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Common . Nineteenth-century designers saw parks as breathing spaces whose trees would pump oxygen through tenement and mansion alike. Even the vocabulary of green spaces freshens speech—grove and bee, clover and pebble, pine cone and jay. Seagulls on the common across the street from my family’s house stand as stout…
Read More »He’s back with another brain-stretcher of a mega-concept. David Brooks is writing about a national “gentility shift,” a long-term trend in how Americans are organizing their society, that he suggests may be a root cause of today’s new kind of economic pain. This has to do with younger people mostly—what those with more…
Read More »In today’s NYTimes, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes about Susan Retik and Patricia (Fleming) Quigley, who co-founded Beyond the 11th after their husbands were killed in the 9/11 attacks as a way to reach out to women in Afghanistan who, like them, lost their husbands in violent incidents. Patti (Fleming)…
Read More »Read E. J. Dionne’s latest take on the recalibrated mid-term election battle in this pick-up of his regular column from truth-out.org. E. J. says President Obama has moved to reshape the narrative just about nine weeks from voting day. What’s great about this link is that it includes the full…
Read More »We don’t like it, but we write about guns and shootings on this blog because that’s part of what happens in our lives. Fortunately, we live in a place that offers many ways to uplift and enrich us day to day. Dick wrote about the Bread and Roses Festival in Lawrence on Labor…
Read More »OK, now we’re talking. For Labor Day, President Obama called on Congress to support a $50 billion program to modernize US infrastructure over the next six years. Read the report from AOL.COM here. I heard the President was a pretty good poker player back in Chicago. It sounds like he’s…
Read More »The following might sound like it came out of the movie “Dave,” in which a presidential look-alike who runs a temp agency (Kevin Kline) winds up being secretly installed as president after the real prez has a stroke. At first manipulated by an evil chief of staff (Frank Langella), “Dave”…
Read More »Today’s Globe has the first in what it promises will be “a series of occasional articles” about the University of Massachusetts. Read about UMass Amherst’s struggle to improve itself and compete against other public universities in states near and far in the first article, and consider buying the Globe if…
Read More »Longtime classroom teacher, writer, and educational consultant Frank Thoms, a familiar downtown resident, will read from and sign his new book about teaching on Thursday, Sept. 23, 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., at UMass Lowell’s Barnes and Noble Downtown Bookstore, 151 Merrimack Street. In his book, “Teaching from the Middle of the…
Read More »SUN reporters continue to track the Pawtucket Falls Dam issue. Read today’s front page story here, and consider subscribing to the paper if you appreciate the reporting.
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