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“(We hope) that our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, mental illness with a pill, poverty with a law, slums with a bulldozer, urban conflict with a gas, racism with a goodwill gesture.” – Philip E. Slater “Wisdom demands a new orientation of…
Read More »Helen Keller – an American author, political activist, and lecturer – was born on this day June 17, 1880. Her relationship with Annie Sullivan – who was sent to live at the Tewksbury Almshouse (now Hospital) after her mother died – is memorialized with a Mico Kaufman sculpture located next to…
Read More »For anyone facing surgery, the possibility of pain looms large. Imagine back to a time when options for “anesthesia” were limited to alcohol or the danger of opium. When a Boston dentist demonstrated the “power of ether” back in 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Jospeh Warren – a well-respected surgeon…
Read More »The autumnal equinox heralds the start of Fall which in 2012 begins here in the Northern Hemisphere today September 22 at 10:49 A.M. EDT. The word equinox comes from the Latin words for “equal night.” The fall and spring equinoxes are the only days of the year in which the…
Read More »While walking through the grounds of the Whistler House Museum of Art yesterday on our way to the “Bernie & Bill” exhibit, the person I was with exclaimed “what a beautiful butterfly bush!” I’d probably heard of such a shrub before but the name never made much of an impression…
Read More »On April 29, 1962 President John F. Kennedy held a banquet honoring Nobel Laureates at the White House. Forty-nine Nobel Laureates, or their representatives attended. The guests included Pearl Buck, Rudolf Mossbauer, Mrs. Ernest Hemingway, Mrs. George Marshall and Dr. Linus Pauling.* It was on this occasion that Kennedy made his…
Read More »In yesterday’s New York Times Douglas Martin wrote of Lowell-born Roger Boisjoly who died a few weeks ago just before the anniversary of the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. Why link these two events? Remember the O-ring question? An O-ring seal in Challenger’s right solid rocket booster failed at liftoff – a situation that…
Read More »Young brides were given a copy of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook as a must-have staple to begin married life. Middle class housewives and “ladies of the house” used it religiously. Later, it became the basis of those science of home economics classes taught in public high schools. The Fannie Farmer…
Read More »Mass Moments reminds us today of the first use of the so-called “iron lung” developed by Harvard’s Dr. Philip Drinker. He was responding to a terrifying new disease that was causing sudden paralysis. Doctors called it poliomyelitis — or polio. First used on this day October 12, 1928 at Children’s Hospital…
Read More »Mr. Jobs’s legacy will be ‘the blending of technology and poetry. It’s not about design per se; it’s the poetic aspect of the entire enterprise.’ James B. Stewart today writes about Steve Jobs’s passion for great design in a long article in the Business Day section of the NYTimes. If…
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