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 Read More…
Are we Bostonians pusillanimous, spineless milquetoasts? It’s easy to conclude that we are, given our recent behavior over snowstorms. The weather forecasters announce ominously that a snowstorm is on the way. The newscasters lament snow in the same way they’d view a plague of locusts. Suburbanites rush to the grocery store to stock up. The Read More…
Super Bowl fever brought up the topic of sports design. Surely you have noticed the Super Bowl trophy. Once in awhile someone mentions its shape, but not much. Apparently two prominent football guys sat down in a restaurant and designed it, and Tiffany made it and continues to make it. Maybe the guys who designed Read More…
It’s oppressive. You can’t get away from the Trump chaos. Everyone talks about it. Walk down the street, meet a friend. Immediately they bring it up even if you don’t want to hear it. A friend who is skiing in Vermont emailed me about meeting for dinner. But then she ended with, “what’s to become Read More…
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 Read More…
Susan and I took the train to DC last Friday with lots of people and returned on Sunday. We stayed at Lois’s house. On Saturday we three went to the Women’s March on Washington. We wore our bubble-gum pink “Nasty (old) Woman” hoodies. (One of us is 83—probably one of the oldest participants.) Chatter about Read More…
Aren’t we Bostonians better than Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump? Millennium Partners beat out several other developers in a plan to demolish the city’s decrepit parking garage at Winthrop Square and build a 700-feet-plus skyscraper, paying the city millions of dollars to be spread around for park improvements, affordable housing and the like, all of Read More…
So we’re sitting in a movie theatre at Loews on Tremont Street, waiting for Manchester by the Sea to begin. The previews are too loud. The themes are sadistic, violent, cruel, creepy, pathological. Silence is one of movies. The others I can’t remember but they involved cars blowing up, gunshots fired, people disintegrating, mayhem complete. Read More…
Karen is taking a break. This column appeared in December, 2014. Read it for nostalgia because times have changed. Now several downtown neighborhoods enjoy two pick-up days for recycling, which has boosted the recycling rate. Those residents who recycle religiously produce little trash, so the trash pickup days went from three to two in those Read More…
Karen is taking a break. Here is a column from December, 2015 that attracted several comments. When I was 19 years old, I went to Wall Street. It was narrow, dark, secretive—worthy of the cash that I imagined rested behind those vault-like façades. It was my first encounter with shadows bestowing a sense of place, Read More…
Karen is taking a break so she can manage the busy holiday season. Here is a column that attracted many comments. It is from 2016. It’s when I ride the crowded subway that I feel most Bostonian. “These are my people,” I think. Not that they are much like me. They are younger than I Read More…
What do you want for Christmas? Maybe it’s the same as what I want. It’s peace. A refuge from vitriol. A haven from such absurdities as Stephen Bannon running the country and Ben Carson running HUD. A sanctuary from a nation that still appears to be fighting the Civil War in its red state/blue state Read More…