tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-288047952024-03-13T16:20:31.217-07:00City StoriesAs an editor and writer for City Weekly, I looked for the idiosyncratic, stories about those such as a 97-year-old hitchhiker, a hairdresser who very carefully cut the pricey wigs worn by Orthodox Jewish women, a meth dealer who went from driving an Infiniti to the brink of homelessness, and tugboat captains battling with sea pilots for respect on the harbor.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1153247138456867602006-07-18T11:25:00.000-07:002014-01-08T18:33:00.982-08:00Hitching at 100<img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/300/Arnold.jpg" height="400" width="295" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 11/23/2003<br /><br />FROM HIS DEATHBED, WHERE HE ARRIVED on his 100th birthday, Arnold Stephens wouldn't stop cracking jokes, no matter how many of his friends bawled or prayed he would sit up, free of all the tubes and pumps, and shuffle off, like he was hitching another ride to Burger King.<br /><br />A World War II veteran who reached my age during the Great Depression, it seemed he embodied everything I wasn't, everything I aspired to be.<br /><br />An unrelenting optimist, Arnold could make the most morose characters laugh, even an oncologist explaining the extent of his cancer. At 30, when he sold gallons of soap during the Depression, he liked to say, "I squeezed the nickel so hard I could make the Indian ride the buffalo on the other side of the coin."<br /><br />Though he owned an apartment in one of the wealthiest parts of town, a two-bedroom condo that could have fetched more than a half-million bucks and had the word "Royal" embroidered on the brownstone's burgundy awning, he remained a self-described "cheapy" to the end -- eating at "church dinners" after his wife died 20 years before, sticking out his thumb for a ride to Copley Square, or savoring the tapioca pudding nurses served him in his final days.<br /><br />I met Arnold two years before at one of his church dinners, a soup kitchen a few blocks from his apartment. As I waited for someone else, I couldn't help noticing as Arnold, stooped yet seemingly hale, regaled a table full of grumpy old men.<br /><br />I walked over to the short man, who sat at the head of a table in a rumpled brown suit, and listened as he told one of his self-deprecating jokes: "I went into the store to buy a piano the other day and asked if I could buy it on the installment plan," he was saying. "They wouldn't sell it to me ... Go figure.''<br /><br />Then I got a glimpse of how he could eat. The scrawny guy had the appetite of a sumo wrestler. As I watched him move from pork burger to coconut pie, devouring each, I asked if he had enough at home. "I have a microwave, but if I don't have anything to eat, I just starve," he said, pausing for a few long seconds, his saggy jaw unable to conceal the coming smile. "Yeah right."<br /><br />To be sure, Arnold lived off a meager income - he relied on federal aid just to pay the taxes on his condo - but his pension provided more than enough to eat. I wrote about him in a front-page story about land-rich, cash-poor seniors who scrimped by because either they wouldn't move or refused to hock their homes for so-called reverse mortgages. The soup kitchen's buffet-style free food surely had its appeal, but the real reason he ate there and at other churches was "to meet the fellas," as he liked to say, or "shoot the baloney."<br /><br />It was hard not to like Arnold, who never had children and whose only relatives were three nephews, just one of whom he saw regularly. His exuberance quickly breached the walls I had come to naturally build as a reporter, and I soon found myself dropping by his dust-covered apartment, not to check up on him, but to chat. It didn't take long before we became pals.<br /><br />One thing I never could understand, though, was what possessed a man in his late 90s to hitchhike.<br /><br />Arnold, of course, had a simple explanation. "A man has to get around," he would say, his squeaky voice rising and falling with every syllable. </span><img align="right" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/300/arnoldphotos11.jpg" height="300" width="250" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like many seniors, especially one who spent his life traveling through Europe and Asia, Arnold thrived on going places, which made it particularly hard to give up driving. In fact, he remained behind the wheel until only a few years before, when he was 95. But he lived in a big city, I noted, wasn't it risky? How did he know he wouldn't find himself in a dangerous situation? He didn't think much about it, because it came down more to dollars than sense: He refused to waste money on a cab. So, for pragmatic reasons, he took to hobbling out to the curb, sticking out his thumb, and waiting patiently. "People are nice," he said with another disarming smile. "They're all my friends.''<br /><br />I learned a lot over the two years I palled around with Arnold. There would be lessons about life, and death.<br /><br />He presented a model for a man who could live contentedly with few material possessions. The passage of time, whether it slowed late at night or sped up when he looked at a calendar, never tormented him. He could be as comfortable with silence as with a deep conversation. He knew how to laugh and how to tell a joke; but he also knew how to listen and how to comfort. And unlike many former soldiers of his generation, he never hid his affection, often telling me of all the friends and family I brought to meet him, "Tell them I love 'em."<br /><br />Nothing - other than cute girls and good food, of course - gave him more pleasure than giving presents. More than anything else, he liked to record old movies and send visitors home with tapes. Whenever I asked if I could bring him something, all he wanted were blank videotapes, which he always insisted on paying for. On each tape, he wrote "Gift," just in case, he explained, the FBI started asking questions. He would also make presents of cameras, the disposable kind, because he thought it important we all hold on to memories.<br /><br />Arnold also loved to drive around. He knew his way around town better than the most adroit cabbie, and every drive to the supermarket, where he insisted on pushing around his own cart, or wherever else, included a history lesson. As we sat in traffic in my VW Bug, which he called "Herbie," he would tell me stories about horse-drawn fire engines or the great molasses flood in 1919. Later, amazingly, he would e-mail me - one of his nephews gave him a computer - things he forgot along the way.<br /><br />Other than the computer and an old TV, </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/300/ArnoldCamel.jpg" height="200" width="260" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">both of which always had problems, Arnold lived in a cramped apartment strewn with cat litter. Paint peeled off the old, warped walls and the place hadn't seen a renovation since before man set foot on the moon. But he got along fine, shopping for himself, making his own meals, and scrubbing all his dishes. When he had the energy, he changed his sheets and did his own laundry. He also looked after his roommate Janna, an infirmed woman 30 years younger, who began renting a room from him and his wife in 1958, and never left.<br /><br />As his 100th birthday approached, I asked Arnold what he lived for. "Burger King," he said at first, only partially joking. As much as he savored the hefty portions at soup kitchens, or the spare salads and cooked cabbage he served himself at home, he liked to go out to eat, often treating himself to baked potatoes at Wendy's or French fries at Burger King. When we went out together - his favorite place was the Old Country Buffet, which he loved for its all-you-can-eat buffet - it never failed to amaze me how much he could pack down, how second helpings often turned into fourth helpings. Arnold easily swigged more than five cups of coffee at each meal.<br /><br />I pushed him for a more serious answer, and he said this: "Some people live for pretty girls. Some live to eat. Some like to go to the movies. I like all of those. But it's my friends that matter the most."<br /><br />After all the years, I asked whether one lesson stood out, some piece of wisdom he most wanted to pass along. He looked at me intently and said: "To be more tolerant."<br /><br />He also spoke of love.<br /><br />"It's the biggest joy in life," he said. "There can't be too much love."<br /><br />About three months before he died, Arnold complained about some pain, and I took him to the local Veteran's hospital. A test, his doctor told me, showed he had an advanced stage of bladder cancer. I found myself in an odd position, one I hadn't expected.<br /><br />It was up to me to break the news.<br /><br />I figured it was best to first ply him with something to eat, a muffin and a large coffee, which he devoured. When we spoke about the prognosis, Arnold never showed a sign of fear, nor did he ever lose his sense of humor. He favored aggressive treatment, he told me, and despite growing aches and pains, he wanted to live.<br /><br />As he underwent nearly a month of radiation treatment, I watched in awe as he refused to complain and flirted with the nurses. When I asked how he felt, he insisted: "Fantastic … Excellent - with a capital K," a saying of his I never quite understood. Did he need or want anything? He'd smile and say: "Bring me a bag of gold."<br /><br />A few days later, I called to wish him a happy birthday. </span><img align="right" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/300/AtCoffeeHour.jpg" height="210" width="260" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was a long pause, and it sounded like he was struggling to hold the phone. Then I heard this: "Dave, I can't breathe."<br /><br />An ambulance took him to a nearby emergency room, one of countless elderly people rushed to hospitals on any given day for trouble breathing.<br /><br />The night before, security guards had thrown me out of the same hospital for a story the paper assigned me to cover, a relatively routine event for me. This time I cleared past the guard station and found Arnold hooked up to an array of machines, with a huge breathing mask pumping oxygen into his lungs, now full of liquid.<br /><br />All I could do was try to impress upon the doctors and nurses the preciousness of this man. Then, before his nephew and a friend from his church arrived, a resident asked me whether he should be resuscitated if his heart stopped, or if necessary, intubated with a ventilator.<br /><br />I wasn't sure what to do - I had never conceived of having this kind of relationship with someone I wrote about for the newspaper. This definitely wasn't taught in Journalism 101.<br /><br />Five days after his 100th birthday, I stood outside his room in the intensive-care unit and listened as nurses marveled at his improved health. Doctors suggested he might soon be well enough to return home. As I prepared to leave that afternoon, Arnold turned to me, and over the sound of pumps and monitors, he said, "I love you."<br /><br />That evening, a nurse called. Arnold's heart rate climbed sharply. He had no more than 10 minutes to live, the nurse figured.<br /><br />I raced to the hospital. When I arrived, the machines had been turned off and the tubes removed from his arms.<br /><br />He was dead.<br /><br />Alone with him, before his family and other friends arrived, I kissed his cold forehead and thanked him for prying open my heart, for showing me that poverty, old age, and disease doesn't have to sap spirit. </span><br />
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David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</a></i></span><br />
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Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149395739570410812006-06-03T21:33:00.000-07:002014-01-01T21:28:52.034-08:00The Gentle Enforcer<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="377" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-34.jpg" width="640" /><br /><br /><span style="color: black;">By David Abel | </span><span style="color: black;">Globe Staff | </span><span style="color: black;">3/30/2003</span><br /><br /><span style="color: black;">Every cop suffers his own indignities.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Peeling drunken men off sidewalks. Chasing thugs through crowded streets. Even helping an old, incontinent woman change her soiled sheets.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Some cops let it get to them. Too many violent nuts, too many insults, too many petty crimes not worth their time. Eventually they end up behind a desk, pushing papers in some musty precinct.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Not the man dispatchers call Alpha 633.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">At 61, and one of the city's oldest cops still walking a beat, Officer J.J. O'Malley has become a one-man strike force, a veteran of the roughest streets who has his own definition of preemptive action. In a time of war, with security heightened at home, the short, stocky man in the blue polyester uniform disarms would-be wrongdoers -- his way, without handcuffs.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">"I just give them a pat on the back, you know, talk to them a bit, and maybe ask, 'You're not a funny guy, are you?'" says O'Malley, who prefers not to make arrests. "I can be assertive. But I want people to respect me for me, not for my gun and walkie-talkie. There are enough bad guys out there, you don't have to be aggressive with everyone."</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Over the past three decades, ever since the city fashioned the area into a pedestrian mall, the patrolman has become known as the mayor of Downtown Crossing. Chatty but vigilant, he keeps a close watch on the tens of thousands of people passing through daily, bonding with everyone from local lawyers to the homeless to tourists. </span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">With Police Commissioner Paul Evans urging 100 officers to leave the force on voluntary retirement to avoid broad layoffs, it's unclear how much longer Alpha 633 will be on the beat.Long a fixture on the evening commute, O'Malley seems to know nearly everyone, as well as their business. </span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">There's the aging prostitute with AIDS who robs her clients. The priest who plays the lottery and takes strolls around midnight. The 22-year-old who recently opened a high-priced hair salon, the Vietnamese guy who loves basketball, and the old man who makes crank calls from a men's room in Filene's.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">After roll call one afternoon, he steers his cruiser through the neighborhood and parks it where he always does, just off the corner of Summer and Washington streets.It's a few minutes after 4, the time he's started work for the past 18 years, when he spots a homeless man in a jewelry store.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">O'Malley approaches the man, smiles, and quips: "What are you doing, buying a new watch?"</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">The man laughs nervously, and before bolting, says defensively, "Nope, I'm just gonna go to the shelter early tonight."</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">Over the course of an average night, he'll respond to calls for burglar alarms and men passed out from guzzling Listerine. He'll also walk a blind 80-year-old woman home, escort the Cape Verdean manager of a fruit stand to her bank, advise the 19-year-old manager of a card store about the ills of smoking, and track down a phonebook to provide directions to lost South Korean tourists.</span><br /><span style="color: black;"></span><br /><span style="color: black;">"He's the people's cop," says Sheila Jordan, a sales clerk at Tello's clothing store who has known O'Malley since he began the beat in 1979. "You ask some officers for help, and they won't do anything. To him, everything's important. He does things he doesn't have to do. That's why people respect him." </span><br /><span style="color: black;"><br />The list of his admirers includes the homeless who've been on the streets for years and hustlers whom he and his colleagues have spent months trying to bust.Near dusk he spots Dennis Gaskell, who spent 12 years on the streets of Downtown Crossing. The recovering alcoholic now drives a Cadillac and helps run the shelter where he used to sleep. "He would pour out our liquor and we wouldn't like it," he says. "But he always treated us respectfully, like human beings. Something you don't get from most cops."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then there's Andre, the 21-year-old guy in flashy clothes, who for hours every day holds court on the corner by Bath & Body Works. Scores of young pals slap his hand, talk about music, and loaf around with him until dark. Through large bifocals, O'Malley watches Andre and says, "I'm sure he's up to no good."<br /><br />But the man with the black clip-on tie and pointy blue hat takes a different approach from other cops, who've already hauled Andre into the precinct for suspicious behavior. O'Malley jokes with him and his friends, prompting laughs from one large man with a wild Afro when he tells him: "Get a haircut, man."<br /><br />"I call him 'Officer Friendly,' " says Andre, who insists he's just hanging out in what he calls the "most entertaining part of Boston." "You could say he's like a role model. He's always taking care of the public. You've gotta admire that."<br /><br />The amiable approach also works, even if O'Malley's not the only reason for the drop in crime.<br /><br />Since he started commuting from his Lower Mills four-bedroom home, the number of violent crimes in Downtown Crossing has dropped by two-thirds, according to police statistics, and property crimes fell even more. Last year, for example, only 19 vehicles were either stolen or had such attempts made on them, while in 1979 there were 298. In the same time, the number of robberies and attempted robberies dropped from 221 to 46.<br /><br />With rush hour past, most of the pushcarts gone, and the streets increasingly empty, he laments: "It used to be there was always something going on with all the clubs, pickpockets, and unruly people. Now, I have to check to see if my walkie-talkie's on at night."<br /><br />Things have changed over the years. He gets half the 16 or so calls he used to receive on an average night, stopping in a bar for a beer is no longer allowed, and his bosses press him to wear a bulletproof vest and carry a gas mask in his cruiser, neither of which he bothers with.<br /><br />He doesn't lament all the changes, of course.<br /><br />For one, his pay has improved, from $118 a week when he started on the force 34 years ago to his current weekly salary of $953. Then there are all the friends, like the woman from the Chinese takeout kitchen who flags O'Malley over around dinnertime. Before he walks in, she heaps a generous serving of lo mein, chicken, and fried rice into a takeout box.<br /><br />The cop can't resist. "They want to give me something," he says, stowing the food in a booth where he stays when it snows or rains. "If I don't take it, I insult her. And the truth is, I don't mind it."<br /><br />Despite the many changes -- the influx of well-to-do residents and chic restaurants, the new brick walkways and improved lighting, the flourishing of chain stores -- the job's original lure remains: the great mulligatawny that makes Downtown Crossing.<br /><br />In addition to cornerstones like the 203-year-old Stoddard's cutlery shop, the 164-year-old E.B. Horn jewelry store, and the 128-year-old recently refurbished Locke-Ober restaurant, the neighborhood's stew now includes more college students, living in newly built dorms. New high-rises sprout, like the Ritz-Carlton, as well as the new multiplex movie theater off Tremont Street.<br /><br />"With all the change, it's nice to know something hasn't -- that Jim O'Malley is still here," says Karl Vulker, who owns the Winter Street Lottery and has known the officer for 15 years. "He's always here for us, always keeping an eye on things."<br /><br />That will change, perhaps all too soon.<br /><br />The aging officer, by department rules, will have to turn in his badge in 3 1/2 years -- if he resists the current voluntary retirement pressure. It might be nice to spend more time with his wife, and a grandson recently born to one of his three grown children, but it's a day he isn't anticipating.<br /><br />Gazing at the golden dome of the State House, with a full moon rising and the late crowd making its way downtown, he inhales, taking in the strangely comforting chaos of the night.<br /><br />"I don't really consider this work, and sometimes, I think, I can't believe they're paying me for this," he says. "Just look at all these people passing by. These are good people. They've all been places I've never been, and if you open up, you learn things. For me, I think this makes an interesting life."<br /><br />He waves and jokes with an old friend, offers directions to a stranger, and eventually brings a homeless man to a shelter, persuading officials there to let the man enter, even though he'd been barred for some reason.<br /><br />Nearly everyone he meets leaves with a smile.<br /><br />Around midnight, with rats scurrying through the streets and the garbage trucks making the rounds, O'Malley climbs into his cruiser. He takes the long way back to the station, slowing as he passes the darkest alleys.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></a><br />
<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149395011063400882006-06-03T21:19:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:28:16.097-08:00When Dale Met Tina<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>A tale of one Meth dealer's rise and fall</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/dale.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/dale.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="267" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 05/07/2006<br /><br />By the time the law caught up with Dale Bernard, the paunchy addict was on the brink of homelessness -- far from the days when he spent weekends at the Four Seasons hotel and hoarded cash as a dealer of the potent, highly addictive drug he called "Tina."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />This is a story of how the 43-year-old from Boston, whom a federal judge late last month sentenced to seven years in prison, managed an illicit connection long feared by local officials: While high much of the time, he built a bridge between California and Boston, importing a steady flow of crystal meth and feeding a growing problem here -- made visible in last month's bust of an alleged meth laboratory in Dorchester.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />"He was a significant meth dealer selling substantial quantities," says Nancy Rue, an assistant US attorney, at his sentencing hearing at the US District Court in South Boston. "He was a meth addict who spread his addiction."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Over the past decade, methamphetamine has been mainly a West Coast phenomenon, but in recent years it has pushed across the Midwest and is increasingly competing with heroin on the East Coast.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />In Boston, 75 people last fiscal year sought treatment for meth in local hospitals, up from 53 the year before, and compared with just five who sought treatment in 2001, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />But while federal officials say more than 1.4 million people across the country used the drug last year, meth remains a relatively small problem in the Boston area. The euphoria-producing stimulant, which increases libido, still accounts for fewer than 1 percent of those seeking treatment in Greater Boston hospitals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />"We may not see it quite as severe in our area yet; nationally, it is a huge, huge problem," Tina Murphy, a special agent from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's New England Field Division, said at a conference in February on the dangers of meth that city officials organized for local advocates. "In Massachusetts, the greatest threat is meth being shipped in from the West Coast."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Before finding himself the target of federal drug agents in 2004, before what he describes as years of sleepless nights, unprotected sex with too many gay men he met online, nearly being killed in a drug-fueled car wreck and being robbed at gunpoint in California, he graduated from Essex Agricultural & Technical High in Danvers and headed to Penn. State in 1981, according to school records.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Raised in an upper-middle-class family in Andover, Bernard got along well with his family, who accepted his homosexuality when he came out at age 16. His mother says he regularly attended church, never got in trouble, and stayed away from drugs, aside from trying pot once.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />"He was a good kid," says his mother, Carole Bernard, who still lives in Andover. "I didn't really know what was going on."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />His drug problems started, he says, when he stopped believing in God. A few years after he dropped out of Penn. State, a robber armed with a .22-caliber handgun burst into the Brighton leather store Bernard managed and shot him in the stomach. The bullet shattered Bernard's faith as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />He spent about a week recovering at Brigham and Women's Hospital, he and his mother say, much of it on morphine. When he left, he yearned for something to kill the pain. "The morphine felt so good," he says. "I needed something to replace it."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />In a world where God no longer existed, he figured: "I might as well enjoy myself."<br />Shortly after, a friend introduced him to cocaine. "It didn't take the pain away," he says, "but it made it so I didn't care about it."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />For a decade, Bernard balanced work with a low-level addiction to White Russians and cocaine, he says, but his real problems didn't start until 2000, when he fled the local drug scene and landed in that of Los Angeles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Two weeks after arriving, Bernard met someone on the Internet looking to "party-n-play," and he had his first experience with the little crystals. His new friend taught him how to ignite the crystals with a blowtorch lighter and suck the vapor from a glass pipe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Euphoria washed over him. "I felt amazing, invincible, like the most attractive person in the world," he says.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />The benefits, to his mind, included reduced appetite -- the 6-foot-3-inch addict says he dropped from 250 to 180 pounds -- needing little sleep, and having increased sexual energy.<br />A few months later, Bernard lost his job and found a new way to pay his rent and feed his addiction: He bought larger quantities of meth and sold what he didn't use for a profit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Then one day, Bernard says, he came home and found himself face-to-face with a 9mm gun, held by one of his initial suppliers. He says they tied him up, ransacked his apartment, and carted off all his possessions in his Dodge Ram pickup.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The experience, nearly two years after moving to LA, provided enough incentive to return home, where his parents took him in and he made an effort to stay clean. The effort lasted about a month, until a friend in LA sent him his clothes. Bernard found an "eight ball" -- an eighth of an ounce of meth -- in a pants pocket. He stared at it, and let a day go by.