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A Rare Appearance for Six Persimmons, a 13th-Century Masterpiece

An irregular lineup of five orbs, with a sixth in front, absent any background or context and rendered only in tones of gray, the piece, approximately a foot square, exemplifies the kind of stark simplicity and attunement to nature that Americans found so bracing in Zen. It also illustrates just about any Buddhist concept you would care to name. Its six gray bubbles could stand for teardrops, living cells or even six planets as much as they do for astringent autumn fruit. In other words, they evoke the endless, thoroughly interconnected multiverse that is present everywhere and in every moment. At the same time they make you think of the time of year when it begins to get cold, but this fruit associated with good luck and longevity, eaten fresh or dried and pickled, is ripening. They’re all different tones and shapes, from nearly white to almost black, from ovoid to nearly square, and they sit in different postures, too, just as every moment in life is unique and unrepeatable. The persimmons move from light to dark to light again in an almost narrative order, and I couldn’t help reading their procession as a journey from freedom to entanglement and back again, or back and forth between emptiness and illusion. Guarding against such flights of fancy, though, are the persimmons’ stems, six crisp, T-shaped handles into the here and now that remind us that the really Zen way to look at a painting is simply to look at it. These handles descend to foreshortened X’s of leaves that, along with the fruits’ subtle but unmistakable highlights, create the picture’s unique perspective. To one view they form two separate rows, receding on an unseen tabletop. But you could just as well see them hanging in the air from some invisible branch, inhabiting the flatter, more vertical space of a Chinese landscape.

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I Never Said Thanks for the Meal. Sister Agnes Taught Me How.

“Do you have to go back to the office right away?” she asked. “Let me treat you to lunch first.” We walked around the corner to a small, busy cafe. When the waiter set our plates down, the food smelled delicious, and I dug in right away. Then I noticed Sister Agnes had not even lifted her fork, and I was duly mortified. Of course we would say grace before we ate. (In my defense, I’d never had lunch with a nun before.) Sister Agnes saw my embarrassment, and went easy on me. “Rosie,” she said, “let’s give thanks.” And then she said grace as I’d never heard it said before. First she thanked the Lord, naturally. Then she thanked the farmers who planted the seeds and the farmworkers who harvested the food that had made our lunch together possible. Then the packers who prepared it for its journey. Then the truckers who delivered the food, the cook who turned it into our feast and the waiter who brought it to the table. I was moved to silence, and reflection, and then we ate. I made many more visits to St. Cecilia’s during my time at the nonprofit, and had many more lunches with Sister Agnes. She always said grace the same way — and it became my way of saying it, too.

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I Never Said Thanks for the Meal. Sister Agnes Taught Me How.

“Do you have to go back to the office right away?” she asked. “Let me treat you to lunch first.” We walked around the corner to a small, busy cafe. When the waiter set our plates down, the food smelled delicious, and I dug in right away. Then I noticed Sister Agnes had not even lifted her fork, and I was duly mortified. Of course we would say grace before we ate. (In my defense, I’d never had lunch with a nun before.) Sister Agnes saw my embarrassment, and went easy on me. “Rosie,” she said, “let’s give thanks.” And then she said grace as I’d never heard it said before. First she thanked the Lord, naturally. Then she thanked the farmers who planted the seeds and the farmworkers who harvested the food that had made our lunch together possible. Then the packers who prepared it for its journey. Then the truckers who delivered the food, the cook who turned it into our feast and the waiter who brought it to the table. I was moved to silence, and reflection, and then we ate. I made many more visits to St. Cecilia’s during my time at the nonprofit, and had many more lunches with Sister Agnes. She always said grace the same way — and it became my way of saying it, too.

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How Group Chats Rule the World

This kind of communication has been technologically possible for decades now, but for much of my lifetime it had to occur in fixed locations (in front of computers) at fixed times (when you were all online; this was back when the idea of being “online” or “offline” still had meaning). Then smartphones smashed that distinction. In 2008, Apple made it possible to text-message multiple people at the same time, moving limited SMS messaging into their iMessage system — essentially conflating “texting” and “messaging,” collapsing group conversation into a single organized chain. Cell carriers and competitors followed, and slowly, over the next decade, the group chat moved from an occasionally convenient tool — say, something your sister might use to blast big news to a large family group — to a ubiquitous social phenomenon. My own group chats serve a wide range of purposes, from the purely practical to the highly intimate. There is a taxonomy — not quite a hierarchy, but not not a hierarchy. Some are basically purpose-driven and never meant to last: A new chat might pop up for a wedding weekend, a set of unsaved numbers asking one another questions about the location of a brunch, a fleeting collective of friends-of-friends that loses touch on Sunday night. Some are more or less affinity groups: I am in two separate chats for Grateful Dead enthusiasts, both of which tend to move at the pace of old-school internet forums. (Someone posts a good live version of “Scarlet Begonias,” or a joke about Bob Weir, and we all give it a thumbs-up or a heart or a “ha ha” reaction, iMessage innovations that make even-more-passive communication possible.) Some group chats map almost exactly onto I.R.L. groups of friends and are used for a combination of idle chatter and social planning; one has become such a dominant feature of my social life that it is simply named “The Girls,” as if there were no other girls. (The act of naming of a group chat in iMessage indicates, to some degree, its staying power, no matter how silly the name itself may be.) Thus “The Girls” has become one of the first places any of us would look to make social plans. At least, I think so — it is highly possible that for one or another of us there is another group chat, totally unknown to me, that is more important.

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Opinion | Who Was the Real Shaved Woman of Chartres?

In August 1944, in a city near Paris, Robert Capa took a photograph of a woman cradling a baby in the middle of a jeering crowd, her head shaved and her forehead marked with a swastika. The woman, Simone Touseau, would become infamous — first as a symbol of the brutality of post-occupation France and later, through painstaking scholarship, as an example of the Nazi sympathies among some of the French during World War II. A novel released in France this summer has reinvented her once again, this time as a woman scorned. It’s a reinvention that is a disservice to the complicated truth about Ms. Touseau and her and other Frenchwomen’s deliberate collaboration with the Nazis. Women collaborated out of cowardice, self-interest and a whole range of ideological fervor. A reality we should contemplate frankly if we’re to have a proper accounting of the history of the war in France. The photograph, “The Shaved Woman of Chartres,” with the young Ms. Touseau at its center, was understood for a long time as a document of the brutal purges that took place during the liberation of France at the end of World War II. Extrajudicial punishments were carried out all over the country, including shaving the heads of women suspected of sleeping with the enemy.

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Tea, a Train and an Epic Sunrise at a Summer Retreat of the Raj

Dawn on Tiger Hill Seeing the sun’s first rays breaking over the snow-capped peaks of the mighty Kanchenjunga Mountain and Mount Everest has become a ritual among tourists. Because of the location of the sun, the best time to see this incredible sight is from mid-October to December or March to April, and you’ll want to leave early: Tiger Hill was about an hour and a half’s drive from our hotel and we made sure to arrive by 4 a.m. You’d be surprised by how many people were there at that hour. I’ve seen some incredible sunrises over the years, but this was something else: It was an experience that stole my heart. As the very first rays of golden sunshine rose across the snowy mountain tops we were mesmerized. We sipped the sweetest coffee I’ve ever tasted, sold in flasks by vendors capitalizing on the crowds — the perfect way to warm up on a cold, windy morning. The entire experience at Tiger Hill lasts for about 30 to 45 minutes. It begins before dawn, as visitors gather to secure the best place to view the sun. When I reached the viewing point, everything was enveloped in darkness. Suddenly the sky transitioned to deep indigo, creating an aura of anticipation. Then the eastern horizon started to illuminate with a soft, pale orange or pinkish hue. The sky took on a delicate, pastel color, with the sun peeking out. As the sun began to rise above the horizon, it was a moment of sheer awe and wonder as its rays illuminated the landscape. For me the entire spectrum of colors during the Tiger Hill sunrise created a magical and surreal experience, with the play of light and shadow against the Himalayan peaks. The one big disappointment — both on Tiger Hill and elsewhere in Darjeeling — was the mess. Tourists leave their litter everywhere, putting these landscapes at risk: something we need to be more mindful of to preserve these sites for the generations to come.

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Gender wage gap in Boston shrinks, while racial gap grows

“Doing that math, it was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” said Kim Borman, executive director of the council. “I did it six times to make sure.” The gender wage gap in Greater Boston narrowed by 9 cents in the past two years, according to a new report by the Boston Women’s Workforce Council — shrinking for the first time since the council started studying payroll data in 2016 . For every dollar men earn, women make 79 cents, up from 70 cents in 2021. The drop appears to be driven by an increase in women advancing into highly paid leadership roles, Borman noted, and by a 6 percent average salary increase for women overall, while men’s average salary declined. Advertisement The math wasn’t as positive when it came to the racial wage gap, however. That pay divide increased by 3 cents since 2021, with employees of color earning 73 cents on the dollar compared to white workers. Black and Latina women fare the worst, making less than half what white men do. Get Trendlines A business newsletter from Globe Columnist Larry Edelman covering the trends shaping business and the economy in Boston and beyond. Enter Email Sign Up The pandemic likely played into the wage discrepancies, workplace analysts note. Federal funding enabled many women to continue working or take new jobs, and worker shortages in health care, which has a roughly 80 percent female workforce, led to strong wage increases for women. The ability to work remotely may also play into women’s abilities to take higher-paying jobs, while the new state law mandating paid family and medical leave is allowing greater flexibility to care for family members. Meanwhile, communities of color continue to feel the impact of COVID, with increased health problems and caregiving demands hurting the ability to work. This has likely compounded the divide created by the prevalence of people of color in lower-paid jobs and a lower share getting promoted into management. “Most times when you look at efforts that go toward DE&I . . . it’s white women and Asian women who have benefited,” said Beth Chandler, BWWC council member and executive director of YW Boston, a nonprofit that promotes equity and is one of more than 250 local employers that have signed the BWWC’s 100% Talent Compact to take action on wage gaps. “It’s Black and Latina women and Indigenous women who have not.” Advertisement White and Asian women in the Boston area earned just over $100,000 a year on average at the 103 companies analyzed in the report, while women of other races earned between $58,000 and $79,000. Massachusetts has a number of laws dedicated to pay equity, but its 27-cent gender pay gap is the 22nd highest in the country, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families, which, unlike the BWWC report, includes part-time workers and relies on census data. Vermont, on the other hand, has the lowest pay gap of any state, at 15 cents. The state’s small size and largely white workforce may play into this, said Cary Brown, executive director of the Vermont Commission on Women, but Brown noted that the state has passed pay equity laws, strengthened protections against sexual harassment and discrimination, and is investing in child care — “probably the single thing that most impacts women’s ability to make as much money as men,” she said. Unlike other wage gap reports, the Boston Women’s Workforce Council uses payroll data from employers, rather than relying on census surveys. The salaries of more than 165,000 workers were analyzed to find the raw wage gap as of last December, without adjusting for type of job, experience, or education. Research shows that even when those factors are accounted for, though, men are still paid more than women. Advertisement Most of the current earnings gap is between men and women in the same occupation and largely emerges after the birth of the first child, according to research by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who just won the Nobel Prize for her work on the issue. Women in dual-career heterosexual couples are more likely than men to forgo demanding, higher-paying jobs to be more available at home, she found. And women who take high-level jobs end up burning the candle at both ends. Over half of women in senior management take care of most of their family’s household duties and child care, according to management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., compared to 13 percent of male senior managers. And the wage gap gets even wider at the top. In Boston, the “performance pay” gender wage gap, including bonuses and cash incentives, is especially vast at the executive level, jumping from a 25 cent gulf in base pay to 42 cents overall. Pay equity isn’t possible, Goldin has said, until there’s “couple’s equity.” The morning commute near South Station in Boston on Sept. 19. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff When it comes to advancement, the problem isn’t necessarily the glass ceiling, according to McKinsey, it’s the “broken rung” on the way there. For every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, 87 women — and only 73 women of color — move up to management. Advertisement Employers examining their practices need to realize “this is hard, intensive work,” Borman said. Salaries should be continually analyzed and adjusted, if needed, and managers trained on how to better support employees. Everything from what job postings say and who gets interviewed to how promotions are granted must be scrutinized. David Sweeney, former chief financial officer for the City of Boston, instituted a number of changes to bolster inclusivity when he took over in 2020 as chief executive of the nonprofit now called the Longwood Collective, a Compact signer that provides planning, transportation, and other services in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area. Open positions are posted on specialized job boards where a diverse array of candidates, from working mothers to engineers of color, will see them. Workforce diversity is tracked, compensation consultants review all salaries regularly, and every employee gets a bonus when corporate goals are met. This has a cost, Sweeney said, and can be challenging in a tight labor market. “I don’t think most organizations are out actively discriminating against marginalized groups,” he said. “But changes don’t happen on their own. It takes a very proactive mentality to move the needle on these things.” The smallest gender wage gap in the BWWC study — 6 cents — is in the nonprofit sector, where the workforce is 71 percent female. But nonprofits also have a 44 cent racial wage gap, the largest of any industry studied. This racial divide stems from the fact that leaders of nonprofits tend to be white, while lower-paid employees serving clients are more often people of color, said Cambridge-based diversity consultant Su Joun. There’s also an assumption that because nonprofits often support disadvantaged communities, they must be “naturally inclusive” and don’t examine their practices as carefully as they should. Advertisement “Nonprofit leaders assume they’re immune to biases and microaggressions because of the good work they do,” she said. Hub International, the national insurance brokerage with 26 offices in New England, including 11 studied for the BWWC report, increased the raise pool this year by 60 percent across New England after analyzing its compensation structure. In one division, an average adjustment of 8.4 percent was made for more than half the team to alleviate wage gaps, said Mim Minichiello, chief performance and talent officer, and BWWC council member. One person got a 20 percent boost in pay. Compensation is much more structured than in the past, Minichiello said, which is especially important in a business where pay discrepancies can be inherited through acquisitions. But it takes constant supervision. “It’s still a dog fight,” she said. Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.

