprises eight to ten volunteers who host free walking tours, organize cleanup days and install “wayfinding” signs, said the group’s president, Mike Manning, in an email.
But the sign focus has been in East Boston, which is undergoing a waterfront resurgence. Manning invited us to go on a tour with his folks, and I’m sure he would welcome others also. Find their information on www.BostonHarborNow.org.
As to the condition of the HarborWalk abutting the soon-to-be Eliot Upper School at 585 Commercial Street and Langone Park in the North End, it’s mixed.
Construction, to be completed in 2019, has begun on the school, said Boston Public Schools Communications Director Richard Weir. But the HarborWalk behind the school is owned by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, a notoriously underfunded agency.
At nearby Langone Park, however, there are plans. “Later in this fiscal year we plan to start a community design process for upcoming renovations to Langone/Popuolo Park, with construction starting the following fiscal year,” wrote Ryan Woods, Director of External Affairs at Boston Parks and Recreation. “In the meantime we will look into patching up the HarborWalk area so it is a safe place for residents and visitors to enjoy.”
Boston Harbor Now has the best news yet, although it is a long-term project that won’t spark immediate changes. Boston Harbor Now is a newish organization formed by combining the Boston Harbor Island Alliance and the Boston Harbor Association.
This non-profit’s mission is broad. In partnership with public agencies, communities, and private and non-profit entities, it aims to “re-establish Boston as one of the world’s truly great coastal cities.” That pretty much covers the waterfront (sorry).
Jill Valdes Horwood, BHN’s director of policy, said they are aware of the problems.
The most effective solutions to a continuous, navigable public walkway can be implemented through private developers with cash on hand and big new plans. Through negotiations under the 1866 Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 91, which “seeks to preserve and protect the rights of the public, and to guarantee that private uses of tidelands and waterways serve a proper public purpose,” the Department of Environmental Protection requires those entities that seek to develop waterfront property to create such public accommodations as walkways, restrooms, benches, grassy areas, even fishing docks. One of these is in the Seaport District at Pier Four, outfitted with a fish cleaning station and a machine that disgorges bait.
Chapter 91 was haphazardly enforced until the 1980s and early 1990s when the law was tightened as Boston began the harbor cleanup, saw its traditional industrial waterfront uses decline, and welcomed re-use of the old waterfront buildings. At the same time, it realized the public could be cut off again from the harbor, this time not by fisheries and shipping but by private residences, offices and hotels.
As development quickened, the underfunded Massachusetts DEP—isn’t every state agency these days—challenged by a small staff, negotiated with these new entities one at a time, stored the documents and after time passed, who remembers what’s in them? Thus, when a private hotel or residence closes off a portion of the HarborWalk, as critics say they do, is it legal? They might have the right to apply for a private event. Is the hotel forgetting what they can do? Do they not know or care?
Horwood said BHN has a solution that was begun this summer. It involves a website and is time-consuming to execute but thoroughly needed. This website would partly be a map identifying the walk and its amenities, hazards and incomplete sections, since most walkers have no idea what lies ahead and entities in charge of these sections may have no sense of how they are failing.
It would also collect all the licenses DEP has issued over the years into a searchable database so that both owners and neighbors could find out if closing a portion of the walkway at 4 p.m. is legitimate or not.
“The waterfront is for everyone,” said Horwood. “The state holds these lands in trust, and when someone buys a waterfront parcel it comes with strings attached for public access first, then for private development.”
Meanwhile, can we please work on the signs?

Imponderables

News articles extoll Massachusetts’ wealth. From the Boston Globe on June 28: “The Massachusetts miracle: rich and thriving.” In January, “A Waterfront that’s rapidly transforming,” which reports that $1.5 billion of construction was taking place with $850 million about to begin. These new properties mean exploding tax revenue for Boston and higher revenue for Massachusetts with those construction workers’ salaries and the sales taxes contractors are spending on materials.
Massachusetts has been disappointed in actual revenues collected versus revenues predicted, but the numbers are still impressive for both the state and the city.
This leaves questions: If we’re so rich why can’t we afford public transportation at least as good as Paris, which has struggled with high unemployment? Why can’t we keep day care at UMass Boston, not to mention building excellent facilities? Why do our leaders cry poor when schools need funding, when roads need repairing, when rail needs expanding? Why are we so fearful of spending money, while at the same time everyone brags that we’re rolling in it? It’s a mystery.

Do you follow plastic surgery? If so, you might have noticed an interesting spectacle going on in the boobs department. Ivanka Trump and Melania Trump have matching chests. Same size. Same look. And they’re not even related. They don’t look like any of the women I know, except maybe Angelina Jolie, who has a good excuse. (I don’t actually know Ms. Jolie, but I’ve seen photos.) Maybe same surgeon? Maybe the company producing the product makes them only in one size. Who knows?

