Boston, MA
Lucas: Boston’s hellhole
Memo to Michelle: Cease whining.
Somebody ought to inform Boston Mayor Michelle Wu that she is going to get nowhere attacking Gov. Charlie Baker over the town’s drug-addicted homeless at Mass and Cass. It’s her drawback, not his.
Apart from, Baker has poured some $40 million into Boston to cope with the humanitarian disaster, and there’s one other $20 million within the wings. However apparently, it isn’t sufficient.
Baker ought to ask for an accounting earlier than doling out one other dime. The place did the $40 million go?
But what does Wu need? Extra. When does she need it? Now.
“We actually want the state to step up,” Wu instructed her woke supporters final month on radio.
Miffed that Wu would publicly whine about him not offering extra assist for “wraparound” housing for the drug-addicted homeless, Baker stated, “In some unspecified time in the future, the town has acquired to cope with these drug sellers that simply grasp round there and prey on individuals.”
He added, “I simply wished to set the file straight. As a result of I’ve a Legislature that gave me $40 million to spend on these items, and we did.”
Wu responded by saying “nobody is doing sufficient.” She instructed the Herald, “The town and state have each invested vital money and time, however the people on our waitlist (for housing) want us to take shared possession of the regional and statewide problem that exists right this moment.”
Translated that implies that Wu desires extra taxpayer cash to cope with a Boston drawback that has existed since 2014 when then-Mayor Marty Walsh shut down the Lengthy Island Bridge, resulting from security issues, which led to the island’s 440-drug habit restoration middle. Slightly than repairing or changing the bridge, it was demolished a yr later and drug addicts looking for restoration had been left to fend for themselves.
Therefore Mass and Cass. It’s the space on the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard the place some 200 homeless individuals congregate to purchase, promote and use medication.
It’s a hellhole and has been for years, a spot the place prison exercise — theft, prostitution and violence — are commonplace. Most of the drug addicts want houses and well being. These offering the medication additionally want housing, solely in jail.
Reconstruction of the bridge has been opposed by Quincy for years for the reason that site visitors to the island from Boston went by means of the Squantum neighborhood of the town over insufficient roads
This has led to a just lately launched investigation by U.S. Lawyer Rachael Rollins on the grounds that the civil rights of the drug-addicted homeless might have b been violated by denying them entry to the island and restoration.
The issue of getting assist and houses for drug addicts has plagued the Wu administration for the reason that mayor took workplace, simply because it did the Walsh administration.
It’s onerous to consider that this present day that Boston and the state might have let this drawback simmer and boil over in spite of everything these years whereas on the identical time bragging about all of the wonders which have been created by the rising Seaport District.
This brings us to the smoke and mirrors of the younger Wu administration that may brag about her plan to “Revive and Reimagine” downtown Boston to draw extra companies and residents, or promote her proposed transformation of Boston Frequent right into a farmer’s market, theme-park paradise, but fail to unravel the true drawback of Mass and Cass.
If that weren’t unhealthy sufficient, Wu acts as if it was Baker, a Republican, who demolished the Lengthy Island Bridge, and never her predecessor, a fellow Democrat.
Regardless of her whining, Wu is not going to get one other dime out of Baker, who might be leaving workplace in January anyway.
So, the cynical ploy is to arrange Maura Healey, a fellow woke progressive, who many consider would be the subsequent governor, to get hundreds of thousands extra in taxpayer cash to squander.
A mix of Wu, woke and whine will go a good distance with Healey.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
Boston, MA
Constantine Manos, photographer for landmark ‘Where’s Boston?’ exhibit, dies at 90 – The Boston Globe
Among Mr. Manos’s books were “A Greek Portfolio” (1972; updated 1999), “Bostonians” (1975), “American Color” 1995) and ”American Color 2″ (2010). Mr. Manos’s work with color was notably expressive and influential.
“Color was a four-letter word in art photography,” the photographer Lou Jones, who worked with Mr. Manos on “Where’s Boston?,” said in a telephone interview. “But he was making wonderful, complex photographs with color, and that meant so much.”
Yet for all his formal skill, Mr. Manos always emphasized the human element in his work. “I am a people photographer and have always been interested in people,” he once said.
That interest extended beyond the photographs he took. He was a celebrated teacher. Among the students he taught in his photo workshops was Stella Johnson.
“He’d go through a hundred of my photographs,” she said in a telephone interview, “and maybe he’d like two. ‘No, no, no, no, yes, no.’ Costa really taught me how to see. I remember him looking at one picture and saying, “You were standing in the wrong spot.’ Something like that was invaluable to me as a young photographer.
“He was a very, very kind man, very generous. But he was very strict. ‘How could you do that?’ He was adored by his students and by his friends, absolutely. We were all lucky to have been in his orbit.”
Mr. Manos, who moved to Provincetown in 2008, lived in the South End for four decades. The South Carolina native’s association with the Boston area began when the Boston Symphony Orchestra hired him as a photographer at Tanglewood. He was 19. This led to Mr. Manos’s first book, “Portrait of a Symphony” (1961; updated 2000).