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For Hilltown Hikers, New Years Day tradition calls for state park hike

CHESTER — Starting 2024 off on the right foot, more than 100 hikers ambled up the Sanderson Brook Falls trail at Chester-Blandford State Forest Monday for the annual first day hike. “We are getting everyone’s resolutions taken care of right now on New Year’s Day,” said Liz Massa, president of Western Mass Hilltown Hikers. “Get off the couch, you’re getting your exercise. Get back in touch with nature. And be social. Get off the couch and meet people.” This is the third year in a row Hilltown Hikers has hosted a New Year’s Day hike for members and novices and frequent hikers alike. It’s only over the last two years that Hilltown Hikers has been an official co-sponsor of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation First Day Hikes initiative. In Massachusetts, there were 13 first-day hikes planned Monday including at three locations in Western Massachusetts. They were held at Chester-Blandford as well as Mount Greylock in Lanesborough — the state’s highest peak — and Great Falls Discovery Center in Turners Falls. DCR said it has been organizing first day hikes for 33 years. At that first hike, more than 400 hikers gathered to welcome the new year at the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton. It’s been a national program since 2012, with state park agencies sponsoring hikes in all 50 states. Karen McTaggert and Liz Massa of Hilltown Hikers blow noisemakers at the annual First Day hike at Chester Blandford State Forest for New Year's Day, Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. (Jim Kinney/ The Republican)The Republican “We have a lot of fun while introducing people to the state forests, to the Hilltowns and to the Hilltowns’ history,” said Karen McTaggert, Hilltown Hikers vice president. It’s an easy, one-mile-up and one-mile-back trail that rewards trekkers with a visit to a 60-foot waterfall, which was roaring Monday following a few days of rain. The trailhead is on busy Route 20 just 16 miles or so west of Westfield and offers plenty of parking. Folks coming back down the mountain were treated to a toast of sparkling cider and a snack. Hilltown Hikers brought social media photo props and passed out noisemakers and paper New Year’s hats. DCR distributed “First Day Hike” hats. Hikers head up the hill Monday, Jan. 2024 for the annual First Day Hike in Chester Blandford State Forest sponsored by the state parks and Hilltown Hikers. (Jim Kinney/ The Republican)The Republican It’s been a big year for the Hilltown Hikers. In September, the group announced its purchase of the Chester Hudson and Granite Works, a nearby industrial historical site that still has a giant saw left behind by the valley’s quarrying industry. The club plans to open the land with an all-abilities accessible trail. Hilltown Hikers offers free once-a-month guided hikes for all who want to participate, Massa said. Usually, there are about 30 participants. “We take you somewhere different,” she said. “We will teach you the history of the land you’re walking on.” It’s also a big year for the Chester-Blandford State Forest, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024.

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For Hilltown Hikers, New Years Day tradition calls for state park hike

CHESTER — Starting 2024 off on the right foot, more than 100 hikers ambled up the Sanderson Brook Falls trail at Chester-Blandford State Forest Monday for the annual first day hike. “We are getting everyone’s resolutions taken care of right now on New Year’s Day,” said Liz Massa, president of Western Mass Hilltown Hikers. “Get off the couch, you’re getting your exercise. Get back in touch with nature. And be social. Get off the couch and meet people.” This is the third year in a row Hilltown Hikers has hosted a New Year’s Day hike for members and novices and frequent hikers alike. It’s only over the last two years that Hilltown Hikers has been an official co-sponsor of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation First Day Hikes initiative. In Massachusetts, there were 13 first-day hikes planned Monday including at three locations in Western Massachusetts. They were held at Chester-Blandford as well as Mount Greylock in Lanesborough — the state’s highest peak — and Great Falls Discovery Center in Turners Falls. DCR said it has been organizing first day hikes for 33 years. At that first hike, more than 400 hikers gathered to welcome the new year at the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton. It’s been a national program since 2012, with state park agencies sponsoring hikes in all 50 states. Karen McTaggert and Liz Massa of Hilltown Hikers blow noisemakers at the annual First Day hike at Chester Blandford State Forest for New Year's Day, Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. (Jim Kinney/ The Republican)The Republican “We have a lot of fun while introducing people to the state forests, to the Hilltowns and to the Hilltowns’ history,” said Karen McTaggert, Hilltown Hikers vice president. It’s an easy, one-mile-up and one-mile-back trail that rewards trekkers with a visit to a 60-foot waterfall, which was roaring Monday following a few days of rain. The trailhead is on busy Route 20 just 16 miles or so west of Westfield and offers plenty of parking. Folks coming back down the mountain were treated to a toast of sparkling cider and a snack. Hilltown Hikers brought social media photo props and passed out noisemakers and paper New Year’s hats. DCR distributed “First Day Hike” hats. Hikers head up the hill Monday, Jan. 2024 for the annual First Day Hike in Chester Blandford State Forest sponsored by the state parks and Hilltown Hikers. (Jim Kinney/ The Republican)The Republican It’s been a big year for the Hilltown Hikers. In September, the group announced its purchase of the Chester Hudson and Granite Works, a nearby industrial historical site that still has a giant saw left behind by the valley’s quarrying industry. The club plans to open the land with an all-abilities accessible trail. Hilltown Hikers offers free once-a-month guided hikes for all who want to participate, Massa said. Usually, there are about 30 participants. “We take you somewhere different,” she said. “We will teach you the history of the land you’re walking on.” It’s also a big year for the Chester-Blandford State Forest, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024.

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For Some Young People, a College Degree Is Not Worth the Debt

By researching Parent PLUS loans, I learned that the parent alone carries the debt, there are fewer forgiveness options than other federal student loans and the loans carry a current interest rate of 8.05 percent. There was no way I could sign. I’m a renter, and until two years ago, I didn’t have a retirement account. So instead of taking out Parent PLUS loans, I secured a private loan with a much lower interest rate through my credit union. Although I had to co-sign, Alex was designated the primary borrower. Alex understood that this was the only option to pay for college, but as they struggled to adjust to college life in the years following the start of the pandemic, the debt began to weigh on them. This led them to drop out of college after two trimesters. Though they have $7,000 in loans to pay off from their short stint, Alex knew the implications of accumulating even more debt over the course of four years. I did my best to alleviate their worries, but my own student loan debt wasn’t reassuring. Alex believed that, even with a minimum wage job, they could pay off their debt and continue to support themself with jobs that didn’t require a degree. Alex is not alone in this belief. Because of the combined costs of tuition and living expenses, some young people have opted to delay, drop out of or forgo attending college altogether to avoid student debt that could hang over them for decades. A recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit provider of educational reporting, showed that freshman enrollment declined by 3.6 percent last fall, reversing recent gains. In addition, the share of students who left college without a degree rose to 40.4 million as of July 2021.

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Why religious freedom is more important than ever in 2024

Sign up for Reckon’s latest weekly newsletter covering the three topics never to be discussed at the dinner table. Enter your email to subscribe to Matter of Faith. Happy Wednesday! As of right now (Tuesday morning), I am elbow-deep in data from former Pres. Donald Trump’s Iowa Caucus victory. There will be more reporting on that very soon, and I’m excited to show y’all what I noticed about Trump’s cozy relationship with white Evangelicals. For now, we need to talk about religious freedom. Yesterday was Religious Freedom day, so this week’s Matter of Faith is focused on how religions that have been villainized by white supremacy continue to resist and build resilient communities. Let’s dive in: How Muslim communities are rewriting the narrative of American belonging beyond the War on Terror Muslims break their fast on the 27th day of the holy fasting month of Ramadan at the Kingsmead Cricket grounds in Durban at a mass interfaith iftar, the evening meal traditionally taken by Muslims after sunset during Ramadan on June 2, 2019. - The underlying theme is to promote harmony, tolerance, understanding leading to peace between people of various faiths. (Photo by Rajesh JANTILAL / AFP) (Photo credit should read RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP via Getty Images)Getty Images Anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States has grown in the 22 years since the terrorist attack on Sept 11 2001 and the subsequent beginning of the War on Terror. According to 2023 data from the Pew Research Center, six in ten U.S. adults (59%) say they hold “neither favorable nor unfavorable” views of Muslims or “don’t know enough to say,” while 17% express very or somewhat favorable views of Muslims and 22% express very or somewhat unfavorable views of the group. At the end of December, Biden bypassed congress to give $150 million of military equipment to Israel. As the United States continues to fund and support Israel’s military after over 100 days of violence in Gaza, killing 24,000 people, 10,000 of which are children, many Arab and Muslim Americans are saying that anti-Muslim sentiment feels reminiscent of the political climate after 9/11. Palestinian American activist Laila El-Haddad told NBC news in October, “This feels like that, but almost a more dystopian version of that.” 3 ways Muslims are combatting discrimination Haitians who have left their country due to poverty or political repression celebrate a voodoo ceremony in 1995 in their apartment in Brooklyn, New York. There’s a long history of oppressing Voodoo and Santeria in the US. Here’s how anti-Black racism is fueling misconceptions and attacks on the African-rooted religions.Getty Images When the transatlantic slave trade took Africans to America, they brought with them their powerful ancestral practices and spiritual traditions, collectively known as Voodoo. These traditions continue to offer modern-day Black Americans a source of strength and solace today. Despite spooky stories, the religious practice is deeply focused on justice and community, which doesn’t include “turning the other cheek.” This religious focus on justice and harmony followers to use their knowledge to protect themselves, which had real-world political consequences. But slave owners and lawmakers systematically tried to snuff out the practice. While the religion was never banned, states instituted slave codes–laws restricting how slaves could gather and limitations on their education. These laws, like the 1848 Georgia Slave code, prevented an enslaved person from teaching any religion–regardless of its origin–unless there were seven or fewer enslaved people present. “Vodoou was painted as bad because it was used for the Haitian Revolution, and the powers that be didn’t want other Caribbean and Latin countries using Voodoo to become free,” said Sandra Calixte, a Chicago-based Haitian-American Voodoo healer. Get the facts on Voodoo here For further reading: The Iowa Caucus marked the beginning of the 2024 presidential race. Here’s what I’ve been reading about the somewhat bizarre series of meetings and voting held Monday night: Just a note: Hold on tight for the 2024 election cycle and a sure to be thrilling few months of faith, sex and politics sending sparks flying. You can find me online on Instagram, Threads and X. You can also send your feedback on the newsletter to abeahm@reckonmedia.com. Keep wandering ;)

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The Truth in American Fiction - The New York Times

In my nearly three decades as an editor, author and former editor of The New York Times Book Review, a shorthand has often been used to describe contemporary authors — the Latino poet, the Indigenous novelist, the Black writer. Often this extends to a reductive way of viewing their work: This book is by an X person telling an X story. After a presentation to the Book Review in which a publicist referred to yet another book as “unapologetically gay,” a gay editor on staff said in jest, “I wish for once they would talk about an apologetically gay novel.” But his quip made a point. Why is identity so often used as code to describe a particular kind of novel? Just who is this meant to satisfy? The writer and director Cord Jefferson has given a lot of thought to these questions. Back in 2014, Jefferson, then a journalist, wrote a widely read post on Medium called “The Racism Beat,” in which he lamented editors’ tendency to call on him every time something terrible happened to a Black person.

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Behind the Scenes at Boston Supper Clubs