Then there is Charlie Baker. Will he become a Democrat? Not in next year’s election, since he is popular with voters from both parties.
But, as a Republican, where does he go from here? Nowhere. We saw Mitt Romney embarrass himself repeatedly in his presidential campaign as he tried to please Republican voters by walking back from all he told us he believed in while he was governor. Charlie doesn’t seem like that sort of person. While he hedged on global warming the first time he ran for governor, he finally split with fellow national Republicans and admitted he was concerned about it.
On most matters he’s more in line with Democrats than national Republicans. Charlie is unlikely to get an appointed position in Washington, given his opinions of Trump, and it is unlikely he could win the Republican presidential nomination given his opposition to many of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan’s policies. Charlie is the antithesis of those guys—the kind of old-fashioned Republican many of us started out to be before the Republican Party left us standing in the sea without a boat.
Charlie could become the head of some company that he’d relocate to Massachusetts with the appropriate tax breaks or be named president of a prestigious university, and he’d have a fine life. But if he hopes to achieve higher office—president, let’s say—he’ll find little support in his own party, and would be welcomed by Democrats. Interesting to watch.

Why are we building parking garages that will attract more cars when we don’t have enough space for the cars already driving into Boston?
City leaders are bringing two government-subsidized garages holding 2,100 cars to the Seaport rather than spending the money on trolley service or other public transit (Red Line extension, anyone?). Traffic is already stopped dead because the Seaport has only limited access to other parts of the city. As if we didn’t already know, The Economist concluded that, “the costs and availability of parking affect people’s commuting habits more than the rapid buses and light rail lines that cities are so keen to build.”
That means parking will only attract more cars. We shouldn’t build parking if, as the mayor’s Imagine Boston 2030 concludes, we want less reliance on cars. But without parking, we must provide those rapid buses and light rail lines. Technology in streetcars is sophisticated—Seaport leaders should visit Bordeaux, France. That city has streetcars powered by rails that respond to the streetcar passing over but can’t be activated by a person stepping on them or a bicycle crossing them. Street cars running on those wide Seaport streets could move people to transportation hubs like Andrew, Aquarium and South Station.
MassPort is in on the act too, building a new garage at the airport when other cities are putting their money into rail lines to airports. Instead of providing more parking, Massport could extend the Blue Line and improve the sad Silver Line, which now takes four or five times as long to get to the airport as does a cab.
Rapid transit doesn’t work unless it is rapid. That’s what we need, not more parking that will slow us down even more.

One immigrant’s story

In 1990 eight-year-old Victoria Glazomitsky stepped off a plane at Kennedy Airport with her mother and father, her paternal grandmother and grandfather and her three-year-old brother, Misha.
They were immigrating from what was still the Soviet Union. Her grandmother didn’t want to leave. But everyone else did, including her father, who as an engineer could surely get employment in the US.
He would finally. But for two years the Glazomitsky family lived on food stamps and welfare. They struggled to learn English. They depended on a family member who had come earlier. They moved around. Victoria and Misha went to school. The family finally could support themselves. The grandmother gradually lost her nostalgia for her homeland. They all became citizens.
In one way, Victoria’s story is like all immigrant stories—a hope for a better life, a long journey, a struggle to fit into an unfamiliar country, and eventual success, especially for the generations following.
But it is also her unique story. What better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than by telling an immigrant’s story. After all, unless we are descended from the First Peoples in North America, we all have one, even if that immigration was forced upon us, as it was for so many Africans.
Victoria said she has achieved success in America because of good mentors and good luck. It’s possible, however, that her drive, persistence and determination to do well also helped her. But again, that is a typical immigrant’s story.
Victoria was a good student interested in art and art history, so when she enrolled at UMass Boston, that’s what she studied. She also was good at math, a native Russian speaker and believed she had a knack for business, so she also majored in International Management.
She caught the attention of Professor Paul Tucker, a renowned art historian, who became one of her important mentors.
After college, with financial stability as a goal, Victoria first went into the insurance world. After a couple of years, she knew it wasn’t for her. Professor Tucker helped her sort things out and steered her to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln. At first she was an assistant to the director, but when the 2008 recession hit, the deCordova had to let several staff members go. Victoria took over their duties.
At first, it was a burden of more work and sorrow at the loss of co-workers who were also friends. Later, though, she realized that learning everyone else’s job and steering the complex projects other staff members have formerly managed gave her valuable experiences.
After about five years Victoria confided to the director that, having learned what she could there, she planned to move on. Before she could start a job search, however, the director himself found her a new job.
He had been at a conference with the director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. PEM’s director had a number of projects in his expanding museum that had no supervision. He needed someone who could take them over, even though some were still amorphous. The deCordova Museum director said, “I’ve got the perfect person for you.”
Victoria attributes that career builder to the luck of having her director sit next to the PEM director. Maybe.
During her three years at PEM, Victoria acquired a friend who would become her husband and a future stepdaughter. She and her stepdaughter often traipsed around Boston’s museums. One day in the fall of 2014, they stepped into the Nichols House Museum on Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill. They enjoyed their visit, and the docent told them about the upcoming house tour in December that the musuem has annually sponsored. She couldn’t remember the details, however.
Victoria looked up the house tour online and had good luck again. She found on the web site that the Nichols House was looking for a new director to replace Flavia Cigliano, who was retiring after 16 years at the small museum’s helm. Victoria applied and got the job.
Now with her Russian origin masked by her flawless, unaccented English and her husband Todd McKay’s last name, Victoria is moving on, too soon as she puts it, since she intended to stay at the Nichols House Museum at least five years.
She’ll become the managing director of advancement at the Boston Society of Architects Foundation. This job will help solidify her fund-raising skills.
It’s curious about immigrants. Soon they become so American that their talents and accomplishments mean that no one thinks about their more complicated story than those of the native-born.
Nichols House Museum President Kate Enroth’s comments reflect that.
“We are sorry to have Victoria leaving the Nichols House Museum,” said Enroth. “She had great ideas for new programs and events that brought attention to the museum. Most importantly, she led us in the final steps to gaining the significant honor of accreditation by the national American Alliance of Museums. We wish her well in the next stage of her career.”