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Lonely, empty, and sick of having little energy, he couldn't resist. "It was right there in my hand," he says. "I missed the money, the fast pace, the sex."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The rush lasted an entire day, and soon after, he moved out of his parents' home to an apartment near Boston Medical Center, where it all started again.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He contacted his old suppliers on the West Coast, he says, and they shipped him packages filled with coffee bags, the meth hidden inside, wrapped in cellophane. He bought by the ounce, which he says cost him a minimum of $1,400. He would sell an ounce for as much as $3,500.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He says he bought digital scales, special safes, and a stash of Slurpee straws from 7-Eleven, which he used to separate the crystals. His business quickly grew to about 50 clients, he says, most of whom he met online. "Sex was my marketing tool," he says. "If they smoked with me and had sex with me, then they weren't a cop."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Aside from his fillings falling out (meth rots teeth) and the need to stay high constantly -- he says he smoked an eight ball a day -- he was living large. He says he bought an Infiniti I-30, rented a new three-bedroom apartment, bought his live-in partner a car, and took him on a cruise to the Caribbean.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then some of Bernard's associates were arrested. Business slowed, money got tight, and Bernard felt he was being watched. He chalked it up to paranoia.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But DEA agents had been following him for nearly a year. They collected Federal Express receipts and meth-lined plastic bags from his trash, recorded his calls, and discovered the CD cases and shrink-wrapped jewelry boxes where he hid his meth, according to a sworn statement by the lead DEA agent. They had informants record his conversations, in which he described his Malden apartment as "the crystal palace, the house that Tina built."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With enough evidence, and Bernard on the brink of homelessness, federal agents arrested him in Malden on June 2, 2004.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I observed there was no electricity or power at the residence," wrote Michael P. Cashman, the DEA special agent who investigated the case, in his report on Bernard's arrest. "I spoke to the landlord, who stated that he was in the process of evicting Bernard for nonpayment of rent."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before Bernard pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to distribute meth and six counts of distribution, he spent about a month at the Norfolk County House of Correction in Dedham. A judge sent him to a Cape Cod detox facility, and after five months there authorities allowed him to move to the first of three sober houses in Malden, where addicts are tested for drugs every week.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the time between his arrest and sentencing -- when authorities sought information from him to implicate other dealers -- Bernard struggled to overcome his addiction. "The strongest pills I take now are ibuprofen," he says.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He restored ties with his family, church, and to the idea that he could live without drugs. He went to therapy, readily acknowledged his addiction, and for the past year managed to hold on to a job as a travel agent.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"He's come a long way," says Billy Maragiogilo, executive director of New England Transitions, who runs the sober house where Bernard lives. "He's complied with all the rules -- three drug tests a week, a house meeting a week, and three AA meetings a week. He's helped out other guys in the house. We have no complaints about him."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, Bernard would hear Tina's call, in his dreams or when someone recognized him on the street and offered him a hit.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"My addiction is still there," he says. "I still feel it, the desire to get back into the lifestyle. . . . But I know if I kept going the way I was going, I'd probably be dead by now."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last month, after US District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro sentenced Bernard to 87 months in prison and five years of probation, Bernard dropped his head, and his eyes reddened with tears. Though he had faced a potential $4 million fine and as much as life in prison, he had hoped, as his lawyers argued, that his efforts to pull his life together might keep him from going back to prison.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He starts serving his sentence next week.<br /><br /><i>David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>DO NUMBERS BELIE A GROWING PROBLEM?</b><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 05/07/2006<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The federal Drug Enforcement Administration found only three meth labs in Massachusetts last year. In all of 2004 and 2005, DEA agents say, they submitted just 20 meth samples from the Boston area to state labs. Patients seeking treatment for meth overdoses account for fewer than 1 percent of all treatment admissions, local hospitals report.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But officials say the numbers are deceptive.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The gap is partly because many users aren't seeking help, and the main way we measure use is by people asking for help or seeking treatment," said John Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission. "My sense from reading reports around the country is that the problem went from being below the radar to being enormous in a number of areas. People began paying attention to it only when it became visible, which is why we're taking it very seriously now."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Auerbach and treatment providers say accounts from patients and doctors suggest the problem is spreading beyond the city's gay community, where the drug has hit the hardest. Of about 300 patients last year who sought acupuncture detox at Fenway Community Health Center, one of the city's largest substance-abuse programs for gay men, 30 percent described crystal meth as a "primary" or "significant problem" up from 12 percent in 2003.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We're seeing the tip of the iceberg," said Will Halpin, a clinical social worker at Fenway's mental health and addictions department. "The ER visits and treatment visits just aren't really representing the reality. I think it's only a matter of time before we reach a threshold where people are really seeking treatment. I think when outside forces child welfare, police agencies start recognizing the problem, you'll see more people seeking treatment."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Michael Botticelli, assistant commissioner for substance-abuse services at the state Department of Public Health, is also concerned that meth use in the Boston area is on the increase.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Clearly, there's an eastward march of crystal meth, and we're concerned it will take hold here," said Botticelli. While the drug's abusers "may represent a small percentage of our treatment admissions, when we look at the urban gay community, it gives us pause. We're seeing a substantial percentage of our admissions among urban gay men, and there's an impact there."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At Victory Programs, a substance-abuse program in the city where about 1,200 people last year sought treatment, officials say meth use is a problem for a growing number of their patients and is no longer confined to gay men.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I think there's a huge gap between official statistics and the reality," said Jonathan Scott, the program's president and executive director. "I feel like meth use in the city is catastrophic, and we're seeing a real cross section of users now. It's not just a gay drug anymore."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He blamed the state Department of Public Health for not including meth on its intake forms for substance abusers until last year. Victory Programs also only began closely documenting meth use last year. Of 272 men and women in the program's residential-treatment homes, about 7 percent of men and 4 percent of women said they had used meth.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"When you don't have the vocabulary to track or define something, it has the effect of making it seem nonexistent," Scott said. "It's only when you create the vocabulary to identify something that you know it's there. So we have to go on anecdotes."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He likens meth users to late-stage alcoholics who suddenly find themselves bereft of family, jobs, and homes. The difference, he said, is that alcoholism is more of a progressive disease that can take decades to wreck someone's life; meth often leaves abusers in dire straits in a year or two.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"In 30 years of drug treatment, because of meth, I'm seeing people with no experience using drugs coming in with brain damage and psychological damage that is irreparable," Scott said.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"With meth addicts, we see an incredible acceleration of the disease model. I think we're at a stage reminiscent of when HIV was emerging. We're starting to see it grow."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1161222838391184382006-06-03T21:18:00.001-07:002014-01-28T17:29:11.205-08:00Risque Cuts<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/sandra.0.jpg" height="432" width="640" /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">12/04/2005</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">BROOKLINE -- Haircuts always involve a bit of a gamble.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the women who sit before Sandra Darling, there's often more at stake than their vanity: One errant snip could mean the loss of an investment worth thousands of dollars<br /><br />"Once you cut it -- that's it," says Darling, her long, slender fingers as important to her as to a surgeon. "It's not growing back."<br /><br />The 26-year-old hairdresser has built a business in recent years cutting, washing, and styling sheitels -- wigs -- worn by local Orthodox Jewish women, whose religion requires that no man other than their husband sees their natural hair.<br /><br />The custom, intended for centuries to signify modesty and chastity, has definitely evolved.<br /><br />The old bushy wigs -- often made of artificial material or coarse horse hair -- have given way in recent decades to the French top, the layered look, and the feathered cut, among others, nearly all fashioned from human hair imported from Europe.<br /><br />And they're anything but matronly.<br /><br />They come in all shapes, sizes, colors -- and prices. Orthodox wives can be blondes, brunettes, or redheads, with bangs or curls, wavy or straight hair, though most try to match the color of their natural hair, Darling and others say. </span><img align="left" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/187/4451/400/wig.jpg" height="400" width="320" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(Many often have several wigs, for formal occasions, daily chores, and synagogue.) The permutations allow them to affect a short, spiky look, a frumpy and disheveled mop they can connect to hats or headbands, or a long, sultry mane more lustrous than their own hair.<br /><br />The elegance and expense of the pieces arguably contradict the tradition's purpose: Darling and Orthodox Jews interviewed say that sometimes they find the women's natural hair less attractive than their wigs.<br /><br />Women may spend weeks or longer shopping for their wigs before their wedding, and they can cost as much as $5,000, they say. Wigs are now available on websites such as <a href="http://www.savvysheitels.com/">http://www.savvysheitels.com/</a>, which includes adver tisements with come-hither models wearing bright red lipstick.<br /><br />So when the women visit Darling, who's Catholic and learned only in 2001 about the Orthodox wig tradition, they often know exactly what they want. "They're very to the point -- and they can be stubborn," she says. "A wig might be made to go to the left, and they want it to go to the right. I'll do it their way, but I'll show them it doesn't work."<br /><br />Over the years, Darling says she has cut more than a hundred wigs and styled thousands of others. She began nearly five years ago when a young brown-haired woman dropped in at her Brookline salon and asked for a trim.<br /><br />"I just want to let you know it's a wig," the woman announced, recalls Darling, who wasn't sure what to do, but knew that if she messed up it was going to be an expensive mistake. "I had butterflies," she says.<br /><br />Since then, Darling has learned there are differences between cutting wigs and natural hair. Wigs take about a half-hour longer, she says, and she can charge about twice as much, usually $50 for a cut and $25 for styling. The women require privacy, and she ushers them into a private room in the back of the salon, Crew International on Harvard Street, where they open their carrying cases and remove their wigs from a mannequin's head.<br /><br />Darling often does three during one appointment, she says, using special clips and an elastic band that stretches from one ear to another. She has to be careful the wig does not fall off her client's head while she's working. Treating the wigs like natural hair, she shampoos them, sets some in curlers, colors others, and blow-dries most when she's done.<br /><br />The only hairdresser in her salon and one of a few in the area with such a skill, Darling has no need to advertise. "Word gets around very quickly," she says. "They talk in the synagogue, I guess."<br /><br />The talk sometimes also revolves around whether the women are really required to wear wigs, and what constitutes an appropriate source for them. Last year, after rabbinical authorities in Jerusalem ruled that wigs from India weren't acceptable because they might have been used in Hindu ceremonies -- thus making them potentially idolatrous -- hundreds of Jews in Brooklyn thronged into the streets, piled up the condemned wigs, and torched them.<br /><br />Before Harvard graduate students Aviva Presser and Erez Lieberman </span><img align="right" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/187/4451/400/wig2.jpg" height="400" width="320" /><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">married three months ago, the Orthodox Jews discussed whether she would wear a wig. In the end, Presser decided to buy one, but the 24-year-old says she rarely wears it more than once a week, generally only to synagogue. The rest of the time, like others, she wears a hat to cover her hair.<br /><br />"It's way less comfortable than a hat," says Presser, who cut her long, brown wig on her own. "I'm sort of debating and learning more about the practice. It's the Jewish law obligation, but I want to establish whether God cares. If I find it's an invention of people, I guess I'll be less inclined."<br /><br />Presser dated men who would have ended their relationship immediately had she said she wouldn't cover her hair, she says. In an interview after Shabbat services on a recent Friday night at Young Israel of Brookline, her husband said it's not a big deal for him. "It's entirely up to her," he said.Not all Orthodox husbands have such liberal views.<br /><br />"I stick to the halakhah," or Jewish law, says Shlomo Amar, who married six months ago. "The hair of a married woman is considered an attractive part of her body and needs to be covered."<br /><br />He and his wife, Rochelle Amar, also recently attended services at Young Israel, where she was wearing a fashionable wig parted in the middle. The soft, shoulder-length brown hair from Eastern Europe, which required several days to pick out, looked naturally shiny, and matched her eyebrows.<br /><br />She doesn't like to wear it too often, she says, because she worries it might ruin her natural hair, which most women hide beneath their wigs with the help of barrettes and netting. "That would defeat the purpose," she says. "Then I might not be beautiful for my husband."<br /><br />Does she think it's potentially hypocritical to wear a wig that some might find attractive?<br /><br />She's not concerned.<br /><br />"Just because the law requires modesty," she says, "doesn't mean you have to be ugly."<br /><br />Her husband says he would object if he thought her wig were too extravagant.<br /><br />An Orthodox rabbi for eight years whose wife also cuts and styles wigs, Rabbi Yitzchak Rabinowitz of Congregation Beth Israel of Malden says, "There's no question that some women overdo it."<br /><br />But he also says there's no reason why an Orthodox woman can't look nice, and the mere wearing of a foreign object to cover her "crowning beauty" fulfills her obligation."<br /><br />According to Jewish law, a woman is not supposed to go around dressed in a provocative manner, where so much of her body is uncovered, like a low-cut dress," he says. "If a woman covers herself properly, is it a contradiction if she wears something attractive to cover herself up? It's not."<br /><br />It's a sentiment Sandra Darling holds dear.<br /><br />On a recent afternoon at the salon, with bouncy music in the background, glossy magazines in the waiting area advertising skin-baring celebrities, and Christmas decorations on the walls, Darling says she doesn't question whether her clients should be concerned about primping their wigs. <br /><br />"Whatever makes them happy," she says.<br /><br />Not anything goes, though.<br /><br />"I won't let them look stupid."<br /><br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00061_9.1.jpg" height="298" width="640" /><br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149394776141938832006-06-03T21:18:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:30:03.681-08:00Collision Course<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/collission.1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/collission.1.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="221" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For decades, two forces have clashed over who should guide large ships into Boston Harbor. Now, with business down and security fears up, they're trying to rewrite the law in their favor (<a href="http://boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/07/collision_course/">Click here for a slideshow</a>.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 5/07/2006<br /><br />In the darkness before dawn, with waves rising 7 feet and a cold drizzle falling, the veteran seaman balances his 48-year-old legs on the bow of the bobbing pilot boat. Through a stiff wind, he reaches into the fog for a grease-covered rope ladder, which dangles off the starboard side of a 600-foot oil tanker.<br /><br />The steep climb aboard the Panamanian-flagged Alpha Express doesn't rattle Marty McCabe, who over the years has made hundreds of such ascents, many in storms with seas more than twice the size. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"When you step on that ladder, you trust everything is prepared properly," says McCabe, noting ship crews often lower the ladder only minutes before he boards, to keep the typical 25 feet of rungs from icing up. "No boarding is routine. As soon as you consider it routine, that's when something happens."<br /><br />A former tanker captain who has guided ships from the Mississippi River to the South China Sea, McCabe is one of 10 men who make up the Boston Pilot Association, a 223-year-old institution founded and regulated by the state to help bring large vessels -- those with hazardous cargo or weighing 350 gross tons or more -- through the shoals and fast-moving currents of Boston Harbor.<br /><br />For decades, the pilots, who earn as much as $250,000 a year, have routinely passed control of at least 90 percent of the ships they board at sea to docking masters, specially trained tugboat captains who climb aboard in the inner harbor, take the helm as the ships enter narrow channels, and use a team of tugboats to guide them to port. The custom, never a legal requirement, has been an option for the ship owners, who often pay hundreds of dollars extra for the docking masters' assistance.<br /><br />But as the area's ports have lost business and security concerns have grown in recent years, the peace has begun to unravel. Late last year, lawmakers on Beacon Hill proposed a bill that would require every ship coming in to port to have a docking master on board.<br /><br />Docking masters argue it's a safety issue: They're better trained than pilots at operating ships in tight spaces and more skilled, they say, at orchestrating the minuet of tugboats, three to five of which surround most large vessels entering the harbor.<br /><br />Harbor pilots counter that safety is already best served: It's misleading for docking masters to suggest they're more qualified, say the pilots, who, unlike docking masters, are required by state law to hold an unlimited ocean master's license, the top Coast Guard credential for operating ships. Mandating docking masters, they worry, could lead to lawmakers deeming their jobs redundant and put lesser-qualified seamen guiding ships into the harbor.<br /><br />Over the past year, Boston Towing & Transportation Co., which employs seven of the harbor's eight docking masters and controls about 75 percent of the local tugboat business, has spent more than $150,000 lobbying to pass the law. The company already requires all ships using its tugboats to hire its docking masters, meaning few tankers today are taken to port by pilots. Company officials point to an incident last month involving a pilot guiding a 600-foot salt carrier with three tugboats from another company. The pilot overshot his dock at the Boston Autoport in Charlestown and came close to striking a pier at the Exxon terminal in Chelsea. The pier, about a half-mile away and on the opposite side of the Mystic River, abuts the liquefied natural gas terminal in Everett.<br /><br />"I've never seen anything like that before," says Jake Tibbetts, president of Boston Towing, which helped publicize the incident by providing pictures and a video to the Coast Guard and local media. "You need someone who knows what a tugboat can do, and what it can't do. We're the experts at handling ships in close quarters. All it is is a safety issue. How can you be against a safety issue?" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some lawmakers, including those who have accepted campaign contributions from lobbyists representing Boston Towing, used last month's incident to urge colleagues to pass legislation supporting Boston Towing's goals.<br />"We need to make sure that we have the right people at the right time guiding the ships in and out of the harbor," says Senator Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican who served as cochairman of a harbor piloting panel. "When a vessel with hazardous cargo is transiting through a sensitive area, my bias would be to require a docking pilot."<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00079_9.0.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00079_9.0.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>Last year, Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who like Tarr has accepted contributions from former state Senator Robert Durand, currently Boston Towing's lobbyist, proposed a bill requiring docking pilots aboard all ships ferrying hazardous cargo into the harbor. But it failed to gain enough support. Barrios, who backs a plan to revive a version of the bill in coming weeks, called last month's incident a "red flag" and argues it underscores the need for stringent background checks and licensing requirements for docking masters, whose job now requires no formal license.<br /><br />"Just like airline pilots got additional scrutiny after 9/11, individuals who can guide a ship using hazardous materials as an object of terror should be regulated in the same way," says Barrios, a Democrat who represents communities along the Mystic River and chairs the Joint Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee. "We have to know we've done our best to minimize accidental collisions or some nefarious scheme to injure or terrorize."<br /><br /><strong>Grand Central harbor</strong>Boston Harbor can be a busy place, with local ports each year receiving more than 1.3 million tons of cargo such as automobiles, 12.8 million tons of fuel, and 210,000 cruise ship passengers, according to the Massachusetts Port Authority.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With thousands of ships plying the harbor's waters every year, there are scores of incidents, or what the Coast Guard calls "marine casualties," that have resulted in injuries or other damage. Between January 2000 and March 28, 2006 in Boston Harbor, the Coast Guard recorded two deaths and 17 injuries aboard vessels, 12 boat sinkings, 25 accidents when a vessel struck an object such as a bridge or buoy, nine collisions between vessels, seven groundings, and 155 incidents that led to environmental damage, such as oil spills.<br />Still, pilots, port officials, and others in the shipping industry argue that the proposed legislation is unnecessary. The existing regulations have worked for decades, they say, and there's no safety or security reason to require docking masters aboard ships already controlled by pilots.<br />"We've all been ship captains -- no docking master can meet that criteria," says Gregg Farmer, president of the Boston Pilot Association, who argues the pilot aboard the carrier ship that drifted off course last month responded professionally to strong currents. "We're as qualified as a mariner can be. This whole thing is really a tugboat competition."<br />Other local tugboat operators -- there are two other companies in the city -- argue the proposed law really serves as a way for Boston Towing to lock up more of the harbor's tugboat business. One of the companies, Constellation Tug Corp., employs a docking master, but both often rely on the pilots to coordinate their tugs to guide ships to port.<br />"Are we docking tugboats or are we docking ships?" says Marc Villa, president of Constellation, which owns five tugs compared to Boston Towing's 11. "The real issue has to do with whether or not the harbor pilots are to be considered docking masters. They should be considered docking masters, as they are from Fall River to Newport. The pilots are the most professional individuals in the harbor, and we're confident enough to use them."<br /><strong>More safe, or less competitive?</strong><br />Others in the shipping industry worry that legislation requiring docking masters would make local ports such as Conley Container Terminal and Black Falcon Cruise Terminal less competitive.<br /><br />They cite examples such as Volkswagen, which four years ago shifted shipping 82,000 cars a year from Boston to Rhode Island because of a local harbor tax, and Maersk-Sealand, which in 2000 dropped Boston as a trans-Atlantic port-of-call, at the time cutting 25 percent of the port's container cargo.<br />"If a bill is passed, the marketplace would no longer drive the costs," says Richard Meyer, executive director of the Boston Shipping Association, an advocacy group representing agents and many of the container and cargo shipping companies that use the port. "The fear is that a new legislated requirement will be an unnecessary increase in costs."