I’m in a stranger’s apartment in the North End. Most of the party is already here; I’m 40 minutes late due to Red Line construction. They’re standing in clusters in the small living room eating from plastic plates. I’m at the “Hundredth Plate Celebration” of Dinner With Friends Boston, a biweekly-ish supper club run by Suraag Srinivas, a consultant who moved to Boston soon after graduating from college in 2020. This is supposedly his hundredth such dinner (with friends), hence the name. After arriving, I had texted Srinivas so he could let me into his building. Now upstairs, he quickly returns to the sizzling patties on the stove behind the bar. “I’m extremely behind,” he says. I take a plate and meander. People are clustered in little groups that seem to imply prior acquaintance. Nobody is visibly over 30. After a couple of brief conversations I learn that most of these guests are friends of Srinivas, or friends of a friend. A group introduces themselves as Harvard Law School students, a few are Srinivas’ coworkers, and a couple others are college friends who’ve now settled in Boston for their jobs or school. The menu at the "Hundredth Plate Celebration" of Dinner With Friends Boston is a conglomerate of foods that were hits in prior dinners, including black bean patties with onion and spicy mayo on Hawaiian rolls By Courtesy of Vicki Xu When I tell people I’m from The Harvard Crimson, they laugh. “This is such a student journalist thing,” one guest says, gesturing toward the camera around my neck. The menu is a conglomerate of foods that were hits in prior dinners, served on cutting boards: a spread of meats, cheeses, and berries; crostini loaded with Boursin and onions; black bean patties with onion and spicy mayo on Hawaiian rolls. Srinivas has set up a little build-your-own-drink section in the back. Dessert is olive oil cake with berry compote. In recent years, the Boston area has seen a flourishing of private multi-course dinners. They take a variety of forms: a pop-up in a restaurant, a meal around a table. Prices range widely, from $30 to more than $200, and the hosts run the gamut as well from amateur to professional chef. They’re usually run by one or two people and serve anywhere from six to 40 guests. News of these reservation-only events travels primarily through word-of-mouth, and seats are guaranteed through ticket purchases through sites such as Ticket Tailor and Eventbrite. Advertisement I found Srinivas’ supper club through a sponsored Instagram ad. Once I saw one, I seemed to see them everywhere. A quick search through social media uncovered Kendall DaCosta’s Out of Many One People, Matthew Bullock’s Southern Pines Supper Club, and Maria Colalancia’s The Aperitivo Society. Over the next weeks, I went to some supper clubs and spoke to many more chefs about where they started and how their dinners have evolved — and whether it’s food, or something else, that keeps them in such high demand. Conversations with Strangers Dinner With Friends Boston is modeled on Dinner With Friends NYC, a dinner party gathering that started in May 2022 in New York City aimed at bringing strangers together over dinners. One of his friends attended one when she was in New York and suggested Srinivas do his own version in Boston. At the time, he had been hosting more informal gatherings for friends of friends, a project he’d had since moving to Boston, when things were just reopening. “I was thinking a lot about how to create a place for people to meet other people in a less formal setting,” he says. Because of Covid, “it couldn’t be a going-out situation, either.” “People felt more comfortable going to someone’s house and getting dinner with them,” he adds. Suraag Srinivas prepares a dish at the “Hundredth Plate Celebration” of Dinner With Friends Boston, a biweekly-ish supper club. By Courtesy of Vicki Xu “I was cooking a lot because there wasn’t much else to do and I found it a really easy way to meet people and form connections,” Srinivas says. Today’s crowd of 25 guests is a bit unusual, Srinivas tells me. Usually, his meals are more intimate and sit-down, with 7 to 8 guests; he just so happened to want a larger group for Hundredth Plate. Srinivas is not the only amateur-run supper club in Boston, though, at around $30 a dinner, it is probably the most affordable. Maria Colalancia’s The Aperitivo Society, a step up the pricing rung, ranges from $80 to $150 per dinner. There’s a blend of reasons why the amateur chef might want to start a supper club. Srinivas and Colalancia both point to their backgrounds; they both grew up in families that valued sharing food and eating meals together. Growing up, Srinivas’ family always had people over; “it was just expected that my sister and I would cook and help out with whatever event that we were having,” he says. Advertisement Similarly, when she was interviewed on the podcast “Happenstance,” Colalancia says that she grew up in a “huge family, Italian on my dad’s side, Irish-Croatian on my mom’s side. Just gathering and hosting and spending time with people you love was a huge part of my upbringing.” Colalancia founded The Aperitivo Society in January 2023, after her first year of living in Boston, to find a sense of connection she was “craving.” On its website, Aperitivo Society bills itself as a group in the greater Boston area “focused on providing curated dining experiences.” It’s a stylized roughly-biweekly club arranged around a theme, recent ones are “Salem Spice Trade,” a storytelling session and meal hosted in a Salem home; or “An Evening Of Food and Fashion,” hosted in conjunction with clothing rental marketplace “Rotate Your Closet,” themed as a“Met Gala afterparty.” “[The Aperitivo Society] was kind of thrilling and kind of fun, and it set the tone for what this year has been for me,” Colalancia says on “Happenstance.” “It’s been beyond my wildest dreams.” ‘Chef’s Table’ The day after Dinner With Friends, I make my way down to Quincy to attend Out of Many One People’s event “Behind the Line,” the first sitting for private chef Kendall DaCosta’s newest series of dinners tailored toward a smaller gathering of 10 people. The dinner is six courses with six cocktails. It’s hosted in an event space in an apartment complex right outside the Quincy Adams T stop. DaCosta’s assistant today is his mixologist Carolina Mejía, whose day job is in real estate but real joy is in food. She’s making drinks inspired by her Colombian heritage. DaCosta envisions this event to be a “chef’s table” where attendees can see the food getting made right in front of them. “Behind the Line” is also somewhat of an anomaly for DaCosta’s supper clubs, which tend to host 25 to 30 people, as a private seating in a restaurant space, where he’s still cooking all the food but sequestered in a kitchen. At the Out of Many One People supper club, people don't attend to make friends as much they attend to eat. For a price tag of $200, that’s to be expected. By Courtesy of Vicki Xu Dinner starts at 5 p.m., and guests file in shortly after. For most, this is their first time joining Out of Many One People, and also their first at any event of this sort. They’re middle-aged, and three pairs came as couples; it’s a bit of a date-night event. Advertisement Like at Srinivas’, I’m largely ignored, but in this room, it’s less because I’m a stranger and more because I, with a camera around my neck (again), am clearly not here to eat, and therefore, clearly not a guest at the supper club. People aren’t here so much to make friends as they are to eat. For a price tag of $200, that’s to be expected. DaCosta tells the group about the premise behind Out of Many One People — that you could watch the chef cook. “This is like a friend cooking for you,” he says. The attendees talk a bit amongst themselves. They trade their favorite restaurant recommendations, and what other nice dinners they’ve been to. At one point someone asks if they’ve been to any previous Out of Many One People events. Head shakes around the table. DaCosta says one repeat customer who’s been there since the beginning is coming to this dinner but is 30 minutes late. While Mejía serves a drink course, DaCosta shows me the menu he planned: it’s in the Notes app on his phone, with a green check mark next to each item to mark it as finished prepping. He takes full advantage of the supper club as a way to get experimental. One dish pairs bison carpaccio with Dorito powder and thinly-sliced rounds of Fuyu persimmon. Private chef Kendall DaCosta’s newest series of dinners are tailored towards a smaller gathering of 10 people. By Courtesy of Vicki Xu DaCosta started his supper club informally in 2020, when kitchen work was widely unavailable due to the pandemic. While cooking for his friends, DaCosta found an Instagram page called Secret Supper, which runs private suppers around the world, and he thought he would try it himself. He started Out of Many One People at Lucille Wine Shop in Lynn, and then moved to Nzuko in Watertown. Now it’s hosted at Nook in Somerville’s Bow Market. He wants to make it a whole experience: he brings in Berklee musicians and sets up rotating art galleries. Mostly, though, he likes running these because he’s able to have more personal interactions with guests, which he can’t get in a more traditional restaurant setting. “People want to see the chef happy and enjoying what he’s doing,” DaCosta says of his decision to start a supper club. “When you cook food with a smile on your face, that food is going to taste better than anything.” Reinventing Dining Around Boston, supper clubs run in two broad genres: ones run by amateur chefs, typically out of a private home or sometimes a rented space; and ones run by professionally-trained chefs, either as a pop-up in a restaurant or hosted in a rented space. The iteration that appears inside restaurants is often operated by a chef testing out a new concept or chasing a vision that they may not have enough freedom to explore through regular restaurant operations. DaCosta’s Out of Many One People Supper Club, named as a nod to his Jamaican heritage, explores how “harmonious” flavors can be from all over the world. Chef Matthew Bullock, who runs Southern Pines Supper Club hosted at the restaurant Forage, sees his menus as a celebration of Southern cuisine. Advertisement They’re not the only ones who took advantage of the supper club to explore cuisine. Chef Pao Thampitak, who also works at Comfort Kitchen, runs a family-style supper club named Gaaeng out of his own home. Each supper club is themed around a regional cuisine in Thailand. Roving dessert chef T Lawrence-Simon does private five-course tastings, and occasionally pairs up with others — he did an event with Aperitivo Society in October. Sometimes, again, they’re just intimate spaces for gathering with a good meal — Lonely Hearts Supper Club, hosted at Rebel Rebel Wine Bar in Somerville, offers up “an evening for conversation, indulgences, and the thrill of saying hello to someone new,” complete with food, wine, and sometimes tarot readings. What makes supper clubs so compelling for their chefs is, in part, their relatively lower barrier to entry. “It’s much easier and more financially accessible to do pop-ups because to do a restaurant you need diners and significant funding,” says Bullock, adding that even if he didn’t have the support of Forage, he would’ve eventually started a supper club in one way or another. And for people like Mejía, who has a full-time job in another industry, the more flexible schedule allows her to balance her work life and her personal life. For DaCosta and Lawrence-Simon, the pandemic also provided a bit of a push. Though largely seen as a negative for the restaurant industry, the pandemic allowed people like DaCosta and Lawrence-Simon to reimagine their professions. Without a brick-and-mortar, they found ways to extract what they enjoyed most about their culinary vocation. Supper clubs offered both a reprieve from the high-pressure kitchen and an opportunity to venture into new culinary territory. “Pretty much everyone is figuring out there are way more options than anyone was choosing before,” Lawrence-Simon says. Private supper clubs are legally a bit of a gray area. They’re not illegal, but they technically bypass the strict zoning and food safety laws that restaurants must follow. You get around this by getting a food-safe certification, but not everyone does. Many supper clubs bill themselves, instead, as an informal gathering with friends whose contributions cover the cost of getting ingredients and food preparation. Most are BYOB, because you require a liquor license to be able to serve liquor. As a result, supper clubs have traditionally been quite hush-hush. Boston’s supper clubs, generally, are relatively forthcoming, with most posting their meetings publicly. This desire to host has been equally, if not even more strongly, matched by a desire to receive. Colalancia’s first Aperitivo Society post on TikTok received interest from 700 people, of which a lucky 17 were able to come together for a charcuterie dinner. Srinivas’ dinners generally sell out a week before the date. Tickets for DaCosta’s, Bullock’s, and Thampitak’s supper clubs are perpetually limited or sold out. Supper clubs’ attendees’ willingness to seek such arrangements may also, in part, be a result of the pandemic. Lawrence-Simon jokes that if before the pandemic someone invited you to some private meal hosted out of someone’s home, “You’d be like, ‘Am I going to lose a kidney?’” But now, he says, “Our acceptance for taking a little bit of a leap is a lot higher.” Advertisement End of the Night My grandfather always said the best way to get to know someone is to open up a bottle of wine and sit down at a table and talk to them,” Colalancia tells “Happenstance.” To her, finding a common interest with another can come from “something as simple as sitting down and breaking bread.” Colalancia points out the impersonality of modern meals, in part due to technology. “We get so caught up in ‘oh, I’ll just put this in the microwave, and then I’ll work while I do this. I’ll sit on the couch and watch TV while I eat,’” she says on the podcast. “It just becomes this mindless, disconnected action.” But, if sitting down with another, “It’s such a better experience and so much more fulfilling.” At Dinner With Friends, I meet Jinia Sarkar, a longtime college friend of Srinivas. Though a good chunk of attendees are first-timers, this is Sarkar’s “third or fourth” such dinner. After you graduate college, Sarkar tells me, there aren’t a lot of ways to meet other people, make friends. That’s what makes Srinivas’ space so special. I make another round: there’s a stack of bingo sheets in the back with fun facts submitted by each of the attendees, accompanied by the instructions to tick off a box every time you find the owner of the fun fact. The girls I met when I came in are now talking to the group of law students, bingo sheets in hand. Aperitivo Society has done similarly for people seeking friends. Aaliyah Ace Hoo Kim moved from Toronto to Boston earlier this year. She does not typically dine out, but she found Aperitivo Society through someone she followed on Instagram, and attended a dinner in September 2023. “I wanted to go because making friends as an adult is hard and this felt like [an] easy low-pressure way to meet people in Boston who all felt the same way,” Kim writes in an Instagram direct message. Anika Mian, who also attended an Aperitivo Society event, concurs: she bought a ticket to meet new friends, and she managed to bump into someone who went to the same university. At DaCosta’s dinner, when I ask Mejía what kind of people she’s met working with DaCosta, she tells me there are too many to list — people from all walks of life. Supper clubs, then, encapsulate a two-way desire for community and intimacy. They move what might be a restaurant dinner into a private space to achieve this analog connection. To our modern eating culture, this is a novelty, but in reality supper clubs are a revival of an older way of meeting people, of forming relationships. To the extent that supper clubs are reinventing dining in Boston, however, there’s still a ways to go. “This is not a hugely profitable venture,” Srinivas says, adding that he generally operates at a slight loss, only asking attendees to cover ingredient costs. Supper clubs in general aren’t cheap to run; a combination of gathering ingredients, renting spaces, and the irregular schedule pushes prices up. Lonely Hearts Supper Clubs run upward of $80 a sitting, and DaCosta’s go for more than $175. Yet, DaCosta is still a private chef because that’s “what pays for the supper clubs,” he says, and Srinivas and Colalancia don’t have any plans to quit their day jobs soon. Advertisement The higher price points are potentially prohibitive for attendees, though Kim and Mian agree that, in their cases, it’s money well spent. I can kind of see it, that kind of intention to sit down and share a meal with someone. The apartments are warmed by the presence of the people in them. When DaCosta isn’t talking through the next dish, or entertaining the guests between courses, he chats with me and jokes with Mejía. He shows me how to bread jackfruit for the mock fried chicken dish. I compliment Mejía on her chartreuse nails. At Srinivas’, a girl makes me a drink using Chambord. Chatter bubbles up with the night. When I leave Srinivas’, I pass a girl standing under a neon pizzeria sign, turning her face up toward the hot lights. My fingers still smell like the berry compote from the cake I had eaten with my hands. The air is chilly, but I feel warm.