HarborWalk—signs needed

Last Thursday, I took a walk along the harbor with four friends from downtown Boston and others from Iowa, Kentucky and Washington, DC, to assess how the 33-year-old HarborWalk is doing.
Time constraints confined us to the stretch between Lovejoy Wharf and the Fort Point Channel post office. I’ll take a walk at other locations later.
The post office is not officially on the Harbor Walk, but it’s a gem. Its spruced-up look has vents like ocean liner stacks. But never mind. We were assessing the walk, not the buildings.
Our verdict? Parts of the walk are dazzling. All of these were built and are maintained by private developments. Presumably their high rents or condominium prices pay for the upkeep.
The city’s properties and such older developments as Union Wharf, however, built and rehabbed before the walk was established, degrade it with lack of access, blind alleys, unsightly parking lots and poor conditions.
In some parts no one would realize the HarborWalk exists since it looks like a driveway. Few signs point to its location. Signs in general are poorly placed and often wrong. We decided the Harborwalk needs a Friends group to get the powers that be to pay attention.
Let’s begin with the fabulous. On a path next to Bobby Orr’s statue park we headed toward Lovejoy Wharf. There we found a passageway through the new building. Wow! That passageway enshrines a splendid view of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Like other parts of the walk constructed since the late 1980s by private developers, this walkway was wide and landscaped beautifully. Its view incorporated the locks, the police station, bridges and the Cambridge and Charlestown shores on the other side. We gave it an A-plus.
Other welcoming spots were along the Boston Harbor and Intercontinental Hotels. Atlantic Wharf had a grassy lawn filled with happy people eating and sunbathing. Also beautiful was Battery Wharf, but no signs let you know the public is invited. Boston Planning and Development Agency: Require Battery Wharf to put up signs inviting people to the public walkway.
On the other side of the Washington Street Bridge from Lovejoy was a stretch that led along the North End. We gave it a D. Crumbling asphalt abutted granite walls that were askew. The walk by the playground, tennis courts, ball fields, the Mirabella Pool and the Coast Guard facility was disappointing and mostly streetside. This waterfront space is wonderful—expansive and welcoming. But again, signs were non-existent and one was completely wrong. Surely that park could be redesigned to incorporate a repaired HarborWalk.
We deplored all the parking lots we had to navigate, sometimes unsuccessfully. The area behind the Aquarium, along the Harbor Garage, Harbor Towers and Independence Wharf were regrettable, forgettable or hunkered down against the public. We wanted pleasant seaside establishments where we could sit down and have a nice, cool drink. We wanted places where people wanted to be.
We were actually warned at one point. “You know this is private property,” said a woman passing into the townhouse section at Union Wharf, while we were standing trying to find a directional sign. I guess the owners there don’t like the public walking by their houses, as the public does past mine—without incident, by the way.
On the other hand, along one wharf, and I can’t remember, maybe Commercial or Sargent’s, the HarborWalk looked like an scruffy driveway, but beside the doorways were gas grilles and charming flower pots—signs that its residents know how to live in a public city. Surely there are carrots and sticks available to reclaim some of the harbor’s private spaces for the public—and get rid of the parking lots.
We loved Christopher Columbus Park. And we were happy to see Tia’s, the kind of outdoor restaurant there needs to be along the waterfront to attract visitors. The boats along the wharves were a treat, as was the harbor itself.
By the time we got to Long Wharf we were tired. (My phone said 12,000 steps by the end.) No one liked Long Wharf, which my coterie did not know has been the subject of lawsuits between some residents and the BPDA over installing a restaurant or something active there. It seemed uninviting and sparsely populated. It is not near residences and most wanted a restaurant. “With dancing on the wharf every Friday night,” said one. My companions suggested a farmer’s market or seafood market would be another good use, but saw it as dead now.
The HarborWalk’s barriers, poor condition, parking lots and general difficulty finding one’s way made it hard to convince the out-of-towners to stay with us. They preferred to get back to the events at the Copley Plaza hotel where their organization was holding its national annual meeting.
We Bostonians found that a problem. Tourism is a big industry in Boston. If the HarborWalk is unpleasant and hard to navigate, it’s not helping the city. While we loved the space behind the Intercontinental, we wanted tourists to appreciate Boston’s older parts also.
Right now the HarborWalk is falling down on that job.