<br />For similar reasons, Michael A. Leone, director of the Port of Boston for Massport, opposes new regulations. "No one has demonstrated for me that there's a need to change," says Leone, calling the port's safety record "very good." "Until I see a study documenting a need to regulate it, or I have customers calling us and asking for legislation, I don't think a statute is necessary."<br />Coast Guard officials -- who say their investigation into last month's near-hit of the Exxon pier hasn't revealed any negligence -- say laws outlining licensing requirements for a docking master could be useful, so long as they don't bar pilots from docking ships. It's now up to tugboat companies as to who qualifies to become a docking master.<br />Coast Guard officials further insist local politicians are wrong to say existing regulations are insufficient to protect the harbor's safety and security. To obtain a Coast Guard license to operate a tugboat or ship, they say, applicants must pass proficiency tests, be fingerprinted, and have their backgrounds checked by the FBI as well as local and state agencies.<br />Also, they say drug tests are required for any tugboat captain, docking master, or pilot involved in an incident leading to property damage in excess of $100,000, an injury that requires medical treatment, or a discharge of 10,000 or more gallons of oil.<br />"It's inaccurate to suggest that we don't adequately examine or check the mariners we license," says Captain James L. McDonald, commander of the Coast Guard in Boston. "My experience with both docking masters and pilots is that they are very capable and professional. From time to time, there will be errors in judgment, but I think anyone with the requisite experience should be able to work as a docking master. There shouldn't be a monopoly."<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00086_9.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00086_9.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a><br />For Marty McCabe and the pilots, who this year paid local lobbyists $24,000 to press the Legislature to approve an 11 percent raise in their fees, the politics disappear once they arrive on the bridge of a ship.<br /><br />On a recent morning, McCabe boards the pilots' 53-foot twin-diesel engine boat at 4 a.m. and takes a bumpy ride 12 miles to sea to meet the Alpha Express, which turns leeward to reduce the force of the 11-knot winds as he climbs the ship's ladder.<br /><br />He has already checked the tides, the currents, and the winds, and after shaking hands with Korean captain Yh Bag and Filipino crew aboard the Japanese-made ship, he orders the helmsman to point the vessel southwest, toward the Citgo terminal in Braintree.<br /><br />In a foggy sunrise that reduces visibility to little more than a mile ahead, he guides the ship and its 190,000 barrels of gasoline through an array of buoys along Nantasket Roads and the 300-foot-wide passage of Hull Gut.<br /><br />"Each time we go down this, it's a different trip," he says.<br /><br />An hour before the voyage ends, three Constellation tugboats surround the tanker, and Chris Deeley, the harbor's only docking master who doesn't work for Boston Towing, climbs the ladder and shakes hands with McCabe on the bridge.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's an amicable exchange of the helm, and the 41-year-old former tugboat captain begins barking orders on walkie-talkies to his three tugs. The powerful, smoke-spewing boats cruise alongside the 106-foot-wide ship and nudge it through the Fore River Bridge, which is just 170 feet wide.<br />"It's like driving a Mayflower van through Beacon Hill without any brakes," says Scott MacNeil, an apprentice pilot aboard the ship.<br />When the tanker finally slows to a halt, the smell of gas pervading every crevice of the ship, the crew lugs the mooring lines in place, and the captains make the steep ascent off the ship and onto dry land.<br />The next day, they'll do it all over again.<br />E-mail David Abel at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br />Copyright, The Boston Globe<br /><br /><strong>Sidebar:</strong><br />ONE SUNNY APRIL DAY NEAR THE LNG TANK, A CLOSE CALL ON MYSTICA 600-FOOT SHIP OVERSHOOTS DOCK, AND CHARGES FLY<br />By David Abel<br />Globe Staff<br />05/07/2006<br />From a video of the incident, it appears a 600-foot salt carrier came only a few feet from crashing into the Exxon pier in Chelsea on a sunny Monday last month, in potentially disastrous proximity to the nearby liquefied natural gas terminal in Everett.<br />No one disputes that the pilot-guided Hato had drifted off course, to the opposite side of the Mystic River, about a half-mile away from its intended dock at the Boston Autoport in Charlestown.<br />But that's about all that's not disputed by the harbor's vying factions of mariners.<br />"He was totally out of control," says Jake Tibbetts, president of Boston Towing & Transportation Co., which used video taken by one of its tugboat operators to portray harbor pilots as inferior to their docking masters. "This wouldn't have happened in a million years if it was one of our guys."<br />Tibbets and his men insist the incident reflects why the Legislature should pass a proposed bill requiring docking masters aboard large ships entering the harbor.<br />"This is all about setting standards," says George Lee, Boston Towing's head docking pilot. "When you put your child on a bus, who do you want driving that bus -- an experienced professional, or someone else?"<br />Frank Morton, the pilot guiding the Hato, calls the video "propaganda" and part of Boston Towing's "goal of taking total control over the harbor."<br />"If they thought we were in trouble, why didn't they offer to help us, instead of taking pictures," he says. "How professional is that?"<br />Morton, 50, who has worked as a pilot for the last 15 years and has guided hundreds of ships through the Mystic River, acknowledges that he should have made a sharper turn as he crossed under the Mystic River Bridge.<br />But he says the large ship never came closer than 200 feet to the Exxon pier. The problem, he says, was that the ship got caught in the outgoing tide.<br />A strong current from the Mystic River caught the bow of the Hato, he says, while another current from the Chelsea River caught the stern, pushing the ship toward Chelsea.<br />Morton says he tried to steer the ship in the opposite direction, with the help of tugboats operated by Constellation Tug Corp.<br />But as the starboard-side tug pushed the ship from a right angle, he says, it came close to hitting a buoy and had to break off.<br />"That changed the whole nature of the job," Morton says.<br />So the pilot says he decided to take the Hato upriver -- away from the Autoport -- to come around for another try, which he did.<br />With the tugboats in place, he eventually guided the ship to port.<br />"It wasn't a pretty docking; it was a missed approach, in what we call the bailout area," says Marc Villa, Constellation's president. "Captain Morton acted prudently. If there wasn't such intense competition and proposed legislation, there wouldn't be someone standing around taking pictures. I think Captain Morton has been unjustly criticized."<br />Coast Guard officials investigating the incident say there's no evidence the Hato or any of the tugboats hit a buoy or the Exxon pier, as Tibbetts and others at Boston Towing have charged.<br />"Nothing happened," says Lieutenant Edward Munoz, senior investigating officer of the Coast Guard in Boston. "From a legal perspective, it's a non-incident."<br />Munoz also says his investigation has revealed "no evidence of negligence."<br />"It wasn't an ideal landing, and it's definitely not normal for a ship to drift that far off course," he says. "But I don't think the vessel was out of control, and just because the vessel might not have been doing what he wanted, it wasn't negligence."<br />David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149394697396959122006-06-03T21:16:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:34:41.723-08:00Post-Midnight Runners<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/running.0.jpg" height="342" width="640" /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 4/30/2006<br /><br />At an hour when lampposts carve shadows over empty streets, when geese outnumber people on the Esplanade, skunks troll through Brookline, and rats prowl around Beacon Hill, Tom Goulet is out sweating, his muscles burning, his mind far from shutting down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which for most people, given the time and his obligation to be up for work at dawn, would be the logical thing for the mind to be doing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nearly every night of the week, come rain, snow, or howling winds, the 48-year-old venture capitalist from the North End laces up his sneakers, tucks a cellphone in a fanny pack, and joins an unallied cabal of midnight runners.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's almost as peaceful as sleeping," says Goulet, a father of three. He says he often sees dozens of other late-night joggers but on a recent midnight run seemed to have the city to himself. "It's really beautiful to be out here on your own. It's nice and strange to feel the stillness of the city. It feels like a postcard."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Goulet and his seemingly cracked comrades in reflective shoes say they're aware of the risks -- close encounters with menacing denizens of the dark, or drivers failing to spot them darting through intersections, or anything from slipping on black ice to turning an ankle in an unseen pothole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They also don't heed the advice of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which counsels people to avoid strenuous exercise for as much as six hours before sleep.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The idea is to prevent the body from producing endorphins and stimulants that can disturb sleep or lead you to wake up in the middle of the night," says Kathleen McCann, an academy spokeswoman. "Increased levels of hypocretin resulting from exercise at night can lead to awakenings at night."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some scholars who have studied late-night exercise take exception to the academy's advice. They argue that people such as researchers, graduate students, and medical professionals who work irregular schedules -- in short, many people in the area -- are better off running late at night, when it's often most convenient.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Shawn D. Youngstedt, an assistant professor in the department of exercise science at the University of South Carolina, has overseen two studies that found late-night exercise does not impair sleep. In some cases, he says, it even helps. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of his studies, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior in 1998, found that of a dozen college students who exercised on a stationary bicycle for an hour a half-hour before bed, none had trouble falling asleep. The other study, published a year later in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, found that of 18 college students who rode a stationary bicycle for three hours a half-hour before sleep, none had problems sleeping.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lucas Woodward's most serene runs usually come after midnight, often in the dead of winter just after a snowstorm. With few cars on the road and a heavy stillness in the dry air, he says, there's something transporting about the quiet, especially after a long day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 22-year-old computer technician from Jamaica Plain often jogs around Jamaica Pond late at night, when it is pitch black save the distant streetlights and the odd car in the distance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"At night, the wind dies down, and when you're all alone you can hear every footstep," says Woodward, who, like Goulet and other midnight runners, says he has no trouble falling sleeping afterward. "It's really peaceful."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But running in the middle of the night can have its awkward moments, particularly in Boston.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Their company, aside from nocturnal animals, occasionally includes drunken students spilling out of bars from the Back Bay to Brighton. There's also the homeless, who tend to stare at late-night runners as if they're creatures from another planet, and the cars that slow down, their passengers ogling the odd characters coursing through the dark. Even cats wandering the streets stop and gaze at those intruding on their solitude.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's socially unacceptable to exercise at night," says Woodward, a recent Boston University graduate who doesn't worry about lurking danger. "People look at me with the strangest expressions, but I feel like I can outrun anyone."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some runners say they understand the allure of jogging late at night, when the streets are so empty that it feels safe enough to run in the middle of the road. But they advise against it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Four-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers has run several late-night races, including midnight dashes through Sao Paulo, Brazil, and champagne-strewn courses in Manhattan's Central Park. For competitors, he says, it's usually best to run early in the morning, when muscles have had a chance to rest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"At the end of the day, your body wants to rest," says Rodgers, 58. "It's also a lot easier to trip at night."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Hal Higdon served in the Army 50 years ago in Germany, he often ran through the Black Forest at night, the moon his only light. The 74-year-old veteran of 18 Boston Marathons and author of "Boston: A Century of Running" says he now prefers to run under the sun. "Safety is a serious issue," he says, urging night runners to keep their iPods at home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Others argue that it's safer to run at night, particularly during the summer or in warmer climes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For Bob Loewenthal, a 73-year-old retired attorney from Atlanta, there are certain times of the year when running in the day is too dangerous. In the summer, when the temperature soars above 90 degrees, he starts his long runs around 3 a.m.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"During the day, I can have running company; I can see where I'm going; I can watch the scenery; I don't have to adjust my meal and sleeping schedule," he says. "Unfortunately . . . I must start a long run at the time that everyone else is sleeping in order to avoid the heat."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On a recent night in Boston, heat isn't the problem. With cold, stiff winds blowing off the Charles, Dan Laskey and Matt Webster lumber through Brookline toward the river, the lights of the skyline melting into the dark water.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 12:30 a.m., their faces flushed less than a mile into the run, the 22-year-old roommates from Boston are wide awake. Morning, when they both have to be at work, seems far away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's a good way to end the day," Laskey says.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Webster adds: "It beats watching TV."<br /><br />Then the two disappear into the night, the reflective decals on their shoes slowly fading in the pale moonlight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149394552114536982006-06-03T21:06:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:35:36.709-08:00The UN of Boston<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Peru: Suite 511 THE NETHERLANDS? DOWN THE HALL. MEXICO? TRY NEXT DOOR</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/un.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src=" http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/un.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="221" /></a></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Globe Staff | 04/23/2006<br /><br />On the sixth floor, a door opens and merengue pulses from a stereo. A dozen men and women wait next to a large picture of the Dominican Republic's president, Leonel Fernandez, wearing the red, white, and blue presidential sash, which faces three black-and-white portraits of the island nation's founding fathers and a map of Hispaniola that lops off Haiti, its neighbor and historic adversary.<br /><br />Sitting there in the Dominican consulate one recent morning, Felix Almonte smiles. The 47-year-old from Santo Domingo, who has lived in Charlestown and worked in supermarkets over the past eight years, doesn't mind waiting for officials to renew his passport amid the pictures of Pedro Martinez, the music, and the dropped s's of his nation's rapid-fire Spanish.<br /><br />"When I come here," he says, "I feel like I'm entering my country. This is my culture. It's nice to be here."<br /><br />Through the glass doors, past the potted plants and the low-rent awning, scattered among the offices of lawyers, mortgage brokers and psychologists, the building at 20 Park Plaza is where the Dominican Republic and five other countries post their emissaries -- more than anywhere else in New England.<br /><br />Call it Boston's Embassy Row.<br /><br />Unlike the gilded mansions and multimillion-dollar compounds in other major cities, here the consulates are stationed above storefront fast-food shops and behind unadorned taupe doors marked by small plaques that scarcely hint at the worlds behind.In Boston, a capital of medicine and academia, the consulates look as grand as dentists' offices.<br /><br />"This is kind of a mini United Nations," says Jeff Ross, an immigration attorney who works in the building, which abuts the Park Plaza Hotel.<br /><br />Behind one door on the 14th floor, at the end of a carpeted hall, hundreds of people -- young mothers breast-feeding their babies, prisoners waiting to be deported, local residents seeking visas -- stand in long lines at the Brazilian consulate listening to instructions in Portuguese.<br /><br />Four floors below, two security cameras keep watch from above the first of three doors required to enter the Israeli consulate. Inside, two men trained to kill pat down everyone who enters, even those who have worked there for years. Then, before visitors can pass through specially built doors, they must walk through a metal detector.<br /><br />On the fifth floor, amid posters explaining how to vote in the country's presidential election this month, Peruvians wait in chairs lined in rows beside pictures of a faraway paradise: lagoons, ancient cities atop mountains, and llamas. Some 2,400 Peruvians registered to vote at the consulate.<br /><br />The building's six consulates are part of a relatively sizable diplomatic corps in Greater Boston: The US State Department has registered 91 consular officers and issued 95 consular license plates (which allow diplomats to park for free at meters and designated spots) at 23 official consulates and 32 honorary consulates. Honorary consulates are often US offices designated by countries as a place where their citizens can seek help for anything from consular services to business contacts.<br /><br />"We have diplomatic representatives from more than 25 percent of the world's countries," says Leonard Kopelman, honorary consul general of Finland and dean of the Consular Corps of Boston, which holds luncheons with local and state officials and this month raised more than $60,000 for the United Nations at its annual "Consul's Ball" at the Fairmont Copley Plaza.<br /><br />Unlike other cities, such as New York and London, which have fought high-profile battles with diplomats over unpaid tolls and parking fines, Boston has a placid relationship with its foreign envoys, who can also park in commercial spots without fear of being ticketed or towed, city officials say.<br /><br />"We don't have any problems to speak of," said James M. Mansfield, a spokesman for the Boston Transportation Department, noting diplomats can have their cars towed if they park in handicapped spots.<br /><br />That doesn't mean there aren't stresses on the city's diplomats, most of whom are paid to deal with a host of crises. (Honorary consuls generally aren't paid.) The easiest part of their job often deals with life and death -- a baby born in the area who needs a birth certificate from their parents' country, widows seeking papers to send a spouse's body home.<br /><br />At the Dominican consulate, which serves an estimated 70,000 of its citizens throughout New England, Frank Tejeda seems to be in constant motion, often 10 hours a day, six days a week, or a normal Dominican workweek. If he's not meeting officials in Providence or visiting Dominicans in a New Hampshire jail or local hospital, the vice consul is signing powers of attorney, authenticating travel documents, and advising the 70 or so people who walk into the consulate every day, many of whom don't speak more than a few words of English.<br /><br />"Helping people in a crisis is what we do," says Tejeda, who stamps as many as 100 documents a day and visits about 25 prisoners a month.At the Israeli consulate, on a day when the 18 employees on staff await results of their country's national election, there's a different kind of tension.<br /><br />For the past eight years, Eddy Caba has experienced it nearly every day. One of the building's janitors, Caba has received special clearance to clean the Israeli consulate, which, unlike for the building's other consulates and offices, he must do during working hours.<br /><br />Though the staff knows him well, the consulate's security officials still pat him down, search his large, wheeled trash can, and thoroughly check his equipment, even scrutinizing the toilet paper he brings every day. When he's sick, replacements must provide their Social Security number, passport, and have their background checked by police."I understand their concern, but after eight years, it's kind of crazy," Caba says.<br /><br />A country with only 6 million people, Israel has nine consulates in the United States, its third-largest in Boston, after New York and Los Angeles. Why?<br /><br />"This is the biggest university in the world, and a major financial capital," says Meir Shlomo, the consul general in Boston. He says he competed with 40 other Israeli diplomats for the posting. "You also have a lot of presidents from Boston. We see this as a good place to look ahead of the curve, and we want to be a part of the intellectual debate."<br /><br />Serving outside a nation's capital is a different kind of experience for a career diplomat, says Shlomo, who has served in embassies from India to Denmark to El Salvador.<br /><br />In Boston, outside the intelligentsia, many people don't understand what he does, he says. Out of all his speeches, essays, and meetings over the past four years, he says, his greatest impact may have been made by successfully completing an opening pitch at Fenway.<br /><br />"When I say consul general, people have no clue what the title means," he says. "If I go to a store and show a tax-exempt card, the people just don't understand what it is."<br /><br />Jorio Salgado Gama Filho, Brazil's consul general, has a similar problem.<br /><br />"Americans understand what an ambassador is," he says. "You often have to explain yourself."Brazil's consulate, which serves 250,000 Brazilians in New England, is the city's largest. Nearly 500 people visit the spare offices every day, requiring consul officials to process about 120 passports daily, as well as scores of birth certificates, marriage licenses, visas, and powers of attorney. With lines snaking out the door, the staff of 25 employees had to move last month into a larger space of more than 3,600 square feet.<br /><br />The chaos of crying babies and hordes of impatient immigrants requires the presence of security guard Joao Sequeira.<br /><br />When he passes from the building's carpeted halls to Brazil's stuffy offices, Sequeira says, he feels like he's leaving the States and entering Brazil. Lines are long -- they start forming more than two hours before the consulate opens -- and signs are in Portuguese."In a month here, I've seen it all - people desperate for help and couples kissing as they move down the line," Sequeira says. "One guy who was seeking a power of attorney for his mother couldn't remember her name."<br /><br />Nine floors down in the Mexican consulate, one of the country's 48 in the United States, Rafael Barron has had similar head-scratching moments.<br /><br />Standing in a room with posters of tequila and a digital sign listing numbers for the 35 or so people who seek new passports every day, the consular official says he once spent about an hour explaining to a US citizen what she needed to do to retire in Mexico.<br /><br />At which point, Barron says, the woman turned to him and said, "I need to do all this to move to Albuquerque?" He looked at her quizzically, he says, and explained New Mexico is actually a part of the United States.<br /><br />Down the hall from Mexico's offices, which are decorated with Diego Rivera paintings and pictures of Mayan temples, are the Peruvian and Dutch consulates.<br /><br />As distinct as those cultures may be, their consulates are staid places, with few adornments beyond their crests and flags. Both keep their staff behind locked doors and glass windows. And both provide a sense of home: The Peruvians offer cans of bubble-gum-tasting Inca Kola to visitors, and all who enter the Dutch domain are greeted by a framed portrait of Queen Beatrix and her late husband, Prince Claus.<br /><br />The differences between the consulates and cultures often come alive in the photo studio on the building's fifth floor, where every day some 100 residents from each of the countries pay $10.50 for two passport pictures.<br /><br />Joilton B. Azeredo, the shop's owner and photographer, knows the different photo sizes for each consulate -- the Israelis require the largest pictures, 4 by 4.5 centimeters, and the Dominicans and the Dutch the smallest, 2 by 2 centimeters, he says. The Brazilians, more than anyone else, fuss about their photos, he says, while the Americans, Dutch, and Israelis are all business -- in and out, rarely mindful of how they appear. The Dominicans and Peruvians, he says, often dress nicely for their photos."<br /><br />The Brazilians are never satisfied," says Azeredo, who is Brazilian. "Their hair has to always be just right; they always want to be more beautiful."<br /><br />On a recent morning, with Brazilians, Mexicans, and one woman from the Netherlands packed into his tiny office, with toddlers clutching their dolls and elderly men grimacing in front of his Olympus digital camera, Azeredo props up babies in special seats and pleads with a young man to take off his glasses and keep his eyes open.<br /><br />One long-haired Brazilian woman, who marches in with high heels after having the wrong-sized pictures taken, mutters that she doesn't look pretty enough.<br /><br />When the rush dies for a few minutes, Azeredo shows the melange of faces on his computer -- white, brown, black, old and young, maybe a half-dozen nationalities.<br /><br />"This is nice place to work," he says.<br /><br />E-mail David Abel at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe<br />NO CASH, BUT LOTS OF CACHETFINLAND'S HONORARY CONSUL RELISHES ROLE<br />By David Abel<br />Globe Staff<br />04/23/2006<br /><br />It doesn't pay to be the local honorary consul general of Finland.<br />At least, not in cash.