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culture

What you need to know about the worlds only Hmong LGBTQ organization

Stories that will make you laugh, cry and question everything you thought you knew. Step into a portal where LGBTQ+ folks can live authentically, free from hate and where their contributions to art and culture are celebrated. Sign up for the QueerVerse newsletter today! For 14 years, St. Paul, Minn. was home to the world’s only Hmong LGBTQ organization, Shades of Yellow (SOY). Founded in 2003, SOY had a mission “to cultivate a community of empowered Hmong LGBTQ [people] to challenge what we’ve known and ignite positive cultural and social change.” It originally began as a social group where Hmong community members would meet at bars, cafes, and online to support each other through the stress of coming out and navigating conservative family values. St. Paul and the Twin Cities more broadly, were a perfect hub for serving this intersection of the LGBTQ and Asian Pacific Islander community. Thousands of Hmong people fled to Minnesota as refugees following the war in Vietnam and the withdrawal of the US military during the culmination of the Laotian Civil War in 1975. Immigration continued throughout the 1980s and resulted in the Twin Cities becoming home to the largest Hmong metropolitan community to date. SOY made a national impact by creating a welcoming home in the Twin Cities of LGBTQ Hmong people. In fact, SOY’s Executive Director, Keving Xiong, moved to the Twin Cities to become a member of SOY in 2006. Xiong had read an article about SOY in the Hmong Times and decided to move to Minnesota to join the organization at the age of 25. After recognizing both the need for queer Hmong community and the strength of the early social support group, Xiong led SOY to be incorporated as a non-profit in 2006, formalizing its work in the Twin Cities and the Upper Midwest more broadly. At the core of the organization’s work was creating social spaces for Hmong and other Asian Pacific Islander LGBTQ people to meet and build community. One of their flagship events was “SOY Stories,” an opportunity for community members to come together to share and listen to coming out stories. They also held overnight retreats, hosted a formal Hmong Asian Pacific Islander LGBTQ Support Group for youth ages 18-24, and regularly participated in Pride festivities and political actions throughout the Twin Cities. Their annual event, the SOY New Year celebrated each March was started in a garage according to their now defunct website. “SOY New Year started out as a group of cis, gay Hmong men gathering together to celebrate their marginalized identities in a garage. Now, it is one of the largest events Shades of Yellow hosts to celebrate all LGBTQ Hmong, Asian and/or Pacific Islander (HAPI) identities. SOY 2013 New Year Committee, Leadership Team, and Keynote Speaker Esera Tuaolo.University of Minnesota Libraries Over 400 LGBTQ HAPI folks and allies from across the nation come to celebrate SOY’s queer version of the Hmong New Year.” The Twin Cities served as a connection point for Hmong LGBTQ people to gather from around the country and SOY New Year is a primary to understand the impact of local-level organizing within a broader national context. Although the organization shuttered in 2017, it is crucial to celebrate the history of organizations that have made a broad impact on creating a more inclusive LGBTQ community in the Upper Midwest and nationally. From the Queer Archives is a monthly post dedicated to LGBTQ history by culling queer and trans history from archival materials across the United States. Reckon focuses especially in the Midwest, a region where the experiences, contributions, and struggles of queer people and communities have been overlooked in historical narratives. This series is critical in our current political and cultural moment where LGBTQ history, books, and representation are being removed from schools and public libraries. It is through historical visibility that LGBTQ people can understand this moment and themselves as part of a long legacy of queer and trans community-building. Aiden M. Bettine is a trans archivist and historian. He is the Curator of the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota Libraries, the co-founder of Late Night Copies Press, a Minneapolis-based micropress that prints on photocopiers, and founder of the LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library, a volunteer-led community archives & lending library in Iowa City. He specializes in researching and writing about queer and trans history throughout the Midwest.

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culture

Harvard student becomes 1st active-duty U.S. Air Force officer to win Miss America title

U.S. Air Force Second Lt. Madison Marsh has a new title: Miss America 2024. Marsh, a graduate student at Harvard University, is the first active-duty service member to win the national competition, CBS News reported, citing the the Air Force. Marsh, who was crowned Miss Colorado in 2023, graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2023 with a degree in physics, according to her official Miss Colorado biography. She represented the Rocky Mountain State in the national pageant on Sunday night, according to published reports. According to her biography, Marsh currently is a graduate intern at the Harvard Medical School, where where she’s studying how to utilize artificial intelligence to detect pancreatic cancer. It’s an effort that has family ties. In 2018, following her mother’s death from pancreatic cancer, Marsh founded the Whitney Marsh Foundation in her memory. The foundation has since raised more than a quarter-million dollars, according to her biography. Marsh, who was awarded a Truman Scholarship, is pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, according to her biography. Last month, Marsh told fellow airmen at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada that she was " trying to make it a positive thing for the Air Force, for everyone,” CBS News reported In an interview with the Air Force Institute of Technology, Marsh called her Miss Colorado win “surreal.” The “Miss America organization that I’m a part of now is all focused on what you can provide for the community through your social impact, making sure that you have a stellar resume, that you’re good at public speaking, that you can connect with people and are empowered to lead in other ways that’s not just about you,” Marsh continued. “It’s an awesome experience to bring both sides of the favorite parts of my life together and hopefully make a difference for others to be able to realize that you don’t have to limit yourself,” Marsh said. “In the military, it’s an open space to really lead in the way that you want to lead - in and out of uniform. I felt like pageants, and specifically winning Miss Colorado, was a way to truly exemplify that and to set the tone to help make other people feel more comfortable finding what means most to them.”

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culture

Westfield Intermediate School showcases student leadership team, activities

WESTFIELD — At the School Committee meeting on Dec. 18, Westfield Intermediate School Principal Gregory Miller introduced some of the students in the newly formed peer leadership club to talk about their school. Miller said the idea for the club came from reading interventionist Joann Roselli, the peer leadership club adviser, who asked what could be done for the students who have been achieving academically, doing the right thing in the classroom and who show a lot of potential for leadership. He said teachers in the school selected 25 sixth graders to form the club to learn some leadership skills and use them to help other students in the school.

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As Flames Surged, Order Prevailed Inside a Japan Airlines Jet

As smoke filled the cabin of Japan Airlines Flight 516 after its fiery landing in Tokyo on Tuesday, the sound of a child’s voice rose above the din of confusion onboard. “Please, let us off quickly!” the child pleaded, using a polite form of Japanese despite the fear washing over the passengers as flight attendants began shouting instructions. In the minutes that followed, even as the flames that would eventually engulf the JAL plane flickered outside the windows, order held. The attendants evacuated all 367 passengers through the three exit doors deemed safest, sending them down the emergency slides one by one, with no major injuries. Most left behind everything but the phones that would capture the harrowing scenes for the world. While a number of factors aided what many have called a miracle at Haneda Airport — a well-trained crew of 12; a veteran pilot with 12,000 hours of flight experience; advanced aircraft design and materials — the relative absence of panic onboard during the emergency procedure perhaps helped the most. “Even though I heard screams, mostly people were calm and didn’t stand up from their seats but kept sitting and waiting,” said Aruto Iwama, a passenger who gave a video interview to the newspaper The Guardian. “That’s why I think we were able to escape smoothly.”

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Public should value qualities that define police officers today (Commentary)

From all of us at the Springfield Police Department, both sworn and civilians, we wish all of you a very merry, safe and healthy Christmas! We have continued to be busy here. Unfortunately the gun violence continues and although it has been targeted violence, it still continues to rip loved ones and families apart. It is sad to see most of the major cities have record high number of homicides for 2023. The problem is the same throughout the country, so the answer lies in what changed for all of us. There is no magic potion or single answer. I will continue to fight for incarceration of repeat violent offenders, when they are not held accountable for their violent actions by returning to our streets continuing their senseless, violent actions. They also become retaliatory targets for those they offended. The community re-entry programs are useful for those ready and willing to change and accept these services. The lucrative drug markets and lack of consequences for serious offenses just continue to feed the problem. Officers in training: The police academy is in full swing and we are at about 28 recruits when we needed about 50. The problem there is multifaceted as well, mostly due to a lack of respect and incentives for the profession itself. Changing that needs to start somewhere around eighth or ninth grade, where the students are shown exactly what police officers are made of. They have a horrible misconception of our job by the time they graduate high school. We are reaching out to our schools, our community partners and job fairs, but the preconceived notion has to be changed. Helping others: We pulled some resources together and thanks to the Greater Springfield Credit Union, Col. Kerry Gilpin (Ret.), and Sheriff Cocchi we were able to put a wish list together for some children at the Grey House. The recruits wrapped and labeled the presents and joined us in giving them their gifts on a cold rainy Sunday morning. We also obtained names from a few local parishes and we will help some seniors with prepared meals and other families in need with groceries to prepare their holiday feast. We have been teaching about 80 kids to skate on Saturday afternoons. The cadets at the station are collecting toys and coats for kids. I watched a cool video of some officers who brought home a family’s elf on the shelf as he apparently ran away into the woods, (well times were tough this year and he was missing). The project “364 Gives,” named for patrolman’s union local, has distributed thousands of dollars to charity. I bring all this up because we believe letting the community know the kind of human beings our police officers are here in the city — and that this is what makes this profession so great. As I told the recruits, respect doesn’t come from putting on a badge, it comes from your behavior and treatment of others. When you are sworn in as a police officer, certain responsibilities come with it, but not just law enforcement responsibility. The community needs us to be mentors and role models now more than ever. This is no time for us to feel sorry for ourselves. Quite the opposite, it is time to step it up. Show young people what a chance you have to change people’s lives and make them better every time we respond to a call. Be the example that changes a young person’s attitude toward law enforcement and encourage them to look at the career for their own future. Police officers are some of the most compassionate, patient and understanding people I know. I don’t think that is how we are portrayed. I’m sure it’s not how many teenagers think of us. What a difference a police officer can make in someone’s life on almost a daily basis. The responsibility of being able to make a quick life-or-death decision, to risk your life for someone you have never met, to make an arrest of a member of the family as the children stand there screaming and crying are all necessary parts of our job. The majority of our job is preventing bad things from happening, enforcing laws for the good of society and solving problems for those too angry, or influenced by drugs or alcohol, or mental illness, to get out of a terrible situation. This holiday season, we ask for prayers and your help to let those who dislike, misunderstand or insult us understand and get to know us. These acts will start to turn the tide and will go a long way in recruitment and retention of officers. Condolences: My condolences and prayers to Commissioner William Fitchet (Ret.) on the passing of his wife Shirley and to Deputy Chief Robert McFarlin (Ret.) on the passing of his wife Carol. Prayers to the Mawaka family on the passing of Laura, who was always at our memorial services for her father Paul, a Springfield officer killed in the line of duty. Cheryl C. Clapprood is the superintendent of the Springfield Police Department.

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culture

Mattel Has a New Cherokee Barbie. Not Everyone Is Happy About It.

A Barbie doll in the likeness of Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be elected chief of the Cherokee Nation, has been hailed by tribal citizens. It’s also been lamented for its inaccuracies. An event held Tuesday in Tahlequah, Okla., marked the anniversary of Ms. Mankiller becoming chief in 1985 and celebrated her Barbie doll. Mattel, the company that produces Barbie dolls, announced the new toy last month as part of the “Inspiring Women” series that includes the conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall, the journalist Ida B. Wells and the writer Maya Angelou. The doll’s release has been met with some criticism. The doll itself portrays Ms. Mankiller, who died in 2010, with dark hair, wearing a turquoise dress and carrying a basket, a depiction that Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said was “thoughtful” and “well done.” However, he noted that some in the community said the doll’s basket wasn’t authentically Cherokee.

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culture

El hombre ms feliz del mundo comparte tres reglas para la vida

Matthieu Ricard es un monje budista ordenado y autor de libros de éxito internacional sobre el altruismo, los derechos de los animales, la felicidad y la sabiduría. Sus esfuerzos humanitarios llevaron a que Francia, su tierra natal, le otorgara la Orden Nacional del Mérito. (La residencia principal de Ricard es un monasterio nepalí). Fue el intérprete de francés del Dalai Lama y tiene un doctorado en genética celular. A principios de la década de 2000, investigadores de la Universidad de Wisconsin descubrieron que el cerebro de Ricard producía ondas gamma —que se han relacionado con el aprendizaje, la atención y la memoria— a niveles tan pronunciados que los medios lo nombraron “el hombre más feliz del mundo”. También llegó tarde a nuestra cita por Zoom, y eso me estaba volviendo loco. ¿No recibió mi correo electrónico de confirmación? ¿Por qué no había enviado un correo electrónico para avisar que llegaba tarde? ¡Yo tenía plazos! ¡Plazos ajustados! ¡Mi agenda cuidadosamente planificada se estaba yendo al infierno! Bueno, todo salió bien, como iba a salir desde un principio. Claramente, tenía mucho que aprender sobre cómo domar la mente. “No debes desanimarte tan rápido”, dijo Ricard, cuyas memorias, Notebooks of a Wandering Monk, se publicaron este año. “No puedes convertirte en un experto tocando el piano ahora mismo. Estas habilidades toman tiempo”. Bien, he estado meditando dos veces al día durante probablemente 15 años y siento que he mejorado mi capacidad para controlar mis pensamientos y emociones en lugar de dejar que estos me controlen a mí. Pero aun así, a veces camino frente a un espejo y tengo un destello extremo de autodesprecio. O me inquieto por una tontería, como encontrar un sitio para estacionar. ¿Esas reacciones desaparecerán algún día? Pues sí. Claro que sí. Sabes, una vez estuve en el India Today Conclave*. Me dijeron: “¿Puedes darnos los tres secretos de la felicidad?”. Les dije: “Primero, no hay ningún secreto. En segundo lugar, no hay solo tres puntos. Tercero, lleva toda una vida conseguirla, pero es lo más valioso que puedes hacer”. Estoy feliz de sentir que voy por buen camino. No puedo imaginar sentir odio o querer que alguien sufra. *Un evento anual similar a TED que se lleva a cabo en India y que reúne a los principales pensadores de una variedad de campos. No es lo mejor que se pueda decir, pero puedo imaginar fácilmente querer que ciertas personas sufran. ¿Cómo se supone que debemos lidiar con gracia con nuestros polos opuestos en un mundo que cada vez está más polarizado? Quiero decir, el Dalai Lama podría hablar con Vladimir Putin todo lo que quisiera, pero Putin no va a decir: “Tu compasión me ha cambiado”. Una vez, hace mucho tiempo, alguien me preguntó, ¿quién es la persona con la que te gustaría pasar 24 horas a solas? Dije que Sadam Husein. Dije: “Tal vez, tal vez, algún pequeño cambio en él podría ser posible”. Cuando hablamos de compasión, quieres que todos encuentren la felicidad. Sin excepción. No puedes simplemente hacer eso por aquellos que son buenos contigo o cercanos a ti. Tiene que ser universal. Puedes decir que Putin y Bashar al Assad son la escoria de la humanidad, y con razón. Pero la compasión se trata de remediar el sufrimiento y su causa. ¿Cómo luciría eso? Puedes desear que se cambie el sistema que permitió que alguien así surgiera. A veces visualizo a Donald Trump yendo a hospitales, cuidando personas, llevando migrantes a su casa. Puedes desear que la crueldad, la indiferencia, la codicia desaparezcan de la mente de estas personas. Eso es compasión; eso es ser imparcial.