Constantine Manos was born in Columbia, S.C., on Oct. 12, 1934. His parents, Dimitri and Aphrodite (Vaporiotou) Manos, were Greek immigrants. They ran a café in the city’s Black section. That experience gave Mr. Manos a sympathy for marginalized people that would stay with him throughout his life. As a student at the University of South Carolina, he wrote editorials in the school paper opposing segregation. Later, he would do extensive work chronicling the LGBTQ+ community with his camera.
Mr. Manos became interested in photography at 13, joining the school camera club and building a darkroom in his parents’ basement. After graduating from college, Mr. Manos did two years of Army service in Germany, working as a photographer for Stars and Stripes. He joined Magnum in 1963. This had special meaning for him. Mr. Manos’s chief inspiration as a young photographer had been Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of Magnum’s founders. He was such an admirer he made a point of using the same equipment that Cartier-Bresson did.
That same year, Mr. Manos entered a seafood restaurant in Rome that was around the corner from the Pantheon. Prodanou, his future husband, was dining with friends. Noticing Mr. Manos, he gestured to him. “Would you join us for coffee?” The couple spent the next 61 years together, marrying in 2011.
Mr. Manos lived in Greece for three years, which led to “A Greek Portfolio.” He undertook a very different project in the Athens of America. Part of the city’s Bicentennial tribute, “Where’s Boston?” was a slice-of-many-lives view of contemporary Boston.
Located in a red-white-and-blue striped pavilion at the Prudential Center, it became a local sensation. The installation involved 42 computerized projectors and 3,097 color slides (most of them taken by Mr. Manos), shown on eight 10 feet by 10 feet screens. Outside the pavilion was a set of murals, consisting of 152 black-and-white photographs of Boston scenes, all shot by Mr. Manos.
“The most important thing I had to do was to keep my picture ideas simple,” he said in a 1975 Globe interview. “Viewers are treated to a veritable avalanche of color slides in exactly one hour’s time.”
In that same interview, he made an observation about his work generally. “I prefer to stay in close to my subjects. I let them see me and my camera and when they become bored they forget about me and then I get my best pictures.”
Among institutions that own Mr. Manos’s photographs are the Museum of Fine Arts; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Library of Congress; and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
In addition to his husband, Mr. Manos leaves a sister, Irene Constantinides, of Atlanta, and a brother, Theofanis Manos, of Greenville, S.C.
A memorial service will be held later this year.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.
Boston, MA
Below freezing temperatures again today
The winds are still going Wednesday, but the air temperatures remain at respectable levels. Highs will manage to weasel up to 30 in most spots. It’s too bad we’re not going to feel them at face value. Instead, we’re dressing for temps in the teens all day today.
Thursday and Friday are the picks of the week.
There will be a lot less wind, reasonable winter temperatures in the 30s and a decent amount of sun. We’ll be quiet into the weekend, as our next weather system approaches.
With mild air expected to come north on southerly winds, highs will bounce back to the low and mid-40s both days of the weekend.
Showers will be delayed until late day/evening on Saturday and into the night. There may be a few early on Sunday too, but the focus on that day will be to bring in the cold.
Highs will briefly sneak into the 40s, then fall late day.
We’ll also watch a batch of snow late Sunday night as it moves up the Eastern Seaboard.
Right now, there is a potential for some accumulation as it moves overhead Sunday night and early Monday morning.
It appears to be a weak, speedy system, so we’re not expecting it to pull any punches.
Enjoy the quieter spell of weather!
Boston, MA
Boston City Councilor will introduce
BOSTON – It could cost you more to get a soda soon. The Boston City Council is proposing a tax on sugary drinks, saying the money on unhealthy beverages can be put to good use.
A benefit for public health?
“I’ve heard from a lot of residents in my district who are supportive of a tax on sugary beverages, but they want to make sure that these funds are used for public health,” said City Councilor Sharon Durkan, who is introducing the “Sugar Tax,” modeled on Philadelphia and Seattle. She said it’s a great way to introduce and fund health initiatives and slowly improve public health.
A study from Boston University found that cities that implemented a tax on sugary drinks saw a 33% decrease in sales.
“What it does is it creates an environment where we are discouraging the use of something that we know, over time, causes cancer, causes diet-related diseases, causes obesity and other diet-related illnesses,” she said.
Soda drinkers say no to “Sugar Tax”
Soda drinkers don’t see the benefit.
Delaney Doidge stopped by the store to get a mid-day pick-me-up on Tuesday.
“I wasn’t planning on getting anything, but we needed toilet paper, and I wanted a Diet Coke, so I got a Diet Coke,” she said, adding that a tax on sugary drinks is an overreach, forcing her to ask: What’s next?
“Then we’d have to tax everything else that brings people enjoyment,” Doidge said. “If somebody wants a sweet treat, they deserve it, no tax.”
Store owners said they’re worried about how an additional tax would impact their businesses.
Durkan plans to bring the tax idea before the City Council on Wednesday to start the conversation about what rates would look like.
Massachusetts considered a similar tax in 2017.
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