<br />Nor does the lofty title, which amounts to scores of hours a month promoting the Nordic country and helping local Finns with everything from lost passports to working permits, command perks such as exotic travel, diplomatic immunity, or business deals.<br />For Leonard Kopelman, whose card also identifies him as "dean" of the Consular Corps of Boston, the job doesn't even offer the nostalgia of helping out an ancestral homeland.<br />Before the Finnish government asked him to become its man in Boston 31 years ago, Kopelman, a native of Newton, had never visited the Montana-sized country of 5 million people, lacked any special education or family ties to the region, and had no idea Finland had been allied with Nazi Germany in World War II.<br />Why would the busy senior partner at Kopelman & Paige, a downtown law firm with about 60 lawyers, spend so many years in a job he describes as requiring "stamping a lot of stuff and doing a lot of perfunctory work"?<br />"It's a way to be a part of history," says Kopelman, 64, who is a walking encyclopedia of Finnish facts. "I'm interested in what goes on in the world, and I'm always invited into the room when a senior minister visits. It's very exciting to actually see things done and get to participate in history."<br />Kopelman is one of 32 honorary consuls in Greater Boston and 1,032 in the United States, according to the US State Department. Most of them are US citizens appointed by foreign governments to represent their interests in cities where they don't post career diplomats.<br />Theirs can be a lonely station among the grand pooh-bahs of the world's diplomatic circles. The posts don't involve high-stakes international negotiations or much foreign travel; the job comprises more ordinary tasks, such as picking up diplomats at the airport or bailing the county's nationals out of local jails.<br />But Kopelman takes his position seriously, even if he has to buy his own stationery and pay his travel expenses when more senior Finnish diplomats call him to New York or Washington.<br />Every year, Kopelman says, he throws dinner parties for Finns studying at local universities. He helps organize luncheons for local officials to meet other consuls in Boston, all of whom even the honorary ilk have diplomatic "inviolability" for their official, consulate-related documents. (US authorities can't subpoena or otherwise seize them.) And he travels throughout New England, talking up the technological prowess and other wonders of Finland.<br />"They do supply us with a flag and an official seal," he says at his law office, where Finland's regal coat of arms and a large, gold-lettered "Consulate General of Finland" sign greets everyone entering the firm. "Once every decade, we do get flown to Finland, but it's for meetings."<br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149393958142705242006-06-03T21:02:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:37:35.684-08:00Asian Fetish<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/asian.jpg" height="472" width="640" /><br />By David Abel | Globe Staff | 03/26/2006<br /><br />The closest Leo Anthony Ballou has ever come to Asia was a cruise he took three years ago to Mexico.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lifelong Bostonian, whose great-grandparents moved here from Ireland, has no ties to China, Japan, or anywhere else across the Pacific, though he has recently learned to say hello in nearly every Asian language. Before he dropped out of Northeastern, the computer science major had never even studied about the region.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nor had Ballou ever worked in the media.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Such inexperience -- and a business plan that would require stretching the limits of his credit cards -- might have dissuaded a less optimistic entrepreneur from spending thousands of his own dollars to publish Asian Boston, the city's newest freebie magazine. He recently began delivering some 15,000 copies of the first edition to scores of local restaurants and shops, everywhere from Chinatown's China Pearl to Brookline's Fugakyu.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This is America. If you can dream it, you can be successful," Ballou says. "I don't like to </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">hear you can't, you shouldn't."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But what does a Caucasian who grew up in South Boston -- whose closest link to the other side of the planet is a Vietnamese girlfriend -- have to say about Asians?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I just think they're a beautiful people, and I respect their culture," he says. "It's everything about them -- their food, traditional dress, their arts and entertainment. I feel I connect to them in a way that's hard to describe. I hope they appreciate me for appreciating them."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like the thicker glossies it seeks to imitate, the cover of Ballou's 40-page glossy features a venerable, circulation-boosting ploy: a scantily clad woman flashing a well-lipsticked, come-hither pout. Just above the slender Asian's bare midriff, the magazine promises to introduce readers to "the essence of the Far-East Asian Women of New England."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Inside, articles include interviews with Asian comedians, a profile of an Asian rock band, stories about an Asian supermarket and a local fashion designer, and everything from poetry to tips on skin care and hair removal. Between more than a dozen ads -- which Ballou says brought in only $2,000, or $10,000 less than it cost him to publish -- there are more pictures of sultry women, 11 full pages of them. (The index directs the reader to a website if they want to "hire Asian Boston models . . . for your media event or venue.")</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first edition has raised some concerns in the city's Asian community, which comprises about 9 percent of Boston's population, or about 50,000 people, according to a 2004 survey by the US Census.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's weird it's not someone Asian doing this," says Karen Chen, an organizer at the Chinese Progressive Association in Chinatown. "I don't mean any offense, but I wonder if he knows enough about Asians in Boston. What legitimacy does he have to do this?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Chen and others worry the magazine will perpetuate stereotypes about Asians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It looks like he's promoting the idea that Asian women are sex kittens or submissive sex objects," says Anh Nguyen, marketing manager at Sampan, a biweekly English-Chinese newspaper published by the Asian American Civic Association in Chinatown. "If you're not affected by Asian stereotypes, it doesn't affect you. But I have to go out there and live. People who aren't affected by these stereotypes should be more sensitive. It's alarming."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">City Councilor Sam Yoon, the first Asian-American to be elected to the City Council, declined to comment on the magazine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The magazine has another potential problem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Waiting for customers on a recent afternoon at Ho Yuen Bakery in Chinatown, Annie Leung, a 50-year-old saleswoman, flips through Asian Boston and tries to find the words to express her feelings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I don't understand," she says, a mantra others repeat in Chinatown. "Why would I read?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ballou says he doesn't want to offend anyone; his goal is to "celebrate" local Asian culture. As for the language barrier, he says future editions -- he plans to publish four a year -- will likely include articles translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, or another Asian language.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I wanted to come out with a bang, not a whimper," he says. "I wanted the eye-catching women. Having a beautiful woman on the cover doesn't hurt, in terms of getting people's attention."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ballou came up with the idea a year and a half ago after being laid off from a job in which he leased space for cellphone towers. He didn't want to work for someone else, he says, and so he began looking for a business idea.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While listening to books on tape featuring the popular self-help guru Robert Kiyosaki and studying to be a paralegal at Bunker Hill Community College, he says he began noticing how many Asians there were around the city. "I started thinking there was a market there," he says.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He walked around Chinatown to see whether a local magazine for Asians existed, and when he found there wasn't one, he decided: "I'm doing this!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To start, Ballou found a photographer and a fashion designer, and gained permission from the Hyatt Regency near Chinatown to allow him to do a photo shoot there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I thought the idea was fabulous -- I said, `Great, go for it,' " says Donna Agnew, a local fashion consultant who helped pick out the clothing the models wore in the magazine. "I just wanted to encourage him."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Agnew, who received a half-page ad in the magazine for her help, put Ballou in touch with Gunnar Glueck, a graphic designer who spent about six months laying out the magazine, something he'd never done before.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Initially, I thought it was a bit unexpected that he would do this," says Glueck, who charged Ballou only $4,000 for his work. "But I think he just wanted to better represent the community. I thought it was a cool concept, so I cut him a break."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the year, Ballou came up with several story ideas, found writers and models by meeting people on the street and posting online queries, and found a publisher in South Boston. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Editing was the hardest part," he says.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He also found advertisers who share his vision.<br /><br />"I think he's trying to do the right thing," says Michael Tow, president of New Boston Financial in Brookline, which advertises in the magazine. "I see him as trying to do something that Asians haven't been able to do. Sometimes it takes an outsider to bring these kinds of things together. I think he's trying to help the community."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In late February, Ballou began distributing the magazine to some 200 stores and restaurants in Boston and beyond, from Providence to Lowell to Manchester, N.H. He also put some on Lucky Star, one of the Chinatown buslines to New York.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He has begun work on a second issue, and hopes to make a profit by the third. His plan, he says, is to attract more ads from local Asian businesses, increase his rates, and insert DVDs with advertising.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For now, though, things remain tight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ballou still works out of his home in Southie, where he lives with his brothers. He's living off a dwindling savings account. And the future of the magazine is anything but guaranteed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He says he will continue relying on the good graces of those who see his vision.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I'm hoping to make money," says Ballou, who plans to print another 2,000 copies of the first edition. "This is my passion. I'm going to make this work."<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149393727744436232006-06-03T20:58:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:38:22.314-08:00Urban Speed Traps<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/gotcha.1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/gotcha.1.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="221" /></a>By David Abel | Globe Staff | 3/26/2006<br /><br />This story, regrettably, must be told in the first person.<br /><br />At the start, it should be said, without any desire to tempt fate, I have a perfect driving record. Which isn't to say that I never lean on the gas.<br /><br />In the city, where a mile's drive can feel like a season of your life, this hadn't been a problem. Until recently.<br /><br />I was on my way to a conference last month when I found myself caught in morning traffic. My car crawled along Storrow Drive like it was baseball season. <br /><br />At the Charles Street turnoff, I waited in another line of cars backed up by a long red light. When I finally crossed the construction-filled intersection and made the sharp turn onto the Longfellow Bridge, I saw only open pavement, an uncluttered pair of lanes that might have been a runway.<br /><br />I took off.<br /><br />By the time I reached the other side, my odometer had hit 50 miles per hour. Clear of traffic and only a block from my appointment, I felt good to be home free.<br /><br />Then, from the corner of my eye, I noticed someone in the middle of the road, frantically waving at me.<br /><br />A man was pointing something that looked like a gun.<br /><br />My first impulse was to speed up, but I was coming to a light. Then I realized the gesticulating stranger was wearing a uniform.<br /><br />He was a cop.<br /><br />Holding a radar gun.<br /><br />Waving me over to the side of the road.<br /><br />As he walked over to my window and asked for my license and registration, I had trouble processing what was happening: a speed trap in the middle of the city?<br />In a metro area where walking can be quicker than driving and local streets often look like parking lots, a speeding ticket is not uncommon. In the past three years, on speeding tickets alone, Boston cited 30,195 drivers for violating limits; Brookline issued 22,295 tickets; Somerville ticketed 6,550 drivers; and Cambridge stopped 3,837 people -- one-third at the bottom of Longfellow Bridge.<br /><br />"We don't do this for revenue; it's about responding to complaints," says Cambridge Police Lieutenant Jack Albert, commander of his department's traffic-enforcement unit. "We try to target the gateway streets -- Main Street, Brattle, Concord Avenue, Huron Avenue, Western Avenue to be visible as people come into the city. We want them to know we enforce traffic regulations." <br /><br />Officers in Boston, who last year issued 8,445 speeding tickets, or 13 percent of the city's 63,319 moving violations, said the department uses "targeted enforcement" from crash reports to determine where to monitor speed. The effort, they said, is at least one reason the number of people who have died as a result of car crashes in Boston has fallen to its lowest level in a decade, from 27 in 1995 to 20 in 2001 to 8 in 2005.<br /><br />The department has also posted electronic speed-monitoring signboards along Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown, Tremont Street in the South End, Commercial Street in the North End, Warren Street in Roxbury, and Dorchester Avenue, among others.<br /><br />"We've had a crackdown on speeding, red-light violations, and erratic driving," says Officer Michael McCarthy, a police spokesman. "It's a citywide effort that involves more enforcement with radar."<br /><br />What about the many city streets without posted speed limits?<br /><br />"Even if streets don't have posted limits, we expect people to know that the speed limit in a thickly settled area is 30 miles per hour," McCarthy says. "We don't need signs on every street. Common sense should prevail."<br /><br />In Brookline, where police cited 5,885 drivers for speeding last year, officers say they pull over most people during rush hour on Beacon Street, westbound in the evening and eastbound in the morning. They also stop many drivers on Route 9, westbound, "when the traffic isn't too bad," says Captain Michael Gropman, who oversees the town's traffic division.<br /><br />"It's kind of ridiculous the way people drive," says Gropman, adding the community has pressured officers to clamp down on speeding. "We do it an awful lot because we have a very vocal constituency, and because we're a cut-through to Boston. Everyone's in a rush to get to work."<br /><br />Somerville officers say they mainly target Middlesex Avenue by the Assembly Square Mall, Myrtle Street near Washington Street, and Packard Avenue by Powder House Boulevard. Together, the locations last year accounted for more than half of the city's 2,110 speeding tickets.<br /><br />The most likely place to get a ticket in Somerville last year was on Middlesex Avenue, one of the city's few straightaways, where officers stopped 567 drivers for exceeding the 30-mile-per-hour speed limit. "It's a heavily traveled road near the courthouse, so we're down there a lot," says Officer Rick Gilberti, who works in the city's traffic division.<br /><br />State Police also stop hundreds of local drivers every year, everywhere from Storrow Drive to Memorial Drive to the Longfellow Bridge. Troopers say they can't provide the number of speeding tickets they issue on local streets, but many of the aggrieved drivers who receive them end up in Cambridge District Court. The tickets start at a state-mandated $100 -- which includes a $50 fee that goes toward rehabilitating those with head injuries -- and rise $10 per mile per hour after the first 10 over the speed limit. Getting stopped going 20 miles per hour over the limit, for example, translates into a $200 ticket -- and often hundreds of dollars more in insurance penalties.<br /><br />Which explains why Robert Moscow is a busy man. For the past 15 years, he has served as clerk magistrate at Cambridge District Court, where he hears about 100 appeals every week, many of them from drivers stopped on the Longfellow Bridge.<br /><br />"People get irrational and really mad," he says. "I've had people spit at me and curse me out. I try to be polite."<br /><br />Moscow has heard all the excuses, from "I was late for an appointment" or "I had to go to the bathroom" to "I was racing the train over the bridge" or "The person in front of me was going too slow, so I had to pass him."<br /><br />Few excuses ever fly, Moscow says, though if someone can prove they had a medical emergency, he'll review the evidence. "I had a woman show a prosecutor evidence her daughter was sick," he says. "We were willing to accept that."<br /><br />One driver who is keenly aware of the speed limit at the spot where Cambridge officers stop most of their speeders -- the bottom of Longfellow Bridge -- is Judge George R. Sprague, who crosses nearly every day from Beacon Hill to Cambridge District Court, where he often hears appeals for speeding tickets.<br /><br />"I go by very discreetly at 30 miles per hour -- and almost everyone is passing me," Sprague says. "Sometimes they beep at me for going too slowly."<br /><br />He knows what's often waiting at the end of the bridge. When he sees speeding drivers pass, he says to himself: "I'll probably be seeing them in court soon." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Sprague has had people appeal for allegedly going anywhere from 40 to 75 miles per hour. Sometimes he dismisses their cases (reasons ranging from no signs posted on the bridge to one driver who claimed to have been unfairly singled out for going 39 miles per hour).<br />But even if he can't dismiss a case, he sympathizes with many of the drivers. "I think 30 miles per hour is too slow," he says. "It's a straightaway. But the law is the law, whether I agree with it or not."<br />The speed limit on the Longfellow Bridge, which hasn't changed for decades, factors in the merging traffic from Memorial Drive, the pedestrians crossing Main Street, and among other things, the slope of the road, say police and Vanessa Gulati, a spokeswoman for the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which oversees the bridge.<br />"Our engineers determine the speed they think is safe," she says.<br />The officer who pulled me over had just waved over another scofflaw. We idled on the side of the road for what seemed an eternity as he and another officer sat in their cruiser, hidden in an alley at the end of the bridge.<br />As I sat stewing, I thought about my insurance, my wallet, my perfect driving record.<br />I felt like a criminal; I felt like running.<br />A few minutes later, the officer returned with a white piece of paper, covered in ink.<br />I apologized.<br />He told me I should be more careful.<br />Then he handed me the citation.<br />It, thankfully, was a warning.<br /><em>When not in his car, obeying speed limits, David Abel can be reached at </em><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com"><em>dabel@globe.com</em></a><em>.</em><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149393455514823202006-06-03T20:52:00.000-07:002014-01-01T21:22:17.529-08:00Emptying a Bar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6q9FjKuavnERMAeRK-eGSxB7G2BpAhYKFUJe9FzDM3KvqqndxNzpNIF-rOQP_fIuzCRPjxqKgrB-QBn4bLKCIUj72yK626x7oxAAAl_5pNzUTac6fjcrAvHphF_sWbPi0TkRj/s1600/mary-anns-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6q9FjKuavnERMAeRK-eGSxB7G2BpAhYKFUJe9FzDM3KvqqndxNzpNIF-rOQP_fIuzCRPjxqKgrB-QBn4bLKCIUj72yK626x7oxAAAl_5pNzUTac6fjcrAvHphF_sWbPi0TkRj/s640/mary-anns-13.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Globe Staff | 02/12/2006<br /><br />The list of alleged violations attached to its liquor license reads like a rap sheet: gambling on premises in 1997 (employees and management involved); assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on premises in 2001 (employees fail to render assistance and refused to call 911); patron leaving with an open beer in 2002; overcrowding in 2002 ; suspension for serving alcohol to a minor in 2005, and more.<br /><br />The paper trail attached to Mary Ann's, for decades a mecca for Boston College students, ends with an incident last October, when a veteran cop inspecting the Brighton bar fell down a staircase while pursuing underage students. At least one of them had entered with an out-of-state fake ID, police said.<br /><br />After that incident, the Boston Licensing Board, for at least the sixth time since 1989, records show, voted to suspend Mary Ann's liquor license for several days. "We told them the situation was out of hand, that they had to do something," said Daniel F. Pokaski, the board's chairman.<br /><br />Shortly afterward, the owner made a significant, business-altering decision -- the only of its kind for a bar in Boston, Pokaski said.<br /><br />On the brick walls at the bar's entrance, Stanley Chaban, the owner, hung signs outlining Mary Ann's new "no exceptions" ID policy. The bar, the sign blares in capital letters, will no longer allow anyone to enter with only an out-of-state license or foreign passport for ID, not even those age 21 or older.<br /><br />For a neighborhood with thousands of out-of-state and foreign residents, the result has had a predictable effect at Mary Ann's: Business has taken a dive.<br />Around midnight one recent Saturday, when the well-worn bar would usually be hopping, with lines forming under its old yellow sign off Beacon Street, Mary Ann's was all but empty, the staff of bartenders and bouncers often exceeding its trickle of customers. The staff spent much of the night playing cribbage and watching a TV snowboarding competition.<br /><br />When several potential patrons walked through the door, some of whom looked well into their 20s, the bouncers glanced at their IDs, pointed to the signs behind them, and quickly sent them on their way. They all had what appeared to be valid out-of-state licenses.<br /><br />Asked in a phone interview why he took action the Licensing Board didn't require, Chaban declined to comment.<br /><br />How could he stay in business, when his own bartenders say volume has dropped about 80 percent under the new policy?<br /><br />"No comment."<br /><br />Would he consider revising his decision?<br /><br />"No comment."<br /><br />If the new policy has miffed many local students and left the staff wondering about their job security, it has pleased local police.<br /><br />"Mary Ann's is notorious for student drinking problems they're probably number one for repeat offenses in recent years," said Captain William B. Evans, who's in charge of enforcing laws in Allston-Brighton.<br /><br />Asked if he could estimate how many of the bar's former customers were underage drinkers using fake IDs, Evans said, "I have no idea . . . All I can say is it's encouraging that they've cracked down. I don't have a lot of sympathy for them when officers are getting hurt there."<br /><br />The officer hurt at Mary Ann's last fall injured his knee, Evans said, and couldn't work for two months.<br /><br />Mary Ann's may be going overboard, the Massachusetts Restaurant Association's president said, but he argued the problem is state law, which doesn't consider out-of-state licenses a valid form of identification. To buy alcohol, the only acceptable ID under state law is a valid Massachusetts driver's license or liquor ID, military ID, or US passport, said officials of the restaurant association, which represents more than 5,000 restaurants, bars, and other establishments in the state.<br /><br />"We've tried to expand it to valid out-of-state licenses, but the opposition argues it's too easy to get them over the Internet," said Peter Christie, association president. "Without protection under the law, I don't blame the bar. But it's a desperate solution, one few bars could probably afford."<br /><br />A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said Mary Ann's employees have the right to serve whomever they want, as long as they're not discriminating against anyone because of race, sex, or religion.<br /><br />"State of origin is not a protected class," said John Reinstein, the ACLU's legal director. "The question is whether there's any rational basis for this."<br /><br />Some of Mary Ann's business has apparently migrated to nearby Roggies Brew & Grill on Chestnut Hill Avenue, where manager Spiro Dimopoulos has seen a small spike in business.<br /><br />Many of the bargoers recently denied entrance to Mary Ann's , one of the few student bars within walking distance of Cleveland Circle, left livid.<br /><br />After being turned away for showing what appeared to be a valid California driver's license, Kendall Krische stood in the cold, dumbfounded.<br /><br />"I can't believe it," said Krische, 22, from San Diego, whose friends were also rejected for showing out-of-state IDs. "I'd heard so much about this bar, I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I guess I won't be coming back."<br /><br />Michael Howard, 27, and Chris Rubio, 28, business graduate students at Babson College, wanted to let off some stress after studying.<br /><br />Rebuffed for showing a Michigan license, Howard said: "It feels like East Berlin in 1988, but even there they probably let you drink." Then there was Adam Titus, 22, who said he felt particularly discriminated against, given that his home in Salem, N.H., is little more than 30 miles from Boston.<br /><br />Walking away, he offered words that could be an omen for what has long been the epicenter of local nightlife.<br /><br />"I guess we'll just find another bar," he said.<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149393031775307892006-06-03T20:46:00.002-07:002014-01-28T18:00:20.810-08:00The Rich Gone Wild<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/louis.0.jpg" height="427" width="640" /><br />By David Abel | Globe Staff | 1/22/2006<br /><br />The brick-front palace opens its gates to hoi polloi for two weeks every year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And when it does, there's a hint of mayhem in the Back Bay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So hungry for Helmut Lang jeans and Dries Van Noten sweaters, the prices of which last week struck one especially couture-challenged reporter as either a mistake or bordering on insane, they line up in droves in the cold, sometimes waiting for hours.