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culture

Thanks to grant, Springfield Museums are free on first Wednesdays of the month

SPRINGFIELD — When Michelle Murphy, vice president of development and marketing at the Springfield Museums, walked the grounds of the museums Wednesday, she said she observed a wide range of age groups reflected in the visitors. Murphy said the visitors included a group of mothers from Connecticut who planned a field trip with their children and a pair of adults who hadn’t been to the museums in years. When they heard about the museums’ “First Free Wednesdays” program on social media, they marked their calendars to be in attendance. There was also “a lightness of spirit,” Murphy said, which “illustrates the idea of having no barrier to entry” of the museums. Thanks to a $800,000 grant, the Springfield Museums are providing free admission on the first Wednesday of every month through the end of 2026. Both the Springfield Museums and the Smith College Museum of Art are two recipients included on a list of 64 museums partnered with the Art Bridges Foundation Access for All grant. The foundation announced in October it was distributing $40 million to museums with the goal “to increase access to museums across America and foster engagement with local audiences” over the next three years. Murphy said when the Springfield Museums were invited to apply for the grant, they decided that the best way to increase access for people in the local community was by addressing museum admissions. “The gift of this grant removes the barrier for people who may want to join, but can’t because of expense,” Murphy said. While the COVID-19 pandemic brought museum attendance to record lows, with many museums going digital during the height of the shelter-in-place orders, both institutions reported an uptick in attendance and excitement around their new initiatives. While the Springfield Museums have been doing a lot of media outreach since they first received the grant, in mid-October, Murphy said when asking visitors how they heard about the initiative, many noted seeing the news on the museums’ social media outlets. The Smith College Museum of Art has seen a similar resurgence in museum attendance. The museum was able to eliminate all admission fees starting last year as a gift from Smith College alumnae Jan Fullgraf Golann and Jane Timken, but the grant from the Art Bridges Foundation provided an additional $280,000 to help expand museum access through extended hours and additional community engagement. Jessica Nicoll, the museum’s executive director and chief curator, said that beyond being able to extend the museum’s hours of operations, the grant has allowed them to “listen to make sure our exhibits are meeting community needs.” Nicoll said that the return of the previously popular Second Fridays program at the museum — a designated time when museum admissions were waived — has now developed into “cultivating the museum as a social space.” The museum has also initiated a similar model for campus students on the first Thursdays of each month. On both of these days, the museum provides activities, food, art supplies, and even pays for guest speaker fees to engage with both the Smith community and the general public. On average, the Smith College Museum of Art has an average of 32,000 visitors a year. During the height of the pandemic, its numbers dropped to 16,000 visitors. When tracking attendance on the college’s last fiscal year of July 1-June 30, Nicoll saw that numbers increased to 21,015 and is seeing an increase of about 40% since October. This would put attendance back around 30,000 to 40,000 visitors annually, which Nicoll said “feels more normal.” Thanks to the Access for All grant, Nicoll said the museum will have the opportunity to try different things out and really listen and meet what the local community needs. At the Springfield Museums, Murphy agrees and said the grant allows the museums to make an impact on a community level. “It is fulfilling,” she said. “The grant is a great example of how an idea in investing in something that makes it easier for people really comes to fruition.”

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culture

Charles Stuart and Carol Stuart's backstory compared to Camelot

A photo of Charles and Carol Stuart is projected on Revere Beach, near where the pair met at the former site of the Driftwood restaurant on Revere Beach Boulevard. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) Autoplay audio Chuck Stuart climbed into the barber’s chair and sat quietly looking at his reflection in the mirror. Hairstylist Will Zecco met his eyes in the glass. Chuck, I just — just let me say this, Will recalls saying, stammering at the inadequacy of the words. I am so, so sorry for your loss. Chuck gazed back, unblinking, Will remembered. The 29-year-old had just gotten out of the hospital that day, Dec. 5, 1989 — six weeks after his 911 call reporting that a gunman had jumped into his car and shot him, and his wife, Carol, as they drove home from a birthing class. Now, his wife was dead; the couple’s first-born gone, too. The person responsible, according to police, was locked up and languishing in jail, but prosecutors had held off on charging him until Chuck was well enough to ID him in a lineup. The story felt like the only thing on TV. I can only imagine what it would be like, if my wife and daughter — if something happened to them, the hairstylist continued. Will had been cutting Chuck’s hair for two years at his pricey salon just off Newbury Street, a tony stretch of Boston akin, on a much smaller scale, to Fifth Avenue. Every few weeks, Chuck came in, in his dress shirt and tie and asked for a men’s regular: clean cut, over the ears, above the collar, square neckline. Chuck worked a few doors down at Edward F. Kakas & Sons, selling lavish fur coats to the jet set, and he looked like money, somewhere between Hollywood and JFK, with his square jaw and piercing eyes. Usually, Chuck was smiling, making easy, impersonal small-talk, but today he was almost mute. Newbury Street, which runs from Massachusetts Avenue to the Public Garden, remains one of Boston's most exclusive shopping districts as it was in 1990. (Lane Turner/Globe Staff) Shock, Will figured. Will had been half-listening to the news all morning, so he’d known Chuck was being released, but he was surprised when the receptionist told him Chuck had made an appointment for that afternoon. Will had ushered him into a closet-sized private room at the back of the salon, where now he was lamely finishing the little speech he’d prepared for Chuck. I don’t know what you’re going through, he concluded, but I am so, so sorry. Will wasn’t sure what he was expecting Chuck to say. If it was him, he’d cry. But Chuck didn’t answer. His eyes shifted back to his own reflection, and silence settled like frost between them. Will waited. And waited. Chuck raised his hand and pointed at the side of his head. See these gray hairs over here? he said. Can you cover these up? From the moment the first TV station aired Chuck’s desperate 911 call both Chuck and Carol had become characters in a national drama. He was the brave husband, begging the EMTs that found him to take care of his wife first. She was the expectant mother, swelling with hope and child. Early on, the Boston Herald had christened Chuck and Carol “the Camelot Couple,” in reference to JFK and Jackie, and the moniker had stuck. Their shooting was a parable about good and evil and the rot in the heart of the American city. But Chuck and Carol weren’t characters. They were real people. Christine Baratta knew Carol way back, before the headlines, when Carol was a teenage waitress at a seafood joint on Revere Beach. The Driftwood was an institution on Boston’s North Shore, frequented by a who’s who of politicians and sports heroes and jockeys from the nearby racetrack. It had 100 tables, and on weekends you had to know the maitre d’ to have any hope of getting one. Carol had started there as a bus girl, but as soon as she turned 18 — old enough to serve liquor — she got promoted, leaving the bus girl position vacant. That’s how Christine met her: She was hired to fill Carol’s shoes. Carol Stuart. Which, of course, was impossible. Everybody loved Carol. She was a ball of energy, barely 5’1”, talking a mile a minute, pounding Diet Cokes, and working harder than all the boys. In photographs, Carol is all smile, and when people say she was beautiful you can see it. But that’s not really what they mean. Carol had a presence. She was funny like Lucille Ball was funny — fearless, unself-conscious, wide open. When Carol laughed she threw her head back; when she was mad, it was right there on her face. It made her easy to be with. Christine was 14 years old and in awe of this newly minted adult. Right away, as the only two young women working at the Driftwood, they became close. Carol gave Christine rides home, then taught her to drive. She showed Christine how to apply eyeshadow and fill out college applications. They picked out Christine’s junior prom dress together, and Carol persuaded the boy Christine liked to take her to the dance. 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript There’s one story in particular that Christine likes to tell about Carol. For decades now, it’s been recounted in the papers as a funny urban legend about Carol’s firecracker personality. After Carol died, the staff at the Driftwood told it this way: One night, a big party stiffed her with a lousy tip, so she chased them outside and threw it back. It was the rarest sort of showdown, the shift worker versus the wealthy diner. But it’s not exactly true. Christine saw what really happened. Carol did get stiffed, and she did follow her party outside. But she didn’t tell them off or throw anything. She just put the tip money down on the hood of the car and walked away. When the rest of the staff went nuts over this other, crazier version, Christine asked Carol if she was going to correct them, and Carol just laughed. No, she said. I want them to think I’m a badass. And here’s the part of the story Christine loves the most, the part that really captures the Carol she knew. At the end of the night, when Carol gave Christine her share of the night’s tips, it was more money than Carol went home with herself. Never said a thing about it. It was at the Driftwood that Carol met Chuck. Chuck grew up in Revere, not far from the restaurant, in a three-bedroom house at the end of a cul-de-sac. He was the eldest son of six kids in a working-class Irish Catholic family, and his youngest brother, Matthew, worked at the Driftwood too, washing dishes. Their dad sold insurance, their mom was a homemaker, and they went to Mass every Sunday at the Church of the Immaculate Conception where Chuck served as an altar boy. Charles Stuart and Carol DiMaiti, shown in 1987, began dating after meeting at the Driftwood. But Chuck always dreamed of a better, more refined life. He told a story about himself that sounded good but wasn’t true: That he took the job as a cook at the Driftwood after blowing his knee out playing football at Brown University on a sports scholarship. He still looked like an athlete, though, tall and chiseled. He and Carol would catch each other’s eyes across the line. Carol’s dad, Giusto, tended bar at the Driftwood, and, by all accounts, he didn’t like Chuck much. Giusto was protective of Carol and so proud of her that he carried one of her straight-A report cards in his wallet. Theirs was an old-school Italian family that held big dinners on Sundays, and Carol was the baby. Chuck could be charming, but he was reserved — still water that might run deep. Carol fell for him hard, and that was it. On Christmas Eve in 1983, Chuck gave her a wallet embossed with her initials — but instead of the “D” for “DiMaiti,” it had an “S” for “Stuart.” Inside was a diamond ring. They married in ‘85. Carol graduated from Boston College with a degree in political science and went to Suffolk Law; Chuck got his job at Kakas Furs on Newbury Street. In 1987, they bought a little house with a hot tub and a pool on Harvest Road in the affluent town of Reading, where many of their neighbors commuted to white-collar jobs in Boston. Chuck and Carol were each moving further from their working-class roots. An employee at Kakas Furs adjusted the coats on the racks on Jan. 3, 1990. Chuck Stuart was general manager at the posh Newbury Street store, which sold lavish fur coats to the jet set. (Paul Benoit/Globe Staff) Kakas Furs, where Chuck hoped to become the manager, was a grand stone building; to enter, you had to be buzzed in. A scrappy guy from Revere could certainly look in the windows, but to get any further, he was going to need some polish. And Chuck had it. He wore sharp suits and leather shoes, and he spent his days gliding across the Oriental rugs in the showroom, sweet talking the upper crust. Carol got a job at an accounting firm and then a publishing house, and she put in long hours. But unlike Chuck, she never seemed like she was trying to leave her old life behind. She still brought her own lunch to work and ate in the lunchroom with the secretaries. On late nights, her dad would show up with pizzas for her and her colleagues. When they all went out after work, it was Carol at the bar belting out “Ain’t no mountain high enough” off-key at the top of her lungs and laughing until she cried. 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript To the outside world, Chuck and Carol appeared to have an ideal marriage. He took her to New York, to plays, to fancy restaurants, and he bought her beautiful jewelry. Of course, they fought — like any couple. Sometimes Carol, who felt everything deeply, would show up to work with red-rimmed eyes. But what her coworkers remember were not the details of the skirmishes, but the gorgeous long-stemmed roses that showed up in apology afterwards. They seemed to have a fairytale life, and when Carol got pregnant in 1989, the final piece fell into place. Having a family had always been her dream. After the murder, Carol’s pregnancy became the shocking centerpiece of the crime. But before it was a sensational headline, it was a private joy for Carol. She was a romantic, and the feeling of a new life growing in her belly was an almost sacred experience. She and Chuck decorated the nursery and signed up for a childbirth class at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They spent the evening of Oct. 23, 1989 — their last hour as Chuck and Carol — at that class at the Brigham, learning about what happens in the event of a caesarean section. Carol asked lots of questions and took scrupulous notes. Chuck sat beside her, pale and quiet, with what the other students assumed was a terrible case of nerves. A photograph of Evelyn DiMaiti at her daughter Carol's funeral in 1989 is projected outside of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Carol, who had just left a birthing class at the hospital, was taken back to the Brigham after being shot in nearby Mission Hill. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff) They left the Brigham around 8:30 p.m., and a few minutes later, Chuck called 911. “My wife’s been shot,” he said. “I’ve been shot.” Then came the ambulance gurneys, the clicks of photojournalists’ cameras, the crime scene tape. After that, they were the Camelot Couple. Once the Boston police arrested Willie Bennett in November of 1989, things quieted a bit. The police assault on Mission Hill eased. Some questions lingered, but the institutions did what they always do: City Hall demanded a swift result; the police booked a suspect; the media chronicled every dip and turn in the police-provided narrative. December in Boston that year was the coldest in more than a century. The Bruins were crushing it, on their way to the Stanley Cup Finals. And the Celtics were riding high, though Larry Bird’s superpowers were starting to fade. The Stuart story still dominated the newscasts and the papers, but it had been two months since Carol and Christopher died, and they didn’t always make page one anymore. Willie was jailed on charges that had nothing to do with the shooting. He was still the main suspect in the Stuart case, but no murder charges had been filed — yet. Around Christmas, Chuck booked another appointment with Will Zecco at the salon off Newbury Street. His gray was starting to show again, and now, he had an appointment at police headquarters to get ready for. He knew the media would be there, with their cameras, and he wanted to look good. This time, Will didn’t try to talk to Chuck — he found Chuck’s whole demeanor unnerving. He put Chuck back in the private room, put the dye on his head, and stepped out to wait for it to set. As he closed the door behind him, Will could see Chuck’s face reflected in the mirror. He was staring impassively into his own eyes. 00:00 00:00 Read the transcript Will didn’t know what to think of his longtime client. He had always liked Chuck. They had a rapport — or at least, Will thought they did. Now, he wasn’t so sure. During all those haircuts, all those conversations when Will had talked about his own wife and his child — Chuck had never once mentioned that he had a baby on the way. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. In fact, Will didn’t even realize Chuck was married, until he saw it on the news. Chuck arrived at police headquarters on Dec. 28, 1989, with his hair freshly colored and his jacket collar popped. He was there with his attorney to view the lineup, where he picked Willie Bennett — suspect number 3 — out of the row of eight Black men holding numbered placards. In an interview room after he made the identification, he told police he recognized Willie’s jawline and the shape of his ear. Chuck told detectives he was 99 percent sure that number 3 was the shooter. His right-side profile was a perfect match. But prosecutors still didn’t charge Willie with murder. There were rumors in news reports about Chuck’s identification being shaky. But the sources were anonymous and officials refused to comment. Rain-soaked attendees admired an ice sculpture at Copley Square during First Night festivities in Boston on Dec. 31, 1989. (Bill Greene/Globe Staff) In the waning days of December, Boston set aside the Stuart case to celebrate the New Year. “1989, going out with a song, a shimmy, and a splash!” declared one newscaster, before the camera panned to a 40-foot neon piano surrounded by dancing revelers on Boston Common. It had been a roller coaster of a year: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, that terrible night in Mission Hill. Dick Clark counted down, and the ball dropped, and the people screamed. It was 1990, a brand new decade, a fresh start. But up on the North Shore, the past was about to catch up with the Stuarts. On the evening of Jan. 3, 1990, the emergency phone at a Revere fire station where Chuck Stuart’s younger brother, Michael, worked as a firefighter recorded a volley of phone calls between the Stuart siblings. “Michael, we’re all meeting here, right now,” his sister Shelley says in one. Michael says he can’t get out of work, but Shelley tells him to talk to his boss. “It can’t be an emergency crisis at home?“ The recording is scratchy, but you can hear the heaviness in their voices. They both sound like they’ve been awake all night. “I suppose I could say that, but –” She cuts him off. “Say it, Mike. Because it is.” “What’s gonna happen?” he asks her. “We’re gonna tell Mom and Dad,” she says.

