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From the place I now sit south of the Mason-Dixon line, I’ve breaking information for my fellow New Englanders: the vultures are coming.
I imply that actually. Precise vultures — turkey vultures — are flying north as rightful and imperfect harbingers of spring.
From my residence in Vermont, I launched into a street journey to the southeastern United States to satisfy the spring in all its manifestations: heat, wildflowers, songbirds, baseball.
By the point I reached Philadelphia, the purple maples had been blooming alongside I-95. At a roadside relaxation space in North Carolina, the season’s first butterflies had been on the wing. And all through my route, it has been turkey vultures all the best way down. They drift at low altitude, holding their wings in a slight dihedral and teetering gently backward and forward, their bare, ruddy heads searching for out the useless.
For at the least 50 years turkey vultures have been increasing their vary and numbers into New England, different parts of the northern United States, and southern Canada. We’re not totally positive why, however extra roads and extra automobiles, and due to this fact extra roadkill, may clarify a part of it.
Regardless of the case, I’m OK with extra vultures, which have some uncommon and fantastic variations in contrast with different birds. One is an acute sense of scent, which permits them to search out carrion in any other case hidden within the woods. We suspect vulture pairs stay monogamous and mate for all times, not like plenty of different birds. And vultures reportedly defend themselves from predators by vomiting at will (not that any of us would care to check this).
One morning, whereas birdwatching in North Carolina, I ended up chatting for almost an hour with an 80-year-old marine veteran who had seen lots of the world. He advised me that the ospreys would return right here any day to nest (they did), and I identified an orange-crowned warbler feeding close by in a yaupon holly, which I child you not goes by the scientific identify Ilex vomitoria. We mentioned army corruption and the horrors of warfare. And we talked about children and households, getting previous, and marriages that didn’t final.
When it was time for breakfast, we smiled and bid one another properly. As I walked a park street again towards my campsite, he handed me with a wave and a toot from his beater, a blue-and-white Chevy pickup sporting a Trump-Pence bumper sticker on its again windshield.
Had my very own opposite politics come up throughout our dialog, I think it wouldn’t have mattered a lot. Not that I’m naive in regards to the coarseness of our tradition and public discourse or the dismal destiny of nature. It is likely to be straightforward for me on this journey to see the turkey vultures circling over a nation and planet in decline.
However the purple maples bloom right here in purple states as properly. Spring is coming. And it’s arduous to argue politics with anybody when warblers and ospreys are on the wing. And even vultures.
Bryan Pfeiffer is a semi-retired subject biologist and lecturer on the College of Vermont. He writes Chasing Nature on Substack and lives in Montpelier.
Boston police are looking for a man they say inappropriately touched several students at a small high school near Copley Square.
Officers responded around 11:30 a.m. to the Snowden International School on Newbury Street in Back Bay after reports that the man had touched students as they were walking in and out of the building.
“That’s scary, that it’s happening right here,” one woman said.
According to a police report, the man had been seen in the area before, approaching two students. Documents state at one point, a student stated the man “touched his chest and asked, ‘Yo bro, do you work out?’”
Police said photos of the man were captured and sent out to other law enforcement officials.
The department said in a statement that it is “encouraging families to remind students about the importance of being aware of their surroundings and reporting any concerning behavior to their school.”
Boston Public Schools will have an increased Safety Services presence around the campus for the next few days.
Local News
A Boston man who allegedly assaulted a transgender woman at a Blue Line MBTA station on Halloween is facing charges of assault and violating the victim’s civil rights, officials said.
Gregory Burnett, 53, pleaded not guilty to assault and battery causing serious bodily injury, assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (his foot), and a civil rights violation with injury, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said.
The woman, 41, told police that another passenger boarded the train at Maverick, immediately approached her, and shouted “derogatory terms” at her, the DA said. Burnett allegedly said statements including “you’re not a woman, you’re a man.”
Burnett then punched and kicked her, including in the crotch area. The woman tried to defend herself, the DA said, but Burnett grabbed her foot and caused her to fall and fracture her wrist.
Other passengers helped the woman defend herself against Burnett and get him off the train, officials said.
The woman reported the incident to police the next day and said “she felt targeted due to her gender identity based on Burnett’s remarks during the assault,” the DA said.
MBTA police used witness descriptions and surveillance video to identify Burnett and apprehend him at Maverick last Tuesday, according to Hayden’s office.
Burnett was initially held in jail after being found dangerous in court, but was released last week on conditions to stay at home outside of work hours, according to court records. With a GPS, he is confined to his home outside of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. He is also required to maintain employment, stay away from any witnesses, not commit any further offenses, and not possess any firearms.
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Book Club
Last month, “The Boston Globe Story of the Celtics,” a comprehensive book of nearly every recorded moment in Celtics history, was released. The book’s editor Chad Finn, a sports columnist for The Boston Globe and Boston.com, collected hundreds of Celtics stories written by renowned sports reporters, such as Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullan, since the team’s inception in 1946.
For Boston.com’s Book Club, Finn joined Boston.com sports writer Hayden Bird to discuss his process and insights in editing his book. Watch the full video, or read highlights of the discussion below.