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When the doors finally open, with some sort of electronica pulsing from the sound system, hundreds of unwashed fashionistas -- OK, these commoners aren't exactly beggars -- rush to the racks, some tripping over one another on the hardwood floor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 50 percent off, for God's sake, there are deals to be had!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, at Louis Boston, the word "sale" is all relative. The century-old clothing store on Berkeley Street regularly sells men's corduroy pants for $495, polo shirts for $295, and shoes that look like they came from a bowling alley for $450.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And that's the cheap stuff. The price tag on one pily tweed blazer read $3,950.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet at the store's most recent weeklong markdown, which ended last week, the customers seemed like children in a candy store. They couldn't get enough of it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A political science researcher at Harvard, Tadashi Yamomota, discovered the biannual sale last summer, after it was too late. He vowed not to miss it again this month, when Louis (pronounced LOO-eez, almost like a certain French royal known as the Sun King) clears out its winter stock for the new season.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Prowling for presents on his second day at the sale -- the previous day he dropped $6,000 for a suit, three ties, two shirts, and a pair of socks -- the excited 46-year-old scholar from Tokyo plans to spend another $2,000.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This seems cheap," he says. "In Japan, it would cost $20,000 -- and you get service here."<br />Would he wear such extravagant threads on campus, where elbow pads are more de rigueur?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"At Harvard, I stick to `Irish style,' more poor but pure of mind," he says, while ogling stacks of the remaining collared dress shirts, which sell for hundreds of dollars, even with the discount. "I prefer to save these Italian clothes for New York, or a night out in Boston."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kendra Torode says she has shopped at Louis, a grand building that once housed the old New England Museum of Natural History, since she was 3 years old.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still tagging along with her mom, the 24-year-old from Acton looks at shorts with a $250 price tag and Prada boots that regularly sell for $550. Her job in public relations (and Mom's largesse) affords her only so much indulgence, even during the sale.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I try not to go crazy," she says, noting the smattering of CDs available for only $10.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then there's David Ribak, who says he's just thankful he didn't miss the sale, which he was reminded of while reading a newspaper a few days before at a Four Seasons resort in Mexico.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rifling though silk ties on the last day of the sale, when prices are marked down another 10 percent, the 58-year-old divorce lawyer from Chestnut Hill says he bought his first suit at Louis 35 years ago, and he's tried to hit every sale since then.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now he owns two dozen suits, and he's considering one more. He holds up a chalk-striped Brioni that regularly sells for $3,995. He admires it. "This is a power suit I can wear in court," he says.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then he adds, to the chagrin of the store's top management, who say they don't want to promote the sale so much that their customers won't come the rest of the year: "I never would buy this at regular price."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reached on her cellphone in a taxi in Milan, Debi Greenberg, who three years ago officially took over the business from her father, explains why her prices aren't unreasonable: After favorably comparing her merchandise to what she referred to as the middling garments for sale at the Gap, which she suggests has a higher profit margin, she offers this adage: "You get what you pay for."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Asked why anyone would spend $200 for a T-shirt or $3,000 for a leather jacket, she says: "Most men don't understand the quality of good clothing."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 50-year-old fashion guru offers an analogy. "Some cars are $10,000, some cars are $50,000, and some cars are $100,000," she says. "The same thing happens with clothes, even with T-shirts."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then she really puts it in perspective: "The sale is like getting a Mercedes at half off."<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But it's over now. The day after the sale ended, last Monday, Louis closes for the day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After taking what they want for 75 percent off, Greenberg's employees group the sweaters, jackets, pants -- whatever's left over, or about 7 percent of the winter stock -- on racks, where they're scanned and packed in boxes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then they're sent to Filene's Basement, which pays Louis a percentage between 75 and 90 percent off the original price, Greenberg says.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The sale lives on there, where hoi polloi shop, at least until the Louis cycle returns in the summer.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span> Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149392760596905922006-06-03T20:32:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:42:17.081-08:00Powder Keg<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/keg.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/keg.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="222" /></a>By David Abel | Globe Staff | 1/22/2006<br /><br />Around midnight one Saturday in November, as often occurs on weekends in Allston, police fielded complaints about a loud party on Gardner Street, at the former home of Boston University's Phi Delta Theta fraternity.<br /><br />Soon after, two officers in street clothes joined a line at the back of the house, where hundreds of college students paid $5 for a plastic cup courtesy of a 20-year-old doorman, according to a police report.<br /><br />When the officers reached the door, they showed their badges and seized the young man's wad of cash. Afterward, they cleared some 300 mostly underage students from the house and made two arrests. They found, according to the report, assorted Jell-O shots and five kegs filled with Bud Light.<br /><br />It may have been a routine call for an area where some 20,000 students live, but police cite something noteworthy about the incident: They traced the kegs to Wollaston Wines & Spirits -- in Quincy.<br /><br />The case exposed a loophole in the city's latest effort to control student drinking. With little fanfare a few weeks before, and under pressure from the mayor and City Council, the Boston Licensing Board passed a rule requiring liquor stores to give police the name and address of anyone buying a keg of beer -- possibly the first such law in the nation.<br /><br />It didn't take long for students to learn that getting blitzed by the barrel requires little more than a quick drive to Quincy or Cambridge or a short walk to Brookline or Newton, police say.<br /><br />"This is how easy it is to avoid the law," says Captain William B. Evans, who's in charge of enforcing laws in Allston-Brighton.<br /><br />In Boston, the unanimously passed keg regulation is just the latest skirmish in the city's centuries-old battle with booze, one that reaches back to its teetotaling Puritan founders and the Blue Laws banning Sunday alcohol sales, which began in the Colonial era but weren't wiped off the books until 2004.<br /><br />The new rules were first proposed a year ago following the Red Sox pennant-victory riots that left Emerson College junior Victoria Snelgrove dead, shot by police with a "nonlethal" crowd-control weapon.<br /><br />Each year, more than 1,000 college students die and 500,000 are injured nationally as the result of alcohol, according to a 2002 report by the Boston University School of Public Health.<br /><br />"The goal is that we don't lose any more lives," says Councilor Stephen J. Murphy, who proposed the law. "Police found 67 kegs bought that night at liquor stores in Boston that went to houses later identified as off-campus student housing. We wanted to do something about it."<br /><br />Officials at the Licensing Board, as well as national and statewide liquor store associations, said they're unaware of any other city that has adopted such a law. <br /><br />"Other cities do regulate keg sales, but as far as we know, it's the only law of its kind where you have to inform the police immediately on the sale of a keg," says <br /><br />John Bodnovich, a spokesman for the American Beverage Licensees, which represents 20,000 beer, wine, and liquor stores around the country.<br /><br />The rules took effect last fall at the finale of another election season, only a few weeks after Mayor Tom Menino had just wangled headlines calling for alcohol-free "entertainment zones" -- designated nightspots in places such as Faneuil Hall Marketplace where underage residents could gather to party, sans cocktails. <br /><br />"We have to get beyond people going to bars and drinking," Menino had told the Globe in October.<br /><br />Last January, the city's police commissioner announced Operation Student Shield, to crack down on public drinking and loud parties. (By year's end, police had arrested 23 people age 20 or younger for liquor law violations.) Another proposal under consideration would require local universities to assess students $100 per semester to cover policing costs during big sports events. Councilor Murphy says the plan would raise $36 million for the city, but he may shelve the proposal to instead press local universities to add $100 million to their payments to the city.<br /><br /><strong>Party time in student city</strong>Still, loud parties persist and students continue to guzzle alcohol. For many students in the prime target area, Allston-Brighton, the party lives on, particularly now, at the beginning of the semester, with the Super Bowl approaching and schoolwork not yet back in high gear.<br /><br />Sales of kegs in the neighborhood continue at a steady pace -- about 25 a weekend, local police say. But students say they've started trading kegs for beer balls, which are about one-third the size, and cases of beer.<br /><br />In interviews, owners of liquor stores across Allston-Brighton say they've seen a modest rise in sales of beer balls since the law took effect in late October. "They buy what they need, even if it's not a keg," says George Haivanis, owner of Reservoir Wines & Spirits Inc. in Brighton. "They're still going to drink. As long as they're of age and responsible, we don't mind."<br /><br />It's not clear whether keg sales are up in neighboring communities -- owners of liquor stores say they haven't noticed any significant spike -- but police say that even if the new law doesn't prevent students from buying kegs, the information can be helpful.<br /><br />"Our goal isn't to track where every keg goes," Captain Evans says, noting his officers review each fax from liquor stores. "We're looking for problem houses, where multiple kegs are going."<br /><br />For some students, the police are starting to feel like Big Brother.<br /><br />The law also requires liquor stores to tell police the number of kegs bought, the time of the sale, and when and where they're going.<br /><br />"This is another in a series of attempts to curb student life and regulate any semblance of privacy for students," says John Guilfoil, 22, a Kappa Sigma fraternity member who serves as executive vice president of Northeastern's student government.<br /><br />He cites the city's effort last year to require campuses to turn over the addresses of all off-campus students, as well as Murphy's proposal to hike student fees.<br /><br />"If you're of age, and you want to have a keg, you're allowed to do that -- and I don't see why the government needs to know," says Guilfoil, noting kegs, which hold about 15 gallons of beer, offer a better value for larger parties. "Alcohol is a part of adult life all over the world."<br /><br /><strong>A toast to Big Brother?</strong><br />Others describe the new law as government intrusion.<br /><br />"Don't the police have anything more important to do?" asks Catie Gavenonis, 24, a law student at Boston University. "It's like everyone has to have a personal liquor license, and you're being watched even if you haven't done anything wrong."<br /><br />The Licensing Board's chairman, Daniel Pokaski, defends the new keg law as a sensible, if flawed, attempt to rein in student drunks, countless numbers of whom have spilled onto the streets in recent years after postseason Patriots and Red Sox victories, starting bonfires, turning over cars, and climbing streetlights.<br /><br />"We understand the rule is full of loopholes," he says. "If the kids want to buy cases of beer or jugs of alcohol or booze, they can still do that. But if it works once or twice, then I think it's effective."<br /><br />The law, he argues, doesn't violate anyone's rights.<br /><br />"Alcohol is a highly regulated commodity, like drugs," he says. "This isn't like Big Brother; it's like requiring a permit to buy a gun or a prescription before you buy drugs at a pharmacy."<br /><br />A more effective way to reduce student drinking would be to raise taxes on beer or ban two-for-one kinds of sales, says Henry Wechsler, director of the college alcohol studies program at the Harvard School of Public Health. Until state policymakers take action -- local ordinances are too easy to avoid -- it's unlikely students will change their drinking habits, he says.<br /><br /><strong>You open it, you drink it up</strong>"There's a rule that once a container is opened, it's drained, and the larger the container, the more consumed," Wechsler says. "So it's a good idea to reduce access to kegs." <br /><br />"But at the same time the city is cracking down, they're making it easier to drink," he says, referring to the Licensing Board's decisions last year to open the streets around Fenway Park to alcohol vendors and allow the Red Sox to build more than a dozen new beer stands inside the park.<br /><br />"They're sending mixed signals," Wechsler says.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Marty's Liquors at Commonwealth Avenue and Harvard Avenue has a sign advertising the merchandise: "Marty's features the largest selection and lowest priced kegs in town."<br /><br />Inside, past rows of Jagermeister and tequila, behind another sign advising customers to "Remember: Ice, Cups, and Party Supplies!", stacks of freshly filled kegs cool in a large refrigerator. There are 30 types of kegs for sale, ranging from Keystone for $39.99 to Guinness Stout for $144.99. The most popular, selling for $47.99, is Bud Light.<br /><br />Like other liquor store owners interviewed, Marty Siegal says he has no problem with the new law, which hasn't had a noticeable effect on his bottom line.<br />If the city banned keg sales, he says, he wouldn't mind. Given their small profit margin, he says, he could easily do without the large, space-hogging barrels.<br /><br />"We're in the service business," he says. "We only sell them because people want to buy them."<br /><br />David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a><br /><br /><br />SIDEBAR: GOING WITH THE FLOW<br /><br />The cheaper the drink, the stronger the draw to overdo.<br /><br />A keg of Bud Light costing $47.99 ** holds 165 12-ounce servings, at a cost of about 29 cents per drink<br /><br />A beer ball of Bud Light costing $28.99 holds 55 12-ounce servings, at a cost of about 53 cents per beer<br /><br />A case of Bud Light costing $19.99 holds 24 12-ounce servings, at a cost of about 83 cents per beer<br /><br />Boston police report sales of kegs in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood are holding steady at about 25 kegs per weekend. But some students say they've started trading kegs for cases and beer balls, which are not required to be reported to police<br /><br /><br /><strong>Sidebar</strong>:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">FILL 'ER UP, SIR? AND PERHAPS YOURSELF, TOO?<br /><br />By David Abel<br />Globe Staff<br />01/22/2006<br /><br />The potpourri of products for sale include beef jerky, lottery tickets, ice cream, and condoms.<br /><br />The typical stuff stocked in gas station minimarts.<br /><br />At the Shell station between Andrew Square and South Bay, a yellow sign near the pumps advertises a few things unavailable at any of the other 122 gas stations in Boston: "Liquor, Beer, Wine."<br /><br />The 35-year-old former ARCO just west of the Southeast Expressway is the only city gas station licensed to sell alcohol, says Daniel Pokaski, chairman of the Boston Licensing Board, who fought the station's initial application for a liquor license in the 1970s.<br /><br />And they sell it all, everything from expensive Kendall Jackson wine to big cans of Japan-brewed Sapporo beer to scores of 50-milliliter nips filled with whiskey, rum, tequila, brandy, gin, vodka, and more.<br /><br />The board granted the license in 1979 to Value Liquors, a separate company formed by Christopher Azizian, the station's owner, according to a copy of the license. The station has renewed its license every year since then, even though the board twice cited the place for selling alcohol to minors and once for selling to an intoxicated customer.<br /><br />"We've never granted another," Pokaski says. "I think it sends the wrong message. When you're picking up gas, and getting a six-pack, I just think the nexus is too close between drinking and driving."<br /><br />Azizian and other gas station owners argue the ban against gas stations selling alcohol is unfair, particularly when supermarkets now sell gas and other service stations throughout the state sell liquor.<br /><br />"What's the difference if it's a gas station or a food store?" Azizian says. "What about package stores in the neighborhood next to a gas station?"<br /><br />Paul O'Connell, executive director of the New England Service Station and Automotive Repair Association in Billerica, says he would be surprised if the ban existed anywhere but Boston, which for centuries has strictly regulated alcohol sales.<br /><br />Today, however, about 1,200 corner stores, restaurants, and bars including the Shell station are licensed to sell alcohol in Boston, according to the Licensing Board. "It doesn't make sense," O'Connell says. "You can go to almost any corner store in the Commonwealth to buy liquor."<br /><br />A spokesman for AAA Southern New England says he has seen no evidence linking drunken driving with alcohol sales at service stations. "A lot of gas stations have liquor stores right next to them, and it seems unfair to me that a gas retailer is wrong to sell liquor if a Stop & Shop can do it," says Art Kinsman.<br /><br />"Driving is pretty much the way it gets transported anywhere."<br /><br />On a recent morning at the Shell station, a steady flow of customers stop in for everything from six-packs of Bud Light to small bottles of vodka.<br /><br />"It happens to be on my way home," says Sean Lewton, 44, of Carver, who takes a six-pack.<br /><br />Just off work loading supplies at Home Depot, Carlos Diaz and a few buddies walk over for an end-of-the shift celebration. They buy three 40-ounce bottles of Busch, which sell for $2.15 each. "At least we're not driving," says Diaz, 45, of Chelsea.<br /><br />Business may seem strong at the Shell minimart, but it's down about 80 percent in recent years, Azizian and his manager Tatoul Badalian say.<br /><br />A decade ago, the Big Dig closed the expressway exit next to their station, which cut business dramatically.<br /><br />A year ago, construction workers moved the entrance to the expressway, cutting traffic even more.<br /><br />In the summer, the busiest time of the year for alcohol sales, the station used to sell as many as 100 cases of beer a day; now, it moves maybe six or seven, says Badalian, who has worked for Azizian for 25 years.<br /><br />"We're just a little dinky store now," Badalian says.<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-59826654426219513772006-06-03T20:17:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:42:53.298-08:00The Mayor of Mozart Park<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDznOgMq38d3KGDTpDyVBWPEd_6P0xYkip7wbpFYbXkSvQ8xNnJCiov6E1THrPUMOceS0BmJllbJx8jR5ZZCxex3ysfqOQZsfEkYVRdaZPDKOdCHsMl9CGdQuIMVkVJu2MCPKN-g/s400/PX00200_9.jpg" height="425" width="640" /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | May 20, 2007</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The man in the black hat and plastic gloves has the kind of toothy grin of a mayor milling about his constituents.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the past 17 years, Manuel "Madego" Debrand has built a loyal following, slapping backs and kissing babies. But instead of a red tie, he wears a red apron; instead of patronage, he dispenses plastic cups of flavored ices, deep-fried pastelitos, and a helping of avuncular wisdom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, the 58-year-old from the Dominican Republic, who heralds the end of winter by wheeling an old cart out of his red- and white-striped van to a corner of Mozart Park, curries a certain influence as one of the few licensed street vendors in Jamaica Plain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"They call me the eyes and ears of the neighborhood," he says in a Spanish that echoes the Dominican accent of nearly all of his clients.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As he pours tamarind syrup over shaved ices and pulls pastelitos from a vat of sizzling oil, Debrand urges kids not to skip school, alerts police and park officials to problems, and kibitzes with anyone who stops by for his $1 treats.<br />With the steady beat of salsa and bachata pulsing from his boom box, he also transforms what might be an otherwise sleepy corner into a daily fiesta.<br />This year, however, the party may not carry into the summer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Next month, the city will begin a $515,000 renovation of Mozart Park, leaving Debrand with little if any room to operate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It won't make sense for him to be there with the area under construction," said Mary Hines, a spokeswoman for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, one of several authorities that have issued Debrand a license to sell food in Mozart Park. "I just don't know how he's going to do business; there won't be much room for his clients."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hines said construction crews will decide whether it's safe for him to operate while they replace concrete with granite cobblestones and install new planters. But she said the city hopes he can stay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"He's invaluable to us: It's like having our own park partner there every day," Hines said. "Everyone thinks he's a great guy. He's the first to call if there's anything going on that shouldn't, or if there's something that needs to be repaired."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to the parks department, Debrand has permits to sell from Boston's Inspectional Services Department -- which regulates 225 street vendors in the city -- and the state Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. None has any record of a complaint or violation against Madego's, an acronym he said stands for "Made to Go."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Debrand isn't complaining about the renovations that might blunt his business.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"What's good for the community benefits me," he said. "I'm not worried."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Debrand starts his days in Chelsea, where he and his wife have a small restaurant they call Madego's The Great Kitchen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She helps prepare the pastelitos, cutting the dough, stuffing it with cheese, chicken, or meat, and folding them into turnovers, trays full of them, which they pack into coolers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They load other coolers with cans of soda and bottled water, chunks of ice for the snow-cone machine, and reserves of corn oil, which Debrand stacks in the back of the pickup truck he takes to JP.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After winter ends, if the weather's nice, he opens nearly every day.<br />When he arrives at around noon, Madego's is like an ice cream truck at the beach, the salsa and bachata his bell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Within minutes of opening his green umbrella and switching on the music, there's a line, a steady flow of customers that doesn't ebb until he leaves around dusk.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He won't say how much he earns in a day, but he's proud of not raising his prices -- nearly everything he sells costs a $1 -- since he began coming to Mozart Park.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Life can be tough, but everyone has a dollar," he said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He greets those who come for lunch or dinner with "mi vida" (my life), "mi cielo" (my sky), or "mi amor" (my love).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"He's like an uncle," said Juan Fernandez, who owns a nearby barbershop and said Debrand has served him nearly every day for years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gladys Rivera, who regularly brings her children to Madego's, said she wouldn't know what to do without him. "He's a part of the family."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Francisco Lizardo, a vice consul from the Dominican Republic who works at the consulate in Boston, said Debrand is a hub for the Dominican community.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"He really is like the mayor of Jamaica Plain," said Lizardo, who also regularly eats at Madego's. "He brings a piece of Santo Domingo here."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If there's a downside to the business, it's all the garbage that litters the neighborhood by the end of the day. But city officials work with Debrand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On a recent afternoon, Moises Watson, a city worker who helps keep the park clean, gave Debrand several trash bags.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We need more Madego's," he said. "He doesn't just look after the area; he helps keep the kids straight and sets a good example for them -- that if you work hard, you can succeed."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But Debrand said he doesn't see what he does as work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With cars passing on Centre Street beeping their horns for Debrand and others parking in a nearby bus stop to grab a snow cone or pastelito, Debrand moves quickly, joking and laughing and offering his opinions while making change.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"This isn't work," he said. "This is a pleasure."