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culture

Beer Nut: Is beer fading?

Is beer fading? Over the past few weeks, I’ve written about both how beer fared in 2023 and some thoughts on what’s in store for 2024. While I remain cautiously optimistic overall, some clouds gathering on the horizon can still give me pause. One such specter was the focus of a recent story on Fox News Digital by Anders Hagstrom. The piece noted that Americans drank less beer in 2023 than any other year this century. No matter what the extenuating circumstances, that fact can’t be seen as a positive for beer fans. Of course, craft beer still only makes up a small percentage of the overall U.S. beer market. So part of the 2023 decline has to be blamed on the boycott against Bud Light. You might recall that the boycott was fueled by conservative reaction to Bud Light’s sponsorship agreement with transgender activist and social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. The brand celebrated Muvaney’s year of identifying as a woman by featuring cans with the influencer’s face. The backlash caused Bud Light’s sales to drop 30% from 2022. But even a dent in one brand, despite how big it is, certainly can’t account for beer hitting a 23-year low. As a recent story in the Washington Examiner noted, a shift in the tastes of younger generations is also eroding beer sales. The story quoted a survey by data firm MRI-Simmons that showed that Generation Z is less likely to imbibe alcohol at all: They drank the lowest amount of alcohol among legal adults in the country, with just 58% respondents saying they had consumed alcohol in the past six months and just 56% of that group had drunk actual beer. It seems obvious that the legalization of marijuana in many states has also pilfered some market share from beer. Again, the younger generation seems to be gravitating toward weed over booze. And predictions from market analysts say sales will not level off anytime soon, certainly not in 2024. But everything is relative: Considering beer enjoyed more than a decade of extremely robust sales, it can probably take a hit. And the main indicator of beer’s flatlining was pointed out in a Slate article midway last year: Beer sales aren’t horrible; it just has lost market share to other types of alcohol. Last year was the first time beer came in second place for market share: Spirits edged out beer 42.9% to 41.2% as far as market share. So let’s not think the sky is falling (and it certainly seems like Skye Vodka isn’t falling), but instead let’s keep celebrating the Golden Age of Beer we live in, by raising a glass – of beer, of course.

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culture

Susan Sarandons Most Controversial Roles Have Been Offscreen

For decades, Susan Sarandon’s acting career thrived alongside a robust interest in political activism, which often placed her well to the left even of Hollywood’s liberal mainstream. As she starred in films like “Bull Durham,” “Thelma & Louise” and “Dead Man Walking,” for which she won an Academy Award, she became a familiar, outspoken figure who appeared at rallies, took stances on issues at awards shows and made political endorsements. Over the years her brand of progressive politics led to clashes with others on the left, most notably in 2016, when she decided to back a Green Party candidate over Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose to Donald J. Trump. But her politics did not appear to have much impact on her career until last week, when Ms. Sarandon, 77, was dropped by United Talent Agency after she spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York held amid the Israel-Hamas war and said, “There are a lot of people that are afraid, afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.” Her remarks, first reported by The New York Post, struck a nerve at a moment when Hollywood was being divided by the war. Some in the industry were expressing alarm about rising antisemitism and felt that their community had not sufficiently expressed support for Israel after Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 captive on Oct. 7. But questions were also being raised about if and when political speech should affect a career, as others in the industry lost positions and acting jobs after criticizing Israel for killing thousands of civilians in Gaza.

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culture

This is the most popular candle scent in Massachusetts, according to The Loupe

It turns out most people in Massachusetts like their home to smell a little tart. Whether you prefer lavender, citrus or peppermint, there are so many ways in which you make your house smell good with a freshly lit candle. With what seems like endless possibilities, have you ever wondered what the most popular candle scent is in Massachusetts? Read More: Yankee Candle releases 5 new candles for 2023 holiday collection According to the lifestyle site The Loupe, the most popular candle scent in the Bay State is lemon. The website put together its list of “The Most Popular Candle Scent in Every U.S. State” by first putting together a list of 24 of the most popular candle scents from pumpkin spice and lavender to cotton and tobacco. Read More: Yankee Candle fully moves into Hatfield warehouse Staff then looked at which scent was the most searched on Google from November 2020 to November 2021 in each state. Two other states shared in Massachusetts’ love for lemon: Missouri and Tennessee. The most popular scent overall was pumpkin. You can see the whole list by clicking here.

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culture

A Swiss Home So Well Designed It Needs Just One Door

Because they planned to work from home, he carved out space for a dedicated office, in addition to a primary suite and a second bedroom. To make it easier to have business meetings as well as parties with friends, he designed a series of folding and pivoting floor-to-ceiling panels that look more like movable walls than traditional swing doors. One sliding panel can conceal the primary suite, while another can conceal the living room and kitchen. From the foyer, pivoting panels — which blend into walls paneled in stained birch plywood — lead to the office, the second bedroom, a bathroom and a laundry room. “We only have one door, and that’s our front door,” Mr. Claes said. To give the space character, they chose materials rich in texture and patina. The narrow-strip oak floor, for example, looks as if it has always been there. “I told my wooden floor maker that I wanted it to look like a New York bike shop, with stains, oil and life,” Mr. Claes said. “It’s weathered.”

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culture

A Boston holiday party was held. Racial outrage ensued.

A seemingly innocuous holiday party is not usually headline news, but this week’s gathering for a local “Electeds of Color” group went viral after an e-mail gaffe for the soiree, which was first reported by The Boston Herald. On Wednesday, a group of lawmakers and their significant others gathered at Parkman House, a city-owned mansion on Beacon Hill. There were a few city councilors, some state representatives, a state senator, a sheriff, a district attorney, and the mayor of Boston, who was the host. Warm affirmations were shared among the various pols and their partners. The food was catered from Chinatown. There was no live music. The attire was mostly business; many of the men wore suits. Advertisement Specifically, a City Hall aide mistakenly sent an invitation to the entire Boston City Council, including the body’s seven white members. Shortly after, the aide apologized via e-mail. The party was intended for lawmakers of color. That faux-pas has provided grist for an online outrage machine and garnered international headlines. Much of the wrath hinged on the concept of “reverse racism” and complaints about notions of diversity and equity. For State Representative Russell Holmes, a Mattapan Democrat who is one of the founders of the “Electeds of Color” group, much of the reaction to the event is underpinned “by pure hatred.” “This is an annual event that we’ve had,” said Holmes. Holmes said he formed the “Electeds of Color” group about 13 years ago, along with former city councilor Tito Jackson, and former state representative Carlos Henriquez. The idea was to improve communication and foster collaboration among lawmakers who represented communities of color, said Holmes. He said the Boston-based group came about after the three pols attended a meeting and were unaware of where each of them was positioned on a certain issue. Advertisement Holmes said the group tries to get Boston lawmakers of color on the same page, whether it’s about a response to police brutality, open political offices, or the redistricting process. “We mentor each other, we care for each other,” said Holmes. He said that the annual holiday party is not about exclusion of white people, noting that lawmakers’ partners are invited, regardless of their race. He also noted that identity-based political groups are not unusual, that there are Black, Latino, and women caucuses. “There are pockets of us that want to align around our issues,” he said. The reality is that Boston is still a segregated place, he said. “When you hear Mattapan, you think of someone Black, when you hear South Boston, you think of someone white,” he said. “You can literally racialize the entire city.” He added, “The true undergirding of this is the true segregation of the city.” In City Hall, it’s hard to find anyone who is willing to say the party was offensive or a problem on the record. “I don’t have any objection to the mayor hosting a party for electeds of color,” said Councilor Liz Breadon, who is white. “I have plenty of things to work on and to worry about before the end of the year but this is not one of them,” said Councilor Gabriela “Gigi” Coletta, who also identifies as white. Councilor Frank Baker, who is white and long considered to be the most conservative member of the body, focused Friday on the blowback directed at the City Hall aide, saying such vitriol was “not proper, not correct.” Advertisement Baker did note that Parkman House is a public space where everyone should be welcome, and referenced a part of the city that was for a long time a bastion of the white working class, saying, “If the Southie electeds had a party, everyone would be invited.” Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune, a Haitian-American who is poised to become the council’s next president, considered the matter to be a non-issue, saying Friday that she is “befuddled and saddened at the extent that this has become a story.” Louijeune, who was in attendance at the party, said that people of color and women are among the groups that have been historically excluded in the halls of power. Glass ceilings in local politics are still being shattered by people from those groups, she said. And it’s important for those groups to carve out spaces where people can “be in community” with one another. That, she said, is important for “our professional and personal lives.” Structural racism means that there are issues unique to communities of color, she said. Boston itself has a hard-earned national reputation as a racist place and a long history of segregation that has fostered present-day realities including a stubborn racial wealth gap. People’s grievances over the holiday party, she said, are “misplaced.” “I’m aghast that this has even become an issue,” she said. Advertisement For Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who was at the party, the reaction to the social gathering was telling. He said the vitriol speaks to the reason behind “creating shared spaces for affirmation and support.” “This is why the Elected of Color group exists,” he said in a tweet. “This is why policing the joy, togetherness, or a holiday party for members of color, is a telling position to take.” Another lawmaker who attended the party, state Representative Christopher Worrell said in a statement that “a well-established caucus of elected officials were celebrating their shared work during the holiday season.” “There is nothing wrong with that,” he said. “But there is something deeply distressing when words like ‘segregation’ are casually thrown around by national right wing media to describe contrived outrage.” State Representative Brandy Fluker Oakley, who also was at the party, said in a statement that she knows “firsthand the need for places to gather in fellowship with other people of color who have shared experience in this role.” ”The backlash to this event is absurd and merely a distraction from the real issues we’re facing in the Commonwealth,” she said. Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, on the night of the party this week, said the group offered a “space to build coalitions and represent community,“ and said she was proud to host many holiday parties. For Paul Parara, a local radio host known as Notorious VOG, the fact that Wu, who hosted the party, is the first Bostonian of color and woman elected mayor in the city’s history, explained much of the outrage. Other mayors, as well as Massachusetts governors, have hosted events “specifically for communities of color and it’s never been a problem.” Advertisement “It’s the same white grievance card,” he said Friday. “There’s nothing to it.” Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.

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culture

You Can Buy Hemingways Typewriter. But Would You Use It?

Like when Mr. Soboroff backed out of a deal with the actress Angelina Jolie, refusing to part with Hemingway’s typewriter after she agreed to pay $250,000 for it. While reports at the time indicated Ms. Jolie was the one to walk away, Mr. Soboroff said he canceled the transaction when he learned that she intended to give the machine to her husband, Brad Pitt, for him to use. Mr. Soboroff might have allowed Mr. Pitt to bang away on Harold Robbins’s or Mae West’s machines, he said, but Hemingway’s typewriter was sacred. “At that time, I could have used the money,” Mr. Soboroff said. “But nobody’s touching that one. Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter? No chance.” Now someone else will get the chance to own it, because after two decades bearing the responsibility of protecting, insuring, exhibiting and shipping the typewriters all over the country to promote their legacies, Mr. Soboroff, 75, no longer has the energy for it. And he could still use the money.