Below is an abbreviated version of the discussion, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.
With something like this, where it’s a compilation of the Globe‘s coverage of the Celtics throughout their mutual histories, the one thing you’re really wondering about is: Was everything covered?
I think it was a little bit more complicated, a little bit more reason to worry about it, with the Celtics book because of the race element with Bill Russell. Did they cover some of the stuff that players endured back then? Not being able to eat with their teammates when they would go to North Carolina for an exhibition game or something like that. So it was very satisfying, and also a bit of a relief, to find out that the Globe … had covered every single step, every single significant story along the way with the Celtics, from their launch in 1946 until putting out banner No. 18 a couple of weeks ago.
The first thing you have to do is sit down and make a thorough list of every significant thing chronologically that happened in Celtics history. Once you have that list of 450 different things that happened in Celtics lore, then you go into the archives and you say, “Do we have this?”
A lot of it is also our researcher, Jerry Manion, who’s just an absolute expert at finding what you’re looking for. I can’t tell you how many times in putting this book together where I would message Jerry and say, “Can you find that?” and I’d have it five minutes later. To be able to have that kind of support when you’re putting together a project that could be overwhelming is incredible. I’m incredibly grateful for that.
The game stories and the stories from the coverage tended to be play by play, whereas nowadays, it’s a little bit of a look ahead, or a little bit of context on what you just saw, because you know about Jayson Tatum’s dunk and Jaylen Brown’s three-pointer that tied the game. Back then, that was news to you in the morning. You didn’t see it yourself.
One is Bob Ryan’s lead when they drafted Larry Bird. Red Auerbach took him while he still had a year left of college in Indiana State because back then there was a loophole … where you could draft a player if his college class had graduated.
Bob Ryan had seen Larry Bird play in person. He knew what Red had just pulled off, and his lead basically said Red didn’t just look like he swallowed the canary, it looked like he swallowed the whole aviary — perfect lead for Larry Bird. The whole column turned out to be prescient about how Larry’s career would go. I have some favorite stories in the book, but that one would be right up there in the top five just because of how he started it, how he wrote it, and how right he was.
I learned that the quality of writing really elevated in the late ‘60s. People took more chances with their writing.
In 1969, Leigh Montville got hired at the Globe, and I think if you asked every Globe columnist that has worked here the last 50 years, they would tell you Leigh Montville was the best columnist of all in terms of pure writing ability. He was lyrical, and he joined the beat covering the Celtics in Bill Russell’s last year.
There was another writer at the same time named Bob Sales. His style was very easy to read and thoughtful, and did not shy away from opinions that probably were considered pretty progressive at the time. He was very supportive of the Black players on the Celtics. I thought Bob Sales, even more than Leigh Montville because he came before him, was somebody who really changed the style of writing about the Celtics and the approach that people took to it.
Then a whole different topic, but Bob Ryan came around. He started the Globe the same day as [Peter] Gammons in 1968 as interns. When he took over the NBA beat in the early ‘70s, it changed everything.
If there was an incident, or if they were not treated as equals — which happened a lot — to their white teammates, the Globe wrote about it. And I wasn’t sure going into the book if that was going to be the case, and it was.
There are still misconceptions about how the Celtics handled race, and a big part of that is because their team — that a certain generation remembers so well — is Bird, McHale, Danny Ainge. There was a perception: Oh yeah, Celtics, Boston, White. I mean they had the best white players, but it had nothing to do with race why they were here, and Celtics history tells you that.
Look at Celtics history, and Red just wanted to win. He didn’t care about the race or color of his players. He just wanted the best players, and that was well ahead of its time back then.
You get into the eighties, and Magic and Bird change the game in a bunch of different ways — saying they save the league really isn’t an exaggeration. To have grown up watching that, it was really cool to be able to get into that phase of the book where we are doing things that I remember and that I witnessed.
But it was the hardest chapter in the book to edit, and it’s by far the biggest chapter in the book, for two reasons. Obviously they accomplished a lot, and they won the three titles in that era, and there were so many memorable games, the Lakers and the rivalry, the Sixers, and later on the Pistons. And with a book like this, you can’t just put the championships in it. There were so many games that resonated with people along the way.
The other thing was the quality of the writing was mind-blowing. It was Bob Ryan at the peak of his powers; it was Dan Shaughnessy, Montville; Jackie MacMullan came along in the late ‘80s. So the hardest thing I had to do with this book was pick which story to use without being redundant when two or three of them wrote about the same subject. Which one do I use?
I dedicated the book to my daughter who’s the biggest Celtics fan I know. I also dedicated to Bob Ryan, who is my writing hero.
I also think just writing about the family aspect of it — that’s become a really big thing with the Celtics themselves. I’ve never seen a team that was as connected and as willing to allow people around the players, their kids, their wives, to be as big a part of things as the 2024 Celtics were.
I think it bonded them together even more where they’ve developed this culture, where it’s just greater than what they have on the court.
Catch up on the latest Boston.com Book Club pick and join the virtual author discussions.
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