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1163476842932395572006-06-03T19:57:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:43:44.155-08:00The Duke Walks The Walk<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/img/187/4451/400/image0-7.jpg" height="446" width="640" /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 5/11/2003</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There, at the edge of the grassy field, it glints in the morning sun, beckoning the well-dressed man with the furry eyebrows. It mars his way to work. To him, it's an egregious sight in an otherwise pristine part of the park. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />At 69, he doesn't move as fast as he used to, but he won't let this one get away, no matter what the muddy grounds may do to his penny loafers. With a canvas Amtrak bag in one hand and a fistful of garbage in the other, the son of Greek immigrants darts toward the purple candy wrapper, chasing after it as a sudden breeze lifts it just beyond his reach.<br /><br />"I mean, look at this crap!" he growls, finally snaring the offensive refuse. "It's appalling, disgraceful. There's just no excuse for it."<br /><br />It might strike some as laughable that a man who once ran for president and held the highest office in Massachusetts now spends his morning commute indignantly collecting other people's trash and cursing a decade's worth of politicians and bureaucrats.<br /><br />But for former Governor Michael Dukakis nothing has changed: When you leave office, he says, you don't stop caring.<br /><br />There are many issues the former governor gets passionate about - teaching, high-speed rail - but this morning, it's all about litter.<br /><br />"It's enough to drive you out of your mind," he says. "You see it all over the place and you have to ask: Why isn't anyone dealing with this?"<br /><br />The governor has met with his successors about it. He has harangued officials at the Metropolitan District Commission, which preserves parks in the Boston area, as well as local park administrators.<br /><br />Frustrated with government excuses about budget cuts and bureaucratic delays, Dukakis tries to lead by example -- every weekday he's around when it's not raining or snowing.<br /><br />At 7:30, two hours after rising, ripping through two newspapers and devouring slices of his own homemade bread, he sets off from his Brookline home for Northeastern University, where he has been teaching government for a decade. If he doesn't take a bag with him, he either finds one along the way or just collects what he can hold until finding a trashcan.<br /><br />On a recent morning, dressed in a jacket and tie for a conference featuring the current governor, it takes only a few paces past his driveway for him to barehand an old, soggy newspaper, a used tissue, and a leaky styrofoam cup. The stench doesn't faze him.<br /><br />"This is nothing," he says.<br /><br />Down a stairwell and trotting the banks of the Muddy River, he points to reeds and junk waiting to be dredged. "I left a plan for [former Governor William] Weld 13 years ago to do this, and only now are we getting to it," he fumes.<br /><br />As people pass, some smile but many don't seem to recognize him. If they're younger than 25 years old, he says, it's likely he's a nobody to them.<br /><br />Seeing the governor gather trash, Dukakis says one man recently told him: "We had higher aspirations for you once."<br /><br />But picking up trash is what it's all about -- doing what you can, he says. Of course, that doesn't mean he can't complain. Upon seeing graffiti scrawled on a mailbox, he carps: "Who is this idiot? What is this? What kind of gratification do they get from this kind of thing?"<br /><br />Then there are the leftover encampments from people who have burrowed homes in wooded areas along the way. Seeing all the mangy blankets, old clothes, and cracked bottles in dense piles riles the governor.<br /><br />He would clean it up, he says, but sometimes there's too much stuff for one person. It would take a truck, he says, adding that the Metropolitan District Commission is not doing its job. Then he points to a bag sitting next to a bench in the Fenway. Filled with sludge he gathered two weeks ago, he says it hasn't moved since.<br /><br />More proof: a collection of bottles and cans in one swampy section of the Muddy River. It's where Dukakis draws the line. "I don't go into the water," he says. "Someone else has to do that."<br /><br />Closer to Northeastern in Clemente Park, he sees a sign of hope: a man raking. As if still campaigning, he walks toward the worker and in his signature baritone says: "Mike Dukakis, how are ya?"<br /><br />Gerard Recupero smiles and identifies himself. "Sure I recognize you," he says. "Good to see you, Mr. Dukakis."<br /><br />The two chat about litter for a minute, but Dukakis has to go. There's more trash to pick up, and he's running late.<br /><br />An hour after he started, the two-mile journey ends at Northeastern's Meserve Hall. He finds a receptacle and drops in his last pile of trash -- a stuffed plastic bag. All done without a smudge on his navy blazer. His perfectly combed hair hasn't budged during the commute.<br /><br />Before taking off for his morning class, he parries questions about whether he's depressed by the way things have turned out. Politically, he says: "This is the worst national administration I've lived under." A conservative Republican also now holds his old job. And, recently, in the course of a week, he lost his mother and father-in-law.<br /><br />Yet with teaching going well, calls each day from people interested in hearing him speak, and four grandchildren, he insists: "I feel like a million bucks."<br /><br />For the city's necklace of parks, however, he says things are coming apart. "There's just too much neglect," he says. "Things are worse than when I was governor."<br /><br />So these days, in the evening, if the weather's right, he may be back out there, picking trash on his way home.<br /><i>David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1150685478351228542006-06-03T19:45:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:46:24.800-08:00Balancing atop Bunker Hill<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Restoring the crumbling Bunker Hill monument takes more than granite. (<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/06/11/getting_to_the_point/">Click her for a slideshow</a>.)</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/1600/bunker%20hill.1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/bunker%20hill.0.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="222" /></a>By David Abel | Globe Staff | 6/11/2006</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 200 feet above the city, with briny winds howling off the harbor, Russ Burtt crawls out a small window and plops on a thin plank of plywood -- outside the granite pyramid atop the <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/06/11/getting_to_the_point/">Bunker Hill Monument</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's how the specially trained mason now starts a typical day at work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's not bad, so long as you can stand the heights," says Burtt, 43, who ambles around the "crow's nest," a flimsy looking array of steel cables, brackets, and wood, sans any sign of vertigo. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sunburned restoration specialist leads a four-man crew that's part of a $3.7 million project to renovate the 163-year-old obelisk and surrounding area. The job, which began last month and is scheduled to end next year, includes new lighting, improved wheelchair ramps, and a new museum in the old city library across the street. The monument could reopen as soon as September.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some of the work is routine, but Burtt's sky-high tasks require special skills --beyond stomaching long views to the ground -- and immediate attention. For the first time in 25 years, the crew is "repointing" the monument, replacing much of the mortar that helps keep its massive granite blocks in place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We need to do this now because we've found moisture [in the mortar and granite] that has led to cracks that can stress the structure to failure," says Doug Ford, the project's quality control manager. "It's inconvenient to do it now, but summer's the best time to grout the masonry."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Burtt's men have already found 20 pieces of loose granite -- some the size of bricks -- that were in danger of falling. There are likely more, but the National Park Service only has enough money to repoint the north and east sides, which face prevailing winds and are more weathered than the other sides.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The lack of cash is an old story at the monument. A series of financial shortfalls delayed the monument's completion until 1843 -- 18 years after construction began. (In total, it took $156,218.14 to build the monument, according to the National Park Service, nearly all from private donations, save $7,000 from the Commonwealth.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Burtt has recommended that the park service figure out a way to repair all four sides now. To put off repairing any of the sides, he says, would be significantly more expensive -- and potentially dangerous.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"There's definitely the possibility that some pieces could fall from the other sides," Burtt says.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From what he can see of the south and west walls -- the ones he's not working on -- they appear to have a similar number of loose pieces of granite, which are between roughly 2 by 2 inches and 4 by 4 inches. "I'd say there's surely some liability there. We're aware of it, so I think it should be addressed."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">National Park Service officials overseeing the construction say they'll review any findings that could endanger the 170,000 or so people each year who visit the monument, the nation's first major memorial to commemorate the Revolutionary War. (The Washington Monument, more than 300 feet taller, wasn't completed until 1885.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We don't want to leave the monument in an unsafe condition," says Ruth Raphael, a planner at the National Park Service, which maintains the monument. "If it's a safety issue, we'll have to look at what's involved. But we need to know what we're talking about price wise."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">According to the National Park Service, the total cost of the monument repair work is $314,300, which includes: </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">$60,000 to build scaffolding atop the monument; $155,000 to repoint the exterior; $33,000 to repair exterior masonry; $66,300 for all other work to rehabilitate the monument.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One reason it's cheaper to do the repairs now, says Burtt -- whose Connecticut-based Joseph Gnazzo Co. would profit from the additional work -- is the crow's nest, a treehouse-like contraption that somehow supports 30 tons and can withstand winds up to about 50 knots. His crew's work depends on its intricately designed scaffolding, which they would have to rebuild to renovate the rest of the monument in the future.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To assemble such a sturdy platform atop the 221-foot-high obelisk -- a task akin to balancing a large object on the head of a pin -- took a week's worth of brawn and smarts. It also had to be done delicately enough to avoid scarring the monument's smooth stones.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The careful labor started last month when Burtt and his men climbed the monument's spiraling 294 steps, hauling heavy steel cables and other equipment to the observation deck.<br /><br />There, they removed the monument's old, weathered glass windows and dropped four long ropes to the ground, where one of the men tied the ropes together in square knots, linking the windows.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Completing the crow's nest was like a ballet in work boots and hardhats: The men pulled up the ropes, tied them to a five-eighths-inch-thick steel cable, and threaded it around the 15 square feet at the top of the monument, until it reached all the way around. They set corner brackets on three sides of the monument and, using turnbuckles and fist grips, tightened the cable -- the scaffolding's spine -- until it was taut, reaching 130 pounds per foot of pressure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next step required poles to position large, load-bearing brackets, which they secured to the cable and attached, through additional 200-foot cables, to a 600-pound "electric swing." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />With the mobile scaffolding, the men brought up more cables, two dozen brackets, a mesh fence, and 20 planks of OSHA-approved plywood, all of which they hammered and stitched together to create two well-ventilated floors, connected by a ladder.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's a step-by-step process," Burtt says. "You start smaller and get bigger."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With the scaffolding complete, the men got to work, using diamond-blade saws to remove as much of the old mortar as possible from the monument's two sides.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moving up and down on the electric swing, the men are now using tools called trowels and hawks to fill the joints with mortar, made from a special solution of lime and sand that Burtt says should last 100 years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The rest of the work involves pressure washing both sides of the monument, to remove several decades-worth of carbon buildup, and repairing the loose granite with what they call dutchmen. The men cut the replacement stones to fit exactly where they removed the loose granite. Then they attach them with stainless steel pins and seal them with epoxy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The goal is to preserve the historic look," says Burtt, whose crew recently completed similar work on the Bennington Monument, a 306-foot obelisk in Vermont. "We don't want it to look shiny or new."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Stepping off the electric swing, which supports three men and takes about 10 minutes to reach the top, James Lemanski is covered in dust, his safety harness and hard hat barely visible in a cloud of fine soot raining down.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Carrying a 5-gallon bucket of mortar, the 27-year-old mason says he's proud to be part of the team restoring the towering memorial to the bloody battle there on June 17, 1775. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />As for the heights?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"You get used to it," he says.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>David Abel can be reached at <a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com">dabel@globe.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</i></span><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></strong>
<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">SIDEBAR:</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">THE STARTING POINT</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Construction on the obelisk began in 1825, but work lurched along as funds were depleted, then cobbled together. To get the job done, the Bunker Hill Association in 1838 began selling off 10 acres of the battlefield as house lots, eventually hanging onto only the summit of Breed's Hill for use as monument grounds. Josepha Hale, editor of Ladies' Magazine, banded together with other women to hold a sale of crafts and baked goods, racking up $30,000 over a two-week run that fi lled the rotunda of Quincy Market. Now, 168 years later, Bunker Hill is in need of a monumental rehab.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To mix replacement mortar, construction will use: 8,000 lbs. hydrated lime, 14,000 lbs. sand, and 1,600 lbs. water. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Total weight of new mortar is 12 tons, a volume of 3,000 gallons.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Total linear footage of horizontal and vertical joints on monument is 11,500, or 2.3 miles, of which 1.2 miles will be replaced.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tradesmen and inspectors will climb up and down the 221-foot-tall monument twice per day for four months, totalling 120 miles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Energy required to lift mortar up monument stairs over project life could exceed a billion foot-pounds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">SOURCE: National Park Service </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-47574253960605682322006-06-03T19:22:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:48:16.646-08:00For Coaches, Real-Life Losses<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyJdEHS5DuCJkr3YVDY6cKZyfW3t2yn4TNyoJgWvsC72GaBX7KS6ZxFEg94oqxZABZJsx2oO6mCXSzTJNxJcwzwjYC9MDkiklGXFIMe3I0Kdc4lk7QmLwgb58f7y2djtANjZWfA/s400/PX00249_9.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | May 18, 2007</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Roosevelt Robinson and Dennis Wilson learned that Jerome Wells had been shot to death, they realized he was the third former quarterback they had lost to violence since they began coaching football at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One was found floating in the Charles River. Another was shot to death at a Dorchester party trying to help a girl who had a necklace stolen. And Wells, 20, was shot Tuesday night on a Roxbury street, standing next to his seven-months pregnant girl friend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I do more funerals than graduations or proms," Robinson said. "It's just very sad."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In their front-row seat to Boston's street violence, they have helped bury dozens of former players, athletes they tried to recruit, or other students they have known.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's very devastating, very dishearten ing, very depressing, and very scary," Wilson said. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"And it's getting worse, not getting better. It seems like every day another kid is dying. It's mind-boggling. How's it going to stop? When's it going to stop? When are they going to learn the value of a life? It's just really crazy."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the years, the duo -- Robinson, 42, has been the team's head coach since 1992 and Wilson, 56, the assistant coach since 1981 -- have struggled to keep their players from falling victim to the violence all around them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They said yesterday that they have taken their players for meals and to the movies and, when necessary, given them money and jobs. For some, they have stood in as surrogate fathers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They said they have tried to teach from their experience, that life presents trapdoors, and that a young man needs to know who he is and what he wants from life to avoid getting sucked in by the drugs, the thugs, the evils that have consumed too many of their peers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There have been successes, but the failures have been catastrophic. Some found the streets more alluring than their coaches' words.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We don't just teach kids football and basketball; we teach them how to be men, how to make good decisions that may not be fun but are the right decisions," said Wilson, who is also the school's basketball coach and teaches history. "But too often they get drawn into the bad things."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As of yesterday, 22 people have been homicide victims in the city this year, one more than at the same time last year. All but one victim was younger than 30, and all but two were men. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last year the city had 74 homicides, one less than the total in 2005, which hit a 10-year high.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robinson and Wilson remember Simba Sharif , a foster-care child who played quarterback for Madison Park in the 1980s and turned up dead in the Charles River several years later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Errol Morrison , another quarterback, was shot in the back of the head on Norwell Street in Dorchester in 1995 after trying to protect a woman, they said.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Other former Madison Park students they have mourned include Lloyd Industrious , a basketball player killed in 1994; Earl Pate , a basketball player stabbed to death in the early 1990s; and Cedrick Steele , 18, who was struck and killed by six bullets in March after walking into his uncle's barbershop on Dudley Street.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The problem, they say, is a lack of respect for others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Robinson played football for Dorchester High School in the late 1970s, he said, there were drugs and violence, but the culture was different. "Today, there's no respect at all for parents, teachers, coaches. Too many of these kids cuss and swear at you, and they don't think anything about it," said Robinson, who is also a firefighter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So Robinson and Wilson said they try to make their players see the value of life, the opportunity to make something of themselves. "I ask them: Why would you kill someone for $50? I tell them, 'You can't replace a life.' "</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One student who appreciated their influence is Miguel Lacourt , now 22, a linebacker who graduated in 2003 after helping lead Madison Park to a state championship. He saw fellow students die.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Some people just can't think that will happen to them," he said in a telephone interview. "I thought, 'Wow, that could have been me.' "</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Chuck McAfee , the headmaster of Madison Park, called Robinson and Wilson "true role models who are in a constant battle to keep their players on the straight and narrow."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"They're always trying to steer them from that negative element, trying to pull them in a different direction," he said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That lure apparently caught Wells, a former all-city quarterback at Madison Park who had run-ins with the law and had been shot once before. Two young men were arrested within hours of his slaying; the motive remains unclear.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Robinson and Wilson first met Wells years ago, when they coached him on the Pop Warner Roxbury Raiders and the Mighty Mights .</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Arlisa Bennett , Wells's mother, said the coaches did their best to look out for her son, who she said was studying to be an electrician.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"If Jerome got into anything, Coach Robinson was right there," she said in an interview at her home in Roxbury. "Coach Robinson would come to my house and really let Jerome have it. And I mean he would make Jerome get out there and do extra runs."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She said she didn't have to call Robinson to ask for help -- he usually called her. But when she did reach out, Robinson was there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I had his number on speed dial," she said. "I would call up Coach Robinson and say, 'You know what? This boy is over here hanging out,' or something, and he'd be right over."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Rev. Miniard Culpepper , who ministered to Wells at his Dorchester church, said he, Robinson, and Wilson tried to persuade Wells to use his football talent to get into college.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We wanted to compare notes on Jerome," he said. "Everything was about Jerome going. . . . It was a way out. It would have been a way out."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1155088288636653782006-06-03T17:50:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:50:49.635-08:00Trials of Tourism<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/letsgo.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/letsgo.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="221" /></a>By David Abel | Globe Staff | 6/18/2006 </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The job requires a willingness to brave freak acts of nature like monsoons, fend off pickpockets and other potential miscreants, and stomach the solitude of traveling alone for two months, often in a foreign country, with no more than a dim grasp of the language.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Candidates should expect to bunk in dingy hostels, sample the local cuisine, whether it be cow hearts sprinkled with salt or stir-fried dog, and pay the digestive consequences – all while taking copious notes at countless guesthouses, restaurants, museums, and nightspots.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh, and depending on the country, hires must survive on roughly $50 a day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sound like torture?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To Ross Arbes(cq) and generations of Harvard students, the highly competitive positions are about as close to Shangri-la as a summer job can get. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It’s definitely in the awesome category,’’ says Arbes, 20, a soon-to-be junior now exploring Vietnam. ‘‘Last summer, I was an intern sitting in a cubicle. Now I’m going to be near tropical beaches and shopping in foreign markets.’’</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last week, the English major began a unique opportunity offered to a select, hopefully hardy crew of Harvard students – that is, a job that pays them to travel and publish their journal musings. As part of an annual summer tradition, about 80 newly trained field researchers shipped off this month to five continents to update 15 of the popular Let’s Go Inc. budget travel guides, which Harvard students have produced since 1960.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To qualify, Arbes had to distinguish himself during a battery of interviews from hundreds of similarly bright students who filed into their grungy offices just across from The Harvard Lampoon on Mount Auburn Street. The 14 editors at Let’s Go – which only employs Harvard students – sought out those who wouldn’t go wobbly in less than five-star conditions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To land a spot as one of five researchers for the 2007 edition of “Let’s Go: Vietnam,’’ Arbes had to impress Julie Vodhanel(cq), 19, who just finished her freshman year and serves as editor of the book’s second edition. He had to prove that not only could he manage to live on just $49 a day, which she insists is a relatively generous stipend for Vietnam, but that he would be ‘‘gung-ho’’ to do the work. Meaning he wouldn’t fail to file the weekly dispatches to Vodhanel, who like Arbes had never been to Vietnam.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘We didn’t hire people who thought they were getting a free vacation,’’ says Vodhanel, who alone interviewed about 80 students interested in researching Vietnam. ‘‘We expect he’ll work as hard as we need him to, and probably harder.’’ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Arbes joined Let's Go at a time when the top brass has decided the travel guides – which face increasingly stiff competition – should return to their roots, a core audience which they describe as "the young and the young-at-heart" who want to explore the world with an irreverent companion that won't burst their budgets.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before 9/11, Let’s Go, a for-profit company owned by the nonprofit Harvard Student Agencies, was sending some 200 researcher-writers every summer to update more than 60 titles that covered 70 countries and 18 major cities around the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But as the attacks triggered a slump in the travel industry, and with the rise of competition – ‘‘Rough Guides’’ now publishes some 200 titles covering similar territory and ‘‘Lonely Planet’’ prints about 600 titles that offer budget travel tips – Let’s Go felt pressure to try to broaden its audience. Their publisher, St. Martin’s Press in New York City, urged more safety advisories and higher-priced listings, which translated into new items such as ‘‘The Big Splurge’’ and hotel recommendations that sought to appeal to young professionals. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The strategy hasn’t necessarily paid off; the general manager of Harvard Student Agencies says Let’s Go now sells some 500,000 books a year, down from about a million books a year in the late 1990s. Overall, in royalties and advertising, he says the books generate about $2 million in revenue for Harvard. Let’s Go’s website, which now gets about 5 million hits a month, still takes in less than $20,000 a year. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One sign of the guides’ hard times, editors and managers noted, was the publisher’s decision this year to try to boost sales by dropping the price of “Let’s Go: Europe,” the company’s best-selling book, from $24.99 to $14.99. (More than 130,000 copies of the 2006 edition have already sold this year, double the number from last year, according to St. Martin’s Press.) Also, with about half the field researchers on staff than as recently as five years ago, Let’s Go now updates fewer books.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“We’re a student-run operation – we can’t compete with ‘Lonely Planet,’” says Bob Rombauer(cq), the general manager of Harvard Student Agencies. “So we’ve tried to narrow our focus in recent years.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To do that, Let’s Go decided to junk its “sophisticated” covers for more “colorful” covers. This year’s “Let’s Go: Europe,” for example, scrapped the striking yet obscure image on last year’s cover. Instead of a sculpted face peering out of a field of sunflowers, the 2006 edition features a collage of easily identifiable icons, such as the Eiffel Tower and Dutch clogs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“We saw the 2005 cover as a pretty picture that wasn’t appealing to those in our age group,” says Laura Martin(cq), 23, a recently graduated senior who’s now Let’s Go’s editor in chief. “We wanted our audience to easily identify us.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The more substantive changes involve reasserting Let’s Go’s cheeky tone, which she says editors muffled to some extent in recent years to cater to the broader audience. The difference, she says, is they’re encouraging writers to forgo neutral descriptions for more saucy or “honest” language, the kind they say college students value.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So Arbes and the rest of this year’s crew will reassert Let’s Go’s cheeky tone, which she says editors muffled to some extent in recent years to cater to the broader audience.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In previous editions of “Let’s Go: New Zealand,” for example, she says a writer described a “quaint” town and objectively listed its various sights. In the latest edition, Martin says the writer describes the town as more of a place for “grandmothers,” somewhere not worth visiting to really experience New Zealand. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘We were being too cautious,’’ she says. ‘‘We want to bring the vigor back to the books.’’ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For Arbes and the other researchers recently hired, one of the first tasks is learning about libel law. Let’s Go has been sued by businesses miffed about the way writers described them. In one case settled in 1998, it took eight years and a Supreme Judicial Court ruling to throw out a lawsuit by an Israeli who claimed Let’s Go unfairly besmirched his youth hostel by telling travelers he had been sued for sexual harassment. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Writers are taught to document their opinions. If they find a place dirty, they must provide details. If they come across a cockroach, they should note the time and place. ‘‘Telling the truth is very important,’’ Martin says. ‘‘But we have to back it up.’’</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They also go through "model mugging'' classes, and women, who have long made up about half of Let’s Go researchers, learn ways to avoid leering men. Among the tips passed along, women are told to wear fake wedding rings, and if necessary, lie about meeting a husband or boyfriend to men whose attention they don’t want.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last summer, while traveling as a researcher in Poland, Stephanie O’Rourke(cq) was walking near the Warsaw Ghetto around noon when she says two men cornered her and grabbed her bag. At 18 and just finished with her freshman year, she used what she learned in the mugging seminars before leaving: She elbowed one of the men in the groin and screamed ‘‘help’’ and ‘‘getaway’’ in Polish. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘I’m not very athletic, but it worked,’’ says O’Rourke, who’s now the editor of ‘‘Let’s Go: Germany’’ and oversees six researchers and an associate editor. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The harrowing experience wasn’t the hardest part of her trip; more challenging was just being alone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘I went days without talking to people in English,’’ she said. ‘‘I spent bus rides just formulating phrases.’’ </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The sometimes cruel serendipity of living on the road taught her coping mechanisms, such as diligently washing her tired feet every night, splurging on decadent desserts as often as possible, and always getting at least eight hours of sleep. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Amber Johnson had similar experiences while working as a researcher last summer in London. By the end of her route, the 26-year-old graduate student also felt the pangs of loneliness. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘You kind of stand out having dinner by yourself in a romantic place,’’ she says. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So she learned to befriend strangers, and she discovered the joy of finding free stuff -- like museums -- and nearly free stuff, like cheap opera seats. She also found that as much fun as she had researching, it was real work. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘It can be really exhausting being a fulltime tourist,’’ says Johnson, whose assignment this summer – about 15 percent of researchers do the job more than once – is to figure out how to survive in New York City on just $93 a day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The fatigue comes from the requirement to move around a lot, but Let’s Go advises their researchers to avoid night transportation, especially night buses. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The warning has been a priority since 2001, when Haley Surti(cq) became Let’s Go’s first researcher who didn’t return from an assignment. The 21-year-old biochemistry major died when a night bus she took in Peru plunged off a mountain road.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No. 1 on a list of safety tips that Let’s Go gives researchers reads: ‘‘Never, ever take night transportation. Ever.’’</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/letsgo2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/letsgo2.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="266" /></a>But for researchers like Arbes, whose itinerary has him taking a 24-hour bus ride the day after landing in Ho Chi Minh City, there’s often no other choice. ‘‘It’s the only way to go,’’ he says. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the skinny student from Atlanta loaded his sturdy green backpack last week, he carefully follows Let’s Go’s packing instructions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He wraps duct tape around a Nalgene bottle, in which he stuffed socks, waterproofs his backpack by lining it with a garbage bag, and packs, among other things, a pillowcase to cover potentially dirty hostel pillows, a loud alarm clock, and a deck of cards to play solitaire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to a laptop, an iPod, and a medical kit filled with malaria pills a pack of Starbursts, he sets out five boxer shorts, two pairs of khaki pants, a thin fleece, and one button-down shirt. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then he organizes the seven folders that contain all the maps and CDs he has to update and mail to Cambridge throughout the summer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Researchers have regular weekly call-in times with their editors and must send ‘‘copy </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">batches’’ just about every week. (Those who don’t risk having their stipends cut off.) The editors spend the summer massaging the text, and in the early fall, they send the manuscripts to St. Martin’s Press, which around Thanksgiving will print 15 of Let’s Go’s current 48 titles. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The day before leaving, and still unsure how to say ‘‘thank you’’ in Vietnamese, Arbes says he has no illusions about the hard work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘It’s easy to romanticize this, but it’s an intense job,’’ he says.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">His only real concern, he says, is getting sick and being far from a hospital. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘‘But to be honest,’’ he says, ‘‘I’m not too worried.’’</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149360044678273102006-06-03T11:35:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:52:20.188-08:00Vignettes<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/1600/IMAGE_00024.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/200/IMAGE_00024.jpg" height="256" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="320" /></a> By David Abel | Globe Staff | 4/23/2006<br /><br />Wizened men stroked their long beards. Gray-haired women in berets nodded along to the beat of his reedy voice. Bright-eyed students hung on his every word.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With more than a few turtlenecks and shaggy sweaters in the crowd, it was a quintessentially Cambridge moment, a kind of Memorial Drive of the mind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the last legends of the Beat Generation, Lawrence Ferlinghetti left his enclave in North Beach, San Francisco, last week to accept the New England Poetry Club's Golden Rose, which club officials say is the nation's oldest literary prize. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the balding, 87-year-old New York native gingerly made his way to a podium at Harvard's Yenching Library to receive the honor previously awarded to masters such as Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, and Czeslaw Milosz, he received a standing ovation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He put on thick, red glasses and began reading from his oeuvre, decades-old poems from books such as "A Coney Island of the Mind" and "A Far Rockaway of the Heart."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lines such as, "I feel there's an angel in me . . . whom I'm constantly shocking," got as many laughs and nods as his quips about the "monster corporate monoculture."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In an interview, Ferlinghetti spoke about the difference between San Francisco and Boston, similarly sized cities with liberal politics, distinct neighborhoods, and a history shaped by oceans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"People here are more courteous and crotchety," he said. "It may be a liberal city, but it's much more traditional than San Francisco. Old forms, mannerisms, and conventions persist here in a way they don't on the West Coast."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But Boston has changed, to his chagrin. The buildings have grown. The accent is no longer uniformly "R"-challenged. And the Harvard Square Bickford's, where he wrote one of his poems long ago, is gone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Boston has grown so enormously," he said, "I hardly recognize it anymore."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1149308157331311822006-06-02T21:14:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:53:29.498-08:00Axing Escort Ads<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>It's no morals case</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/dig.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/dig.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>By David Abel | Globe Staff | 5/21/2006 <br /><br />Why would a young and puckish alternative weekly, which has yet to show a profit and until recently paid some of its writers in beer and gift certificates to burrito joints, cut some $200,000 in annual revenue -- a sum that rivals the pay of its entire editorial staff? <br /><br />It's not for moral reasons -- that is, any concern they might be profiting off prostitution, its president and publisher say.<br /><br />Nor, they say, is it the result of an FBI investigation last month into child pornography, or pressure from its parent company, which unsuccessfully sought to move the staff from the cramped space it now occupies in an old South End warehouse near the Pine Street Inn into more plush offices. (The paper's content, management was told, didn't fit the landlord's mold.)<br /><br />And they insist it has nothing to do with avoiding potential sexual harassment complaints by allowing the likes of "Miami's Best Booty," "Asian Pearl," or "Chocolate Bunny" to flaunt their fleshy wares during photo shoots at their office, notable for its smattering of scuffed desks, half-empty bottles of Jack Daniel's, and pictures of David Hasselhoff overlooking the Southeast Expressway.<br /><br />This month, the top brass of Boston's Weekly Dig, which over the past seven years has carved a niche in the local media scene and provided increasing competition to the Phoenix, decided to stop advertising escort services. The ads, most of them featuring nearly naked women, are a staple of alternative weeklies around the country -- the Phoenix publishes a separate section filled with them -- and they have long rankled local police, who say they serve as fronts for prostitution.<br /><br />The salacious ads once accounted for 40 percent of the Dig's revenue, the paper's directors say, but this year dropped to about 5 percent, reflecting the paper's success in landing new advertising accounts.<br /><br />"I'm not in the business of providing my readers with a moral compass . . . and there are no issues of legality," said Jeff Lawrence, the Dig's president and founder. "I'm just honored to be in the position we're in now. We've reached a position that we had an opportunity to change."<br /><br />Two years ago, Boston Magazine publisher Metrocorp bought a majority stake in the Dig, leading to the freebie's redesign and a doubling of circulation, to nearly 60,000 copies a week, according to an independent audit.<br /><br />The investment, Lawrence said, has helped the paper boost salaries and buy new equipment, nearly double the size of the staff to 28, and move into larger offices this summer.<br /><br />It also gave the paper the ability to eliminate ads that Lawrence and ther staffers say don't cater to their target audience, those between 18 and 34 years old.<br />They haven't polled readers or assembled focus groups, Lawrence said, but he insists Dig readers don't use ads for escorts because "they're skewed to an older audience," an apparent dig at the Phoenix, which he said targets "50-year-olds in Lexington."<br /><br />The Dig audience, however, does like porn, he said, and the Dig has continued to publish racy ads for exotic dancers, massage parlors, and everything from adult chat lines to services that get as explicit as offering "Free Sex." Also, the paper's website still offers escort ads, though they are free. (In the current newsstand edition, Lawrence said a "system glitch" mistakenly put one massage parlor ad under an "escort" heading.)<br /><br />"Escort ads helped keep the lights on here for a long time," said Chris Rohland, the Dig's publisher, adding the paper has already replaced the revenue from the escort ads and expects to be profitable by the end of 2007. "We're growing at a pace now where we felt we could get off the adult IV. We felt we should focus on attracting useful ads."<br /><br />Stephen M. Mindich, the Phoenix's publisher, declined to comment on the Dig or his paper's decision to continue publishing escort ads.<br /><br />"I really have no need or interest to talk," he said at his paper's office in the Fenway.<br /><br />In 1991, after police launched a sting and charged one of the Phoenix's advertisers with running a $3 million prostitution ring that had more than 4,000 clients, Mindich told the Globe he had no problem continuing to publish escort ads. "I have no idea, literally, whether 80 percent are fronts or 80 percent are legitimate," he said, noting it wasn't the first time controversy arose over the ads. "We have not changed anything as a result . . . and have no intention of changing it."<br /><br />The Phoenix's editor, Peter Kadzis, said the Dig has "cleverly discontinued a category that they're not strong in. They're making a PR play."<br /><br />When asked in a phone interview about the Dig's rise as a competitor, he would only say: "I don't make judgments based on what they do. Period."<br /><br />Neither The Boston Globe nor the Boston Herald publish escort ads. "Our standards reflect what our readers expect," said Tim Murphy, the Globe's vice president of advertising, marketing, and sales.<br /><br />The Dig isn't the first alternative weekly to give up escort ads, which are increasingly published for free on websites such as craigs list.com, said Richard Karpel, executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, a Washington-based advocacy group representing more than a hundred papers, including the Dig and the Phoenix. Other weeklies have debated giving up adult ads in an effort to attract more traditional advertisers, such as banks and department stores, Karpel said. But he hasn't seen any ideological groundswell against publishing such ads.<br /><br />To police in Boston, where 2,200 people have been arrested on prostitution-related charges in the past five years, there's no question that escort ads are legal. There's also no question that what they're advertising often isn't.<br /><br />Over the past year, Sergeant Detective James Fong said he has arrested some 80 local prostitutes who advertised as escorts in the Dig, Phoenix, or online. Fong, one of the force's few detectives who polices the city's sex industry (the department disbanded its vice squad in the 1980s), said the only difference between prostitutes and those who advertise as escorts is that escorts don't have to walk the streets.<br /><br />"Without a doubt, the escort ads are advertising prostitution," Fong said, adding that proving as much can be difficult. He said the escort service women he's arrested on prostitution charges have ranged in age from 18 to 56; even when convicted, few serve time in jail.<br /><br />Because of that low risk, he said, those who place escort ads have become increasingly explicit, effectively erasing the pretense that they are services to accompany the lonely, he said.<br /><br />Over the last few years, the Dig has received multiple inquiries for information from Boston Police and the FBI about its advertisers, Lawrence and his advertising director say.<br /><br />They've routinely refused to provide information, they say, though they recently complied with FBI demands about an advertiser allegedly linked to child pornography, and another linked to a group calling for "all types & sizes" to "work in adult films."<br /><br />But there was little secret about the Dig's escort ad business, visible to anyone on the fifth floor of the warehouse the paper occupies in the city's old garment district.<br /><br />A parade of scantily clad women -- some pregnant, and some toting children -- ambled in regularly to have their pictures taken for a fee ranging from $75 to $150, depending on the size of the ad.<br /><br />"Due to the nature of the business, we didn't take credit cards," said Nick Bolitho, the Dig's classified ad director.<br /><br />Some brought in their own pictures and advertising copy, which the staff sometimes edited for being too explicit or too raunchy, Bolitho said.<br /><br />They had other standards, too: They say they refused to sell ads to women who had clients -- or "hobbyists" -- call the paper and complain about their escorts robbing them.<br /><br />"As far as we were concerned, we said the ads were for someone who wanted company," he said. "Whatever they wanted to do with their clients was up to them."<br /><br />Since the Dig stopped publishing escort ads, Bolitho said, he has received a dozen or so calls from escorts asking why they stopped running their ads.<br /><br />"They seemed confused, and they just keep asking, `Why?' " he said. "We've told them to post their ads on our website."<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span><br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1155090669138755392006-06-02T19:26:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:54:32.718-08:00Battle Stations<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/aris.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/aris.jpg" height="400" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="222" /></a>By David Abel | Globe Staff | 9/04/2005<br /><br />It now causes untold pain, that little yellow light, the one on her dashboard, registering that her Dodge is really thirsty.<br /><br />She can't afford the high-priced fuel, she said, and so she now often begs friends for rides, or walks. <br /><br />But when Vivian Campbell has no choice and must fill up her Caravan's tank rather, add enough gas to get by for some time the 52-year-old Cambridge resident drives through her own city, passing maybe a half-dozen other stations, until she reaches a grimy stretch of Somerville, where four lines of cars idle until reaching a guy holding a wad of cash in one hand and a pungent nozzle in the other. <br /><br />"This is the only place I'll come for gas," Campbell said. <br /><br />Aris Auto and other independently owned stations are struggling to offer the best deals in Greater Boston. With prices for gas in the metro area surging this Labor Day weekend well beyond $3 a gallon -- in some cases rising by the hour -- they are fighting for every drop of business, tracking one another's prices and lining up customers who drive in from miles away. <br /><br />Aris's eight pumps on Somerville Avenue, which at the end of August sold regular gas at $2.47 a gallon, offered the cheapest gas in the area, according to gasbuddy.com, and only 2 cents more than the best retail price for regular unleaded in the nation, according to the latest Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations. <br /><br /><strong>Line 'em up</strong><br />At Aris, where on the same day last month its regular unleaded sold for 40 cents below a Shell station less than 3 miles away, a constant stream of rusted jalopies and shiny new sedans lined up. <br /><br />They came from around the corner or miles away, with drivers from suburbs such as Lexington, Salem, and Waltham saying it was worth passing other stations, fighting traffic, and driving the distance to gas up at the inconveniently located station. <br /><br />Twice a week, Bob Davis drives the roughly 10 miles from his home in Lexington to fill up at Aris, he said. An antiques dealer who drives around a lot, the 70-year-old has discovered a downside to his powerful new Ford pickup -- it gets about 11 miles a gallon and now costs more than $80 to top off, he said. <br /><br />"I look around at gas prices all the time, but this is the cheapest I can find," Davis said. "It's worth my time coming here." <br /><br /><strong>Cheap, of course, is relative. </strong><br />A local cabdriver for the past decade, Paul Griffin often visits Aris twice a day. But with the cost of fuel increasingly cutting his profits -- an average day now nets him only about $75 -- the 50-year-old from Chelmsford has trouble looking at the old pump's gauges. <br /><br />Like many others, he resists filling up. It's easier to pay $25 for gas twice in a day than it is to fork over $50 at once. "You get by how you can," Griffin said. <br /><br />A week before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and sent gas prices soaring further, Longin Holejko's eyes bulged as he watched the pump reach $35 to fill his new Buick LaCrosse. The 70-year-old retired chemist, who drove to Aris from Arlington, couldn't believe he's getting only about 13 miles a gallon. The dealership, he said, told him the car would be more fuel efficient. <br /><br />Then he handed over the cash. <br /><br />"I'm not happy," he griped. "It may be cheaper here, but the cost is still outrageous." <br /><br /><strong>`He's just crazy' </strong><br />How does Aris do it, particularly when other stations in the area charge significantly more -- some on the same day last month by as much as 40 cents? <br /><br />"He's out of his mind -- he's just crazy," said Jack Orchanian, 52, who for the past 30 years has owned the small station less than a mile and half north of Aris on Massachusetts Avenue. On a recent day at Jack's, also known for low prices, a sign advertising its regular unleaded read 8 cents more than at Aris. <br /><br />"He's not even covering his overhead," Orchanian said of Aris's owner. "Well, if he wants to give his gas away, that's up to him." <br /><br />To cover costs and make it worth his time to sell gas, Orchanian tries to keep his margin at 10 cents above what he pays his suppliers. Which means if he sells 2,000 gallons a day, average for his station now, he takes in about $200. Money from a repair business and sales of other merchandise must carry the rest of his payroll, insurance, utilities, and other expenses.<br /><br />On the same day Aris was selling gas for $2.47, Orchanian said he paid his suppliers $2.47 a gallon to fill his station, just 2 cents more than Aris had paid its distributor. "I just don't understand how he's doing it," he said. <br /><br />A few blocks away, another independently owned competitor called Gas with a Smile was selling self-serve regular for 11 cents a gallon more than Aris. <br /><br />The station manager, Chris Poutakidis, scratched his head when asked why there was such a difference in price, particularly after noting how his station had already cut its usual margin from an average of 25 cents a gallon to 18 cents. "It doesn't make sense," he said. "How does he stay in business?" <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00205_9.0.