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Pope.L, Provocative Performance Artist, Dies at 68

Pope.L, an uncompromising conceptual and performance artist who explored themes of race, class and what he called “have-not-ness,” and who was best known for crawling the length of Broadway in a Superman costume, died on Saturday at his home in Chicago. He was 68. The death was confirmed by his gallery, Mitchell-Innes & Nash. No cause was given. By 2001, when he began “The Great White Way: 22 Miles, 9 Years, 1 Street, Broadway, New York,” as the performance was ultimately titled, Pope.L was already well known in the art world for a career that comprised every medium from writing to photography, from painting to sculpture, and from performance to straight theater. His abiding themes were the intersecting difficulties and distinctions that he experienced as a Black American and a son of the working class. But the impact of his work came less from the literal sense of its surface contents, which could be difficult to decode, than from its sheer intensity, and from his willingness to say and do things others wouldn’t. Especially when performing, he used his own bodily presence to shock viewers back into their own.

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The Commonwealth Restaurant at UMass brings even more elevated taste to No. 1 college dining

Editor’s Note: How can a dining program that serves tens of thousands of students and staff each day churn out award-winning cuisine that has been recognized by Princeton Review for having the best campus food for seven years in a row? MassLive visited the UMass Amherst campus, interviewed chefs, tasted the food and toured the kitchens to find out how the UMass Dining program became a dining dynasty. While the campus dining program at UMass Amherst has been ranked No. 1 for seven years running by the Princeton Review — many may be surprised to learn than within its newest dining hall lies a full service restaurant serving up food matching or exceeding the school’s already stellar food credentials. Located on the third floor of the reconstructed Worcester Dining Commons, The Commonwealth Restaurant offers an “elevated” dining experience in a more intimate and refined space, just one story up from flocks of hungry students traversing the main dining hall below. Bob Bankert, one of UMass’ executive chefs, oversees the university’s four dining commons, which serve around 50,000 meals daily. Bankert primarily works in menus and recipe development for the dining halls, but also curates the Commonwealth Restaurant’s seasonally-rotating menu, which changes every couple of months. He joined UMass in 2014, drawn from Newport, Rhode Island’s high-end restaurants and resorts, thanks to UMass’ growing reputation for its use of quality ingredients, commitment to local and sustainable food purchasing, and incorporation of global cuisines, he said. One key to UMass holding onto its No. 1 dining status is keeping the campus’ menus “fresh and exciting,” according to Bankert. This includes empowering dining hall staff — who hail from all corners of the world — to bring their family and cultural recipes into its food fare, as well as looking to incorporate and cater to the home flavors and tastes of students who may come from abroad, Bankert added. During a visit this fall by MassLive, Bankert prepared a smattering of dishes and specialties available for order. Small plates included items like the fried garlic and herb cheese curds served with locally grown Brussels sprouts over a highly rich and concentrated tomato confit sauce cooked down with garlic and olive oil into a purée, Bankert said. Current lunch items include handhelds like a traditional Mexican-style “cemita” sandwich made vegetarian friendly with breaded oyster mushrooms swapped in for the usual chicken milanese. UMass Dining on MassLive TikTok: Bankert then tops the cemita with a spicy guacamole sauce, pickled onions and cilantro and it is served on a brioche bun with melted Oaxaca queso alongside fries. And for dinner entrées, Bankert prepared its restaurant’s current pan roasted Norwegian salmon, served with its skin crisped over a lemon cauliflower purée with sautéed kale, delicata squash, fried scallions and a cranberry gastrique. Pan roasted Norwegian salmon at the Commonwealth Restaurant at UMass Amherst's Worcester Dining Commons.Chris McLaughlin Bankert said he sees UMass as a “trendsetter” in the food industry, typically being years ahead of the curve and larger trends in sustainability, local produce and plant-based cuisine, with a vision to consistently “set the standard.” “It’s definitely caught on that we’re here,” said Valerie Maurer, the manager of the Commonwealth Restaurant. “We’re seeing a lot of [UMass] hotel business, a lot of new faces, which excites me tremendously.” For Maurer, there’s a sense of familiarity with the restaurant’s usual clientele — saying she knows many returning UMass faculty and staff members on a first name basis during the lunch rush — but she hopes to continuously grow its dinner guests. The crowd can range beyond faculty members to include visiting parents, alumni, community members and even students, particularly on Thursday and Friday afternoons and evenings, the restaurant’s staff said. UMass Hotel guests looking for full service dining can also take a five minute jaunt to reach the restaurant from their hotel room, she added. “One of my favorite parts about it is just seeing the excitement on their faces when [guests are] here for the first time,” Maurer said. “They almost act like they don’t believe it. Like when they come in they’re like ‘Oh my God, there really is a restaurant here.’” Maurer credits the Commonwealth Restaurant’s relocation to the new Worcester with steadily increasing the foot traffic and visibility of the eatery, which was rebranded from “The University Club” at its former home in the oldest building not only on campus, but also in all of Amherst. Condensed from six dining areas spread across two separate, but adjoined, buildings at the 18th-century-era Stockbridge and Homestead Houses — the Commonwealth Restaurant offers one contiguous setup for up to 46 guests at a time with views out to campus and notable buildings like the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, Maurer noted. Worcester Dining Commons at UMass Amherst. (Hoang 'Leon' Nguyen / The Republican)Leon Nguyen She added transitioning to the sleek, new environment has resolved several previous challenges posed from working in a centuries-old historic space. “I feel like it’s kind of more like a quality than quantity thing here,” Maurer said. “It doesn’t have the rustic charm of a 300-year-old building, but has the exquisite, new, clean, modern [feel] of a three year old building.” Being connected to the larger Worcester Dining Commons allows the restaurant to have more flexibility and resources in terms of its food and drink selections, Maurer noted. She cited a “lavender lemon martini” the Commonwealth Restaurant ran seasonally last spring, sourcing the ingredients from the nearby UMass food installations. “I had a gorgeous purple lavender martini on the menu all spring,” Maurer said. “Which maybe I wouldn’t have the ability to purchase all that stuff just for one drink on the menu [before].” At the bar this fall, Maurer prepares drinks such as the restaurant’s “autumn spritz” mocktail served at lunch, an alcoholic pumpkin spice sangria served at dinner, and a returning seasonal favorite hot malt apple cider with a brown sugar coated rim sourced with fruit grown on UMass’ Cold Spring Orchard in Belchertown. A fresh glass of seasonal apple cider prepared by manager Valerie Maurer at the Commonwealth Restaurant at UMass Amherst.Chris McLaughlin Maurer explained that the front of the house is entirely student run, and that thanks to the nature of the restaurant’s clientele, several of these students have found networking opportunities with those who come through the restaurant as well. The Commonwealth Restaurant is open Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Maurer said while reservations are not required, they are encouraged, and for larger group reservations, they should reach out by email or phone in advance.

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Caught on video: Sheep escape from manger at Boston church on Christmas Eve, police say

BOSTON — Two sheep were temporarily on the lam when they escaped from a Boston church on Christmas Eve during religious festivities, police said. The black and white sheep, who were not named, were participating in a live nativity scene being set up at St. Mary’s Church when they escaped around 3 p.m. Sunday on Boston Street, police said. One white sheep was caught on cell phone video galloping on a sidewalk near Fr. Songin Way. Caught on video: Sheep escape from manger at Boston church on Christmas Eve, police say (Cody Fitzgerald) The sheep could be seen in the video walking into traffic and then strolling right past a Boston Police cruiser. Sheep escape from manger at Boston church on Christmas Eve, police say Numerous police cruisers responded to the scene to corral the sheep. Several bystanders watched as the sheep tried to avoid police. Luckily, the pair were unharmed. Caught on video: Sheep escape from manger at Boston church on Christmas Eve, police say (Cody Fitzgerald) With the help of Boston officers, the sheep were returned to the church manger before Mass began, police said. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2023 Cox Media Group

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How Do You Respond to a Young Person Upset by Racist Jokes at School?

Within that small cocoon of privacy, I’ve had a young woman sob in my arms after saying: “Those girls you wrote about must have felt so heard. But nobody listened when it happened to me!” I’ve heard the stories of young people who were the targets of everything from racist remarks to violent bullying. I’ve fielded questions about free speech and the role anger plays in the emotional health of victims. “I did not want to write about my experiences with racism,” Jeena Ann Kidambi, an eighth grader from Framingham, Mass., wrote in an essay about the girls, Ana and A., featured in the Times article because they were targeted by the racist Instagram account. Like A., she wrote, “I did not want to dwell on those memories. However, by writing this essay and embracing my emotions on the subject, I gained closure and released myself from anger’s chokehold.” (The essay won a contest in her school district sponsored by the Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival at Framingham State University.) At one school, a girl spoke so softly that I had to lean close to hear her. Haltingly, with her eyes fixed on the ground, she asked how people could make amends for a harm they caused if the person harmed wouldn’t speak to them. She didn’t tell me what she had done, but I could see that it haunted her — both the guilt over the injury she had caused and the fear she would be punished in perpetuity. I think about this girl often, wishing I had a better answer to give her. At every school I visit, I remind students that they are works in progress, that during their teenage years they will both be harmed and cause harm, and that they have the capacity to survive both. And each time, I walk away struck by how vulnerable they are to forces that they neither created nor control. Dashka Slater is a writer in California with a focus on teenagers and criminal justice. Her book “The 57 Bus,” a New York Times best seller, was based on an article she wrote for the magazine in 2015 and went on to win a 2018 Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association.

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Ramboy: A Family Farm in Ireland Prevails - The New York Times

Ever since we were children, we’ve been fascinated by pastoralism. We both come from families with farming roots but grew up in the city. This enthusiasm brought us to Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, where sheep graze over the grassland. In a vast peat bog in this corner of the world, the 14-year-old Cian and the 78-year-old Martin stand side by side, surrounded by more than 100 sheep. “Away! Come by!” they shout in turn at a dog that appears to be out of control. Cian would prefer to spend his summer playing soccer with his friends, but Martin, an aging farmer, sees that it’s the right time to introduce his grandson to work on the farm. Here, we closely trace Cian’s introduction to animal husbandry, as the teenager questions what his future holds and absorbs the workings of his homeland. This documentary captures the patience and tenderness required to learn and pass on a craft from one generation to the next. Lucien Roux and Matthias Joulaud are both filmmakers from Grenoble, a city in the Alps region in France. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Need a Home for 80,000 Puzzles? Try an Italian Castle.

Meet the Millers, George and Roxanne, proprietors of the world’s largest collection of mechanical puzzles: physical objects that a puzzler holds and manipulates while seeking a solution. In total, the Miller collection — an accumulation of collections, and collections of collections — amounts to more than 80,000 puzzles. It comprises some five thousand Rubik’s Cubes, including a 2-by-2-by-2 rendering of Darth Vader’s head. And there are more than 7,000 wooden burr puzzles, such as the interlocking, polyhedral creations by Stewart Coffin, a Massachusetts puzzle maker; they evoke a hybrid of a pine cone and a snowflake and are Mr. Miller’s favorites. Mrs. Miller is fond of their 140 brass, bronze and gold puzzle sculptures by the Spanish artist Miguel Berrocal; Goliath, a male torso in 79 pieces, is “a puzzle that all puzzlers lust after,” she said. Until recently, the Miller collection resided at Puzzle Palace in Boca Raton, Fla., filling their mansion and a museum (a smaller house) next door. Puzzles occupied even the bathrooms. Then last year, on a whim, the Millers bought a 15th-century, 52-room castle in Panicale, a hamlet in central Italy. They packed their puzzle collection into five 40-foot shipping containers and, for their own transit, booked a cruise from Miami to Rome. Before sailing away in April, the Millers went on a two-month road trip — “a last hurrah,” Mr. Miller called it — visiting puzzler friends from coast to coast. Along the way they accumulated more puzzles. In Garden Grove, Calif., they loaded up a cargo van with 58 boxes from Marti Reis, who donated her collection of folksy punning puzzles by the designer RGee Watkins, such as Diamond Ring, a dime with a metal ring passing through the coin’s center. The puzzle maker Lee Krasnow, who has production facilities in Portland, Ore., and Grand Rapids, Mich., met the Millers at a puzzle party on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, and hand-delivered his famed Clutch Box. Made from exotic hardwoods and precision machined metals, it opens with a subtle unlocking mechanism; the goal is simply “the thrill of having opened it,” Mrs. Miller said. And then, “if you’re daring,” Mr. Krasnow added in an email, the goal is “to fully disassemble it into about 40 individual pieces.”

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Cardinal asks for peace and reflection in Christmas mass in Boston

Cardinal Sean O'Malley is sending a message calling for forgiveness and peace around the world amidst wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Parishioners said it was a beautiful Christmas mass full of love and a time for reflection at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End. "We celebrate Christmas when we make it a feast of love, of friendship, of reconciliation and of peace" the cardinal said during mass. "Peace on earth seems like a shattered dream in today's world with these terrible wars in the Ukraine and the holy land with the contentious political climate in our country and even polarization in the church" "In a world where there is still no room in the inn, we must commit ourselves to a compassionate response for the poor, the sick, the refugee, the prisoner, the stranger, the homeless" he added asking church members to be compassionate to those who are struggling. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. It was a message that made many parishioners reflect. "The meaning of Christmas and love itself and how we should all work together and get along" said Joe Haden, who visited from Kentucky. Towards the end of his homily, Cardinal O'Malley asked parishioners to forgive those who have wronged us and to ask pardon of someone we have wronged, reminding people that Christmas is always an invitation to start again.