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00205_9.0.jpg" height="267" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="400" /></a>Reached on a cellphone while steering a boat in the waters off his native Greece, George Varelis, who bought Aris from a fellow Greek in 1981, explained how he undercuts the competition and still pays attendants to pump petrol for all his customers: He has already paid off the station's mortgage, so his overhead isn't too much of a burden. He also charges 5 cents a gallon extra for purchases with credit cards, which means most sales are in cash and he doesn't lose as much to Visa or American Express. Another reason is that he works in volume, hoping that low prices attract more customers, many of whom may also bring in their cars for repairs. <br /><br />Despite the station's constant traffic, receipts have shrunk in recent months, Varelis and his managers say. There are plenty of drivers at the pumps, but more have either cut back on how much they'll spend on each visit or found alternatives to using their cars, they say. Still, Aris now has on average 600 customers buy about 10,000 gallons a day, about five times more customers than Jack's Gas. <br /><br />"It's not by accident that we have the lowest prices around," Varelis said. "We drive around every day and look at all the prices. We always try to be the cheapest." <br /><br />On the day last month when Aris hawked its full-serve regular at $2.47 a gallon --like stations throughout the region, the price has since soared much further -- a receipt from the station's distributor showed Varelis paid only 2 cents less to have his tanks filled. <br /><br />"This is not the time to make money," he said. <br /><br />"It's hard enough for a lot of people, and more than anything, I want to keep my customers. So I feel obligated, and sometimes I lose a little." <br /><br />Selling below the price paid for gas is illegal in Massachusetts and about a dozen other states. Varelis's losses come from having too small a margin to cover all costs, he said, let alone make a profit. <br /><br />Over the last week, Aris saw its prices rise from $2.47 to $2.69 to $2.89 to $3.09 to $3.25, as of Thursday. <br /><br />"The prices are going up so quickly, we have to raise them every day now," said Herbie Burnett, one of the managers at Aris. "Some stations I've seen haven't changed their price on their signs, but they've gone up at the pumps, which is illegal. We're just trying to survive right now."<br />The corporate difference <br /><br />Though some nearby stations have competed with Aris by keeping their price within a few cents, others seem to have opted out of the price wars, particularly those run by the corporate behemoths that occupy such prime real estate that they don't fret about being low-balled.<br /><br />Less than 3 miles away from Aris, along Magazine Beach on Memorial Drive, the Shell station there advertised its full-serve regular for $2.87 a gallon and its top grade "V-Power" for $3.02.<br />On the same day late last month, when these were relatively expensive prices, another Shell station, just off Interstate 93 in South Bay, was selling self-serve regular for $2.81 a gallon, $3.05 for V-Power. <br /><br />"All I can say about our prices is that they're set by the corporate office," said Philip Kwan, a mechanic running the Magazine Beach Shell. <br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><br />SIDEBAR <br />1:HOW TO FIND THE CHEAPEST GASThere are several sources for checking out the best gas prices in your neighborhood. Here are three popular online sites:<br />AAA.com: Click on the "Fuel Price Finder" line. Choose stations within 3-, 5-, or 10-mile distances. <br /><br />fuelmeup.com: Breakdowns by brand and grade; encourages drivers to post information on where to find cheap gas. <br /><br />gasbuddy.com: Includes stations throughout the US, as well as Canada. Also asks for driver input. <br /><br /><strong>PUTTING THE BRAKES ON GAS CONSUMPTION</strong><br />1. Slow down. Dropping speed decreases the aerodynamic drag. Cutting down to 62 miles per hour from 75, for example, can reduce gas use by about 15 percent. <br /><br />2. Don't be abrupt with the accelerator or the brakes . Using slow, steady acceleration and braking can increase fuel economy by as much as 20%. <br /><br />3. Keep tires pumped. Maintain the tire air pressure recommended by the vehicle manufacturer. A single tire under inflated by two pounds per square inch can increase fuel consumption by 1 percent. <br /><br />4. Lose the cool. The air conditioner puts an extra load on the engine, burning 20 percent more gas. The defrost on most vehicles does the same. <br /><br />5. Close the windows. Especially at highway speeds, open windows increase drag and decrease fuel economy by as much as 10 percent. <br /><br />6. Car care. Proper service and maintenance avoids poor fuel economy related to dirty air filters, old spark plugs, or low fluid levels. <br /><br />7. Cruise. Use of cruise control, keeping speed steady over long distances, saves gas. <br /><br />8. Travel light. Heavy loads hog gas. Pack lightly for long trips. <br /><br />9. Idle losers. Shut off the car when you know you'll be stopped for more than a minute. Restarting the car uses less fuel than letting it idle for that amount of time. <br /><br />10. Buy a fuel-efficient vehicle. Think small, and shift for yourself. Manual transmission usually offers better fuel economy.<br />Source: Gasbuddy.com</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />IS EXPENSIVE GAS BETTER GAS?<br />Asked whether some stations charge more for gas because they sell better petrol, John Paul, a spokesman for AAA Southern New England, said much of the gas in the area comes off the same tankers that dock in East Boston. The only significant difference is that some companies have trucks with special tanks, which mix the gas with additives that may reduce engine knock. <br /><br />"Essentially, gasoline is gasoline, and it will perform similarly in the same cars," Paul said. "So, for most people, I recommend they try to buy the cheapest gas they can find."</span><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1155089757165783322006-06-02T18:02:00.000-07:002014-01-28T18:08:20.918-08:00On Death's Doorstep<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Crime scenes find new life as someone's home sweet home</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 10/27/2005</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />If Jeremy Parker once had a feeling that ghosts exist, that feeling hardened into a belief after living in a house where a former medical student murdered a man and his dog and then allegedly carved the words ''THIS PLACE IS CURSED" into the wood porch.<br /><br />Over the three months he rented an apartment in the sallow triple-decker in Jamaica Plain, Parker hated to be home alone.<br /><br />The wind sometimes blew the door shut, and he would shudder. He would hear a creaking sound, and the hair on his skin would rise.<br /><br />''A lot of it was just a gut feeling, like when you feel someone's watching you, that there's a presence, that you're not alone," said Parker, a mechanical engineering major at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where the murder victim also attended. ''It was really creepy."<br /><br />After a grisly tragedy strikes inside a home, when the yellow tape from the crime scene has been removed, the blood mopped up, and the original owners or tenants are gone, the property is often sold, rechristened, and reoccupied. Families eventually replace murdered families, students take over the rooms where students had been killed. Life goes on, like grass growing over a grave.<br /><br />But the stain of what happened rarely disappears, even if the horror remains solely in the minds of those who have taken over the lease or mortgage -- the grim memory transmitted by word of mouth from neighbors or previous tenants.<br /><br />How can anyone live in a home where they know something horrific happened?<br /><br />Consider the Berggrens. Seven years ago, they moved into an old, brown house on Clayton Street in Dorchester. The paint was peeling and the front steps looked rickety, but the family of six soon learned of something else that had made the two-story, three-bedroom home unappealing to other prospective buyers.<br /><br />On a hot night in the summer of 1973, in what became one of the city's most notorious crimes, George O'Leary, a Korean War veteran who had been awarded a Purple Heart, went from room to room firing his 38-caliber revolver into the heads of his wife and five young children. He killed them all, leaving pools of blood throughout the house, and police later found him slumped over a bureau next to his bed, dead from a cocktail of sleeping pills, rum, whiskey, and brandy. Pictures of the small brown house surrounded by police cruisers appeared in local newspapers and on TV.<br /><br />The house didn't sell for several years until eventually it found a buyer. Over time the house had several other owners, and 25 years later Michael and Alma Berggren moved in.<br /><br />The Berggrens, who now have four boys, didn't learn about the murders until well after paying $70,000 for the house. But Michael Berggren wasn't angry about the lack of full disclosure. It was so long ago, he says, it wasn't really relevant.<br /><br />''It was definitely a strange thing to find out -- we were all kind of freaked out at first," he said. ''But after a while, the memory fades. At this point, it's really forgotten."<br /><br />The Berggrens' oldest son, Chris, 20, doesn't dwell on it much now, but he says the home's past affected him. ''The more I learned about it, the more it seemed really weird," he said. ''It kind of freaks you out to think about what happened in the home where you've been living. There was so much sadness here."<br /><br />It isn't always difficult to sell a home struck by violence, particularly in a hot real estate market. In the spring, around the first anniversary of when 26-year-old Joshua Fine took out a 9mm handgun and shot his mother's boyfriend at their dinner table and then turned the gun on himself, James Fine, the killer's father, says the four-bedroom home on Woodledge Lane in North Easton sold quickly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />''It was no problem at all," he said. ''It didn't seem to matter to anyone that there had been a murder there."<br /><br />In Woburn, Singh Kaur and his wife, Sitvinder, weren't bothered by the stigma of moving into a home where there had been a double murder. They actually watched cleaning crews scrub blood from the floors of the three-bedroom home where Joanne Presti, 34, was raped and then she and her 12-year-old daughter, Alyssa, were stabbed to death in January 2004.<br /><br />''We did a prayer ceremony for their departed souls," said Singh Kaur, 39, a graduate student at Boston University, soon after he, his wife, and their 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter moved in to the attached clapboard home.<br /><br />In their case, they came to help the owners of the home, who rented to Presti. The owners are his friends, Kaur says, and they were in ''extreme shock" after Presti was killed; Michael Bizanowicz, a sex offender, is accused of the crimes. They had trouble renting after the slayings, and they began mulling putting the house up for sale.<br /><br />''We came here and stayed with them, to console them," Kaur said. ''It all started off with us trying to share their grief, and then one thing led to another."<br /><br />It occurred to Kaur that his family might benefit from a bigger place, and the backyard offered a nice perk for the kids. So after watching new wood floors be installed, windows replaced, walls repaired, and a coat of paint applied to cover the macabre stains left behind, they said prayers and began paying their friends rent.<br /><br />''All my other friends thought I was crazy," Kaur said. ''They couldn't believe their ears and eyes."<br /><br />Kaur and his wife began sleeping in the room where Presti was raped and killed. ''We don't have any problems with it," he said. ''We don't buy the whole notion of the place being spooky. We haven't had any ghost sightings yet," he said.<br /><br />Jeremy Parker, who learned about the 2001 murders in his Jamaica Plain triple-decker a month after moving in, wishes he could say the same. For Parker and other residents of the house on Hyde Park Avenue where Daniel Mason, a fourth-year medical student at Boston University, shot and critically wounded Gene Yazgur, 28, and murdered his roommate Michael Lenz, 25, and his dog Sampson, the creepiness lingers. Particularly up the creaky staircase, in the third-floor apartment, where Mason went on his rampage and now new students live, with a dog.<br /><br />When she moved into the apartment a few months ago and then learned about the murders, Laura Vineyard, 22, kept the windows shut, in fear the house's history meant the neighborhood might be dangerous. But the more she learned about the crime, and how it wasn't a case of random violence, the more another feeling came -- the creepiness, the sense she was living in a haunted place.<br /><br />Her roommate for the summer, Carlin Singer, 22, began wondering why her Shepherd mix, Teddy, seemed to suddenly ''freak out" for what seemed like no good reason. He seemed to be acting differently than normal, she said.<br /><br />And then there was the special greeting on the porch, the one about the house being cursed, It's hard to read now, but it still appears that it was carved with a knife.<br /><br />''All I can say is this has been an interesting experience living here," Singer said. ''It's too spooky if you think about it too much."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><strong>They don't have to tell you, unless you ask</strong> <br /><br />Title 15, Chapter 93, Section 114 of state law states that the circumstances of ''psychologically impacted" property needn't be disclosed to prospective buyers or tenants. It defines the phrases as ''an impact being the result of facts or suspicions including:"a) that an occupant was thought to have or have had AIDS or other diseases.b) that the property was the site of a felony, suicide, or homicide.c) that the property has been the site of an alleged parapsychological or supernatural phenomenon. <br /><br />The provisions do bar ''a seller, lessor or real estate broker, or salesman [from making] a misrepresentation of fact or false statement," which means that agents whose prospects specifically ask about potential stigmas must tell all they know.<br />DAVID ABEL<br /><br />Copyright, The Boston Globe</span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1155090967424781152006-05-27T19:34:00.000-07:002014-01-28T17:56:47.596-08:00Mutiny Ship<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/925/973/320/PX00155_9.1.jpg" height="584" width="640" /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | Globe Staff | 6/11/2006</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1925, when the 260-ton vessel from Essex joined a fleet of Grand Banks schooners, the Roseway sailed as a fishing yacht, designed to compete in races against similar tall ships from Nova Scotia. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A year later, it earned the moniker "mutiny ship" after a 15-day voyage from Georgetown, S.C., left the crew "suffering from want of food [and] terrific seas that nearly capsized the lumber-laden vessel," according to a Globe account. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1934, the Roseway set a record of 74 swordfish caught in one day, and during World War II, the Navy fitted the boat with a .50-caliber machine gun and assigned it to help guide ships through the minefields and antisubmarine netting protecting Boston Harbor, where it served until 1973 as the nation's last pilot schooner. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, after years of ferrying tourists along the Maine coast, serving as a prop in a television remake of Rudyard Kipling's "Captains Courageous," and a purgatory that at one point left it dismasted and slated for a scrapheap, the Roseway has returned to Boston, rebuilt and rechristened for a new mission. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With $1.3 million of new sails, booms, masts, and a host of other physical and technological improvements, the sleek, 137-foot ship will now offer two-hour sails around the harbor and charter cruises and serve as a classroom in Boston Harbor, according to its new owners, the World Ocean School, a nonprofit sailing school from Camden, Maine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"We felt she had an incredible history that we wanted to preserve," said Abby Kidder, executive director of the World Ocean School, adding that it was less expensive to rebuild the old schooner than build a new one. "We thought Boston was the most appropriate spot for her." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Earlier this month, the Roseway docked at a pier on Rowes Wharf, and Kidder invited some of the ship's former crew to take a look at the spruce masts, pine floors, and cedar walls, which for many of them was home for as much as six months a year. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Ron Emery climbed aboard, the 68-year-old retired pilot looked at the bow and saw it was no longer blunt. The two masts rose higher than they did years before. The cabins were larger, the store rooms no longer reeked of rotting fish, and the floors looked nicely finished.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He had a hard time believing it was the same battered ship he served on between 1958 and 1969. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I wouldn't recognize it," said Emery, who saw the ship several years ago, when it appeared close to being recycled for parts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I don't know how they kept her afloat," he said. "It looked like a lost cause. But it's a pleasure to have her back and for a long time." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Richard Cushman, 69, walked along the deck and admired the cleanliness of a ship on which he served between 1954 and 1963 as a pilot and a pilot's apprentice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Returning to the Roseway flooded the old sailor with nostalgia. He and others remember using a large mallet in the winter to beat the ice that built up on the sails. The boat had a large No. 2 written on the mainsail, distinguishing the Roseway from its sister ship, the Pilot, the No. 1 pilot boat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They remembered lugging coal on and off the ship. They remembered lowering the rowboats off the side of the vessel and having apprentices row them to the side of approaching ships, where nearly every day at sea the pilots climbed ladders and guided ships into or out of the harbor. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's definitely a trip back," Cushman said as he took stock of all the changes. "She's totally different down below, but you can't change the hull. We had good memories here." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Larry Cannon, 67, a former president of the Boston Harbor Pilots, remembered one cold night in 1955 when one of their rowboats capsized in heavy seas and the pilots lost three men. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It could be right miserable in the winter," said Cannon, who served on the Roseway for nearly four years. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He described how the schooner, which every other week stayed about 13 miles out to sea, worked as a pilot boat, under sail. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Roseway, which spent a week in port while The Pilot worked the seas, would approach the stern of an incoming or outgoing ship, and when it reached about 30 or 40 yards away, the apprentices dropped a 16-foot dinghy over the side. Then a pilot and two apprentices would row hard to the ship. The pilot would take great risks climbing up the ladder, and the two apprentices would row back to the schooner, after the pilot was safely aboard. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The advantages of working on a schooner were that you really got to learn the ins and outs of the harbor," Cannon said. "You really had to know how to maneuver, and with all the time out there, you got to understand things." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, with the Roseway back in form and back in town, he said it's like a family reunion for him and many of the other pilots. "It's like having one of your own away for a long time, and all of a sudden, they reappear," he said. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to offering charter cruises, the Roseway will serve as a classroom for students attending the Willauer School on Thompson Island. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For more information, see <a href="http://www.worldoceanschool.org/">www.worldoceanschool.org</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28804795.post-1148676340832530802006-05-26T13:38:00.000-07:002014-01-28T18:07:01.682-08:00Docking World's Biggest Ship<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/05/21/1148210324_1999.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/05/21/1148210324_1999.jpg" height="204" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" width="640" /></a></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By David Abel | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Globe Staff | </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">5/20/2006</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As he nudged the throttle, guiding the enormous ship through a final, potentially perilous turn, the captain heard a thundering sound that shuddered the bridge's flat-panel screens and other high-tech gauges.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He thought he made a bad mistake.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Just after dawn yesterday, through a thick fog over Boston's inner harbor, Bill Wright saw he hadn't hit one of the comparatively pint-size boats cruising nearby. The loud sound came from above, and he watched as a US Airways jet swooped just over the 208-foot-tall ship on its way to Logan International Airport.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was a startling welcome to Boston for the Freedom of the Seas, the world's largest passenger liner and one of the biggest boats ever to enter the harbor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It's unnerving to hear strange noises," said Wright, the Finnish-built ship's US captain. "I thought my hand hit something or that it was one of my thrusters."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For all its satellite-guided navigation gadgetry, the $800 million ship -- which is 300 feet longer than the John Hancock Tower -- is tall requires careful human oversight each time it comes to port, particularly in the tight spaces and high traffic of somewhere like Boston Harbor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The potential dangers and the trickiness of handling such massive ships -- the Freedom of the Seas weighs about 160,000 gross tons (nearly 10,000 more than the Queen Mary 2, previously the world's largest passenger ship) -- recently prompted Massachusetts lawmakers to propose legislation requiring docking masters, or specially trained tugboat captains, aboard all large ships entering the harbor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">State and federal laws already require Coast Guard-licensed harbor pilots to board at sea all ships weighing 350 gross tons or more and bring them to port.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which is why at 5 a.m. yesterday, Chris Hoyt sped some 6 miles out to sea on a 53-foot twin-diesel engine pilot boat. By luck of the draw, it was the veteran 48-year-old pilot's job to guide the mammoth cruise ship through the harbor's shoals and fast-moving currents.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"They bring me in for all the tough jobs," joked Hoyt, one of the harbor's 10 pilots, before his relatively tiny boat pulled alongside and he climbed a rope ladder onto the moving ship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It took a five-minute walk through the 1,111-foot-long ship and an elevator ride up its 15 stories before Hoyt and Scott MacNeil, an apprentice pilot, reached the sprawling, glass-covered bridge. There, they took over the ship from Wright and began issuing course headings and other commands to a Filipino quartermaster, a Finnish first mate, and others on the crew, which totals 1,400 people from more than 65 countries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Among the gleaming electronics on the bridge, a satellite image showed the ship moving at 6 knots through the harbor's buoys. With the captain gazing out over a wall of fog from a raised leather chair, Hoyt directed the quartermaster to head between Deer and Spectacle islands, where two small Coast Guard ships joined the Freedom of the Seas and began escorting it into the inner harbor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"New ships can be a headache, because you don't know how they'll react," said Hoyt, adding that the liner's huge surface area exposes the ship to strong winds. "And you have to take large ships in very slowly. The worst thing is going too fast, because they don't stop very quickly."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the Freedom passed an oil tanker and approached the inner harbor, MacNeil called the control tower at Logan to alert planes that the ship would soon be crossing through their landing path. When a ship taller than 175 feet is crossing through the inner harbor, Logan officials don't allow planes to land on Runway 4R using instruments alone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The stop in Boston, where several thousand people in the travel industry came to see the boat yesterday, is the latest leg of the Freedom's maiden journey, a publicity tour wending from its construction site in Finland last month through various European ports to New York. The lavishly appointed ship, which features a casino, discos, pools, restaurants, arcades, even an ice skating rink, leaves Boston Monday for Miami, where it will be based for cruises in the western Caribbean.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Seven-day voyages range in price from $1,900 for a couple in an interior room during low season to nearly $2,500 for a same-sized cabin with a balcony during high season, said Tracy Quan, a spokeswoman for Royal Caribbean International, which owns the ship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The presidential family suite, which sleeps 14, costs $22,000 during peak season, she said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Shortly before the jets started whooshing overhead, the captain took control of the ship’s main engines, which rotate 360 degrees and function as a rudder. He steered the ship past Castle Island, and as it approached Conley Terminal, he maneuvered the engines to make the equivalent of a sharp port turn. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At about 7 a.m., with a heavy rain falling, the 127-foot-wide Freedom turned into the 600-foot-wide channel of the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal. It took a tense hour for the ship to come to a complete stop and several vans to help winch its 12 mooring lines to the old pier.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a greeting, a fireboat pulled in front and shot its water cannons into the air.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the distance, all that could be seen was fog, smokestacks, and the old, dilapidated pier.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The Eagle has landed," Wright said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">David Abel can be reached at </span><a href="mailto:dabel@globe.com" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">dabel@globe.com</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-style: italic;">. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Copyright, The Boston Globe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com