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Will Audiobooks Survive Spotify? - The New York Times

Spotify may have made it easier than ever for us to listen to an enormous trove of music, but it extracted so much money in doing so that it impoverished musicians. Now the company is turning its attention to books with a new offering. It will do the same thing to writers, whose audiobooks Spotify has begun streaming in a new and more damaging way. We’ve read this story before. Tech platforms and their algorithms have a tendency to reward high-performing creators — the more users they get, the more likely they are to attract more. In Spotify’s case, that meant that in 2020, 90 percent of the royalties it paid out went to the top 0.8 percent of artists, according to an analysis by Rolling Stone. That leaves a vast majority — including many within even that small group — struggling to earn a living. The promise of the business strategy laid out in the book “The Long Tail” was that a slew of niche content creators would prosper on the internet. That has proved illusory for most of them. It’s a winner-takes-all game; too often the tech platforms aggregating the content and the blockbusters win it all, starving a large majority of creators. The result is a gradual deterioration of our culture, our understanding of ourselves and our collective memories. This is why regulation is so crucial. Before writing books, I worked at Google, leading three large sales and operations teams, and before that I was a senior policy adviser at the Federal Communications Commission. What I learned is that today’s tech platforms are different from the kind of monopolies of an earlier era that inspired our regulatory framework. Their networks can have powerful positive or negative impacts. We don’t want to regulate away the value they can create, but the damage they can cause is devastating. We need a regulatory framework that can distinguish between them.

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$100M will be left for Native Hawaiian causes from the estate of an heiress considered last princess

HONOLULU (AP) — In life, Abigail Kawānanakoa embodied the complexities of Hawaii: Many considered her a princess — a descendant of the royal family that once ruled the islands. But she was also the great-granddaughter of a sugar baron and inherited vast wealth thanks to Westerners who upended traditional ways of life through the introduction of private property and the diversion of water for industrial plantations. Now, more than a year after her death at age 96 and the bitter battles over her fortune in the twilight of her life, her estate has been settled. And recently finalized court documents show that after doling out tens of millions to various people — including former housekeepers, other longtime employees and her wife — there will be at least $100 million left to support Native Hawaiian causes. Kawānanakoa cared deeply about advancing Hawaiian culture, and resolving her estate is meaningful to Hawaiians because it is the last of what’s known as “alii,” or royal, trusts, which were set up by royalty to benefit Native Hawaiians, said Dr. Naleen Naupaka Andrade, executive vice president of Native Hawaiian health for The Queen’s Health System. The health system was created from a trust established by Queen Emma in 1859. “Quite frankly, the needs of Hawaiians in education, in social welfare, in housing, in health far exceed the capacity of these trusts,” she said. “They augment what federal and state dollars should be doing for Hawaii’s Indigenous peoples.” Many have been watching where the money ends up because of concerns about the fate of the foundation Kawānanakoa set up to benefit Hawaiians. Kawānanakoa’s trust will perpetuate Native Hawaiian culture and language, Andrade said. According to documents in the probate case for her estate, $40 million will go to her wife. Settlements have also been reached with about a dozen other people who had claims, including someone described in court documents as her “hanai” son, referring to an informal adoption in Hawaiian culture. Legal wrangling over Kawānanakoa’s trust, which now has a value of at least $250 million, began in 2017 after she suffered a stroke. She disputed claims that she was impaired, and married Veronica Gail Worth, her partner of 20 years, who later changed her name to Veronica Gail Kawānanakoa. In 2020, a judge ruled that Abigail Kawānanakoa was, in fact, impaired, and thus unable to manage her property and business affairs. The estate has been overseen by a trustee. She inherited her wealth as the great-granddaughter of James Campbell, an Irish businessman who made his fortune as a sugar plantation owner and one of Hawaii’s largest landowners. She held no formal title but was a living reminder of Hawaii’s monarchy and a symbol of Hawaiian national identity that endured after the kingdom was overthrown by American businessmen in 1893. Over the years, some insisted Kawānanakoa was held up as royalty only because of her wealth. They disputed her princess claim, saying that had the monarchy survived, a cousin would be in line to be the ruler, not her. She put her money toward various causes, including scholarships, medical bills and funerals for Native Hawaiians. She supported protests against a giant telescope because of its proposed placement on Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain in Hawaiian culture; donated items owned by King Kalākaua and Queen Kapiʻolani for public display, including a 14-carat diamond from the king’s pinky ring; and maintained ʻIolani Palace — America’s only royal residence, where the Hawaiian monarchy dwelled, and which now serves mostly as a museum. “Historically significant items” belonging to Kawānanakoa will be delivered to the palace, said a statement issued by trustee Jim Wright on behalf of her foundation. Her trust has been supporting causes dear to her, including programming at the palace such as night tours and cultural dinners, and paying for students at Hawaiian-focused schools to visit cultural sites and experience symphony performances in Hawaiian, Wright said. After Internal Revenue Service clearance, the foundation will receive the leftover money, which Wright estimated to be at least $100 million, to fund similar efforts. Kauikeolani Nani’ole, an educator at Hālau Kū Māna Public Charter School in Honolulu, said her school recently received money from the trust for busing to community events. “In those small ways, they make big impacts for schools like us,” she said. She called Kawānanakoa an “unsung alii” because she often donated to causes and people anonymously. According to documents establishing her foundation in 2001, Kawānanakoa wanted it to “maintain, support, preserve and foster the traditional Hawaiian culture in existence prior to 1778″ — the year the first European explorer, Capt. James Cook, reached the islands. That includes Hawaiian music, religion, language and art. Andrade recently visited Kawānanakoa’s crypt at Mauna ʻAla, also known as the Royal Mausoleum State Monument, which is the burial place of Hawaiian royalty. She laid an offering of maile leaves entwined with white ginger — a flower Kawānanakoa loved. “All of the pilikia — all of the trouble — that occurred in the last several years after she became ill: What was lost in all that was her love of her people,” Andrade said. “Her deep, deep love and the thoughtfulness she had, and the foresight she had before she became ill about wanting to leave a legacy for her people that could make a difference.” — By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER Associated Press

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culture

Happy Days Got Us Unstuck in Time

Mention “Happy Days” to TV viewers of a certain age (raises hand) and the first thing they remember might be not an episode or a scene or a catchphrase but a lunchbox. I’m specifically thinking of a cool Thermos-brand one — featuring Henry Winkler as the show’s pop-phenom greaser, Arthur Fonzarelli, a.k.a. Fonzie, a.k.a. the Fonz — which luckier ’70s kids than I got to schlep their PBJs to school in and which is now in the collection of the Smithsonian. To remember “Happy Days” is to remember your youth, which was also the function of “Happy Days” when it premiered in 1974. Well, at least it sort of was. Ostensibly the show appealed to grown-ups who were young during its time period — roughly, the mid-50s to mid-60s, over 11 seasons. But some of its most ardent fans were the lunchbox-toters toddling down someone else’s memory lane. Now “Happy Days” is 50 years old. Or is it? Time gets fuzzy when you enter the “Happy Days”-verse. In some ways the series never ended; it was just handed down through the culture like a vintage varsity jacket. It was repurposed as a nostalgia object by the Spike Jonze video for Weezer’s 1994 single “Buddy Holly.” In 1998, “That ’70s Show” set its own reverie, like “Happy Days,” among a gang of teenage friends in Wisconsin. Last year, that series’s sequel, “That ’90s Show,” created a ’90s version of the ’70s version of the ’50s. If all this math is too much, all you need to know is that there are only ever two periods in pop-culture nostalgia. There is Then (simple, innocent, fun), and there is Now (scary, corrupt, confusing). Eventually, Now becomes another Now’s Then, and the cycle repeats. “Happy Days” was nostalgic because the teenagers weren’t smoking weed. “That ’70s Show” was nostalgic because the teenagers were smoking weed. We rock around the clock and around the calendar, returning ever again to the beginning.

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culture

A Frugal Opera Superfans Surprise Gift: $1.7 Million for the Arts

When Lois Kirschenbaum, a cultural aficionado who was a fixture in the standing room section of the Metropolitan Opera for more than half a century, died in 2021 at 88, star singers gave tributes and fellow fans offered remembrances. But that was not the end of Kirschenbaum’s relationship with the arts. Though even her closest friends didn’t know, Kirschenbaum, a former switchboard operator who lived in a rent-controlled apartment in the East Village, had made plans to give away a large share of her life savings — some $1.7 million — to cultural groups upon her death. After years of legal proceedings, donations of $215,000 apiece have started to arrive, surprising groups like New York City Opera, American Ballet Theater, Carnegie Hall and the Public Theater. “I was just astonished,” said John Hauser, the president of the George and Nora London Foundation for Singers, one of the recipients. “I had no idea that she had that kind of money.”

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Boston's untold Black history

Boston is known for its host of historic landmarks, such as the Boston Tea Party and the USS Constitution, but there are also many historical stories and sites in the city that too often go unheard and unseen. Researcher and educator Joel Mackall seeks to change this through his Hidden History of Black Boston tours — a series of driving and walking tours that highlight the city's often untold Black history. WBUR reporter Arielle Gray joins The Common to discuss Mackall's Hidden History of Black Boston tour in the North End, which took her from the Rose Kennedy Greenway to the Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

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Styless 71 Most Stylish People of 2023

The “people” on this list — who are presented in no particular order — reflect the ways that the Styles desk defines its coverage: high and low; fun and serious; curious and open-minded; reveling in characters; appreciating the material world; inviting everyone to the party. Many were recognized for being Styles-ish, others for being stylish. (Several could not have done it without the help of stylists, costume designers and other crews.) Lots came from the worlds of politics, film, TV, music, sports and fashion. But a few caught our attention in less expected places, like courtrooms. Some had great hair. Some had singular accessories. One person had both — and was mistaken for a duchess in disguise. Certain people might surprise you or (we hope) inspire heated debate. After all, one thing they had in common is they made us talk: about what we wear, how we live and how we express ourselves. Michelle Yeoh

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culture

Does anywhere in Massachusetts have a white Christmas?

Massachusetts residents hoping for a picturesque snowy Christmas morning have another year to wait. Excluding a few pockets of drizzly rain and fog, Monday’s forecast called for drier weather and cloudy skies, the National Weather Service said. Temperatures hovered in the mid-40s in Boston and mid-30s in Springfield around 8 a.m. Monday. Massachusetts is not alone. Much of the United States is unlikely to see fresh snowfall on Christmas this year. Meteorologists expect temperatures in Massachusetts to rise to the mid-40s or low-50s under cloudy skies Monday afternoon, about 10 degrees above normal for this time of year. Overnight temperatures will likely stay above freezing across much of the region, a forecast from the weather service’s regional office in Norton said. Another cloudy day is on tap Tuesday with similarly warm temperatures in the upper 40s and low 50s, “an unseasonably mild late December day,” the weather service said. Wetter weather is expected to return mid-week. The weather service forecast calls for rain on Wednesday, possibly followed by periods of rain and light snow on Friday and Saturday. Drier conditions are forecast to move in by New Year’s Eve.

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Universities are Trojan horses for change in our society (Guest commentary)

The most famous war story, the one that will forever be told, is that of the Trojan horse. It goes like this: About a hundred or thousand years ago the Greeks and Trojans had been duking it for a decade. The Greeks could not penetrate the city walls of Troy to take over the treasured land and eventual said they had given up. The two parties fist bumped, and the Greeks sail away as the Trojans wheel into the fortified city the giant horse of a parting gift. The Trojans had a few too many Coca-Colas in celebration and passed out. Meanwhile there are 40 MMA Greek warriors chugging Red Bull and shadow boxing. The ultimate warriors pop out and opened the gates for their fellow Greeks who had sailed back during the shadows of the night to help defeat the unsuspecting Trojans. Our country isn’t surrounded by giant walls, but we are protected by our geography, technology and strength in numbers. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were coast-based attacks that led to death of about 5,500 Americans. In retaliation was the leveling of about three different countries and hundreds of thousands of people. The United States, like the Trojans, aren’t to be defeated in a traditional sense. In all available metrics, studies and common sense, the past decade has revealed some troubling trends. Our citizens are less patriotic than ever. We are fatter than ever. We are on more drugs, both prescribed and illegal, than ever. Suicide and drug overdoses have spiked. Crimes from shoplifting to murder hardly even get any attention due to the increased prevalence. There are more fatherless homes than ever. Birth rates and overall life expectancy have dropped for the first time ever. Porn addiction and divorce rates up. We still see people walking around with masks on. Each one of these things adds to the rotting of our great society. How has there been such acceptance to all of this? If this is the end of a Scooby-Doo episode, the mask being pulled off the bad guy has a university president’s face under it.

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University students across Chicago influence schools to stock period products

Zeenat Muhammad’s days as a neuroscience major at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) are busy. Now a junior, she’s double minoring in chemistry and nutrition, secretary of the Women’s Health Initiative and vice president of Blood Buds, a student-led organization working to fight period poverty. “A lot of people ask ‘how do you juggle it?’ I don’t even look at this as an activity, it’s just kind of natural,” she said. “I think passion takes you far.” UIC began stocking period products in some school restrooms during her freshman year but according to Muhammad, the machines were not consistently stocked. Last semester, Blood Buds focused on contacting student advisors from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS), UIC’s largest college, to prioritize making sure the dispensers were filled. “This semester, fortunately, not only have we seen an increase in the number of dispensers of pads and tampons, they’re completely stocked up… And we pushed for the school to put a contact number on the machine so that if it’s out, somebody could text message and let them know. So there’s never really a point of negligence,” she said. The law requires these products to be there. In 2021, Gov. Pritzker signed HB 641, requiring all public universities and community colleges in Illinois to provide free period products in restrooms. While a growing number of states have enforced laws that require schools to provide period products to students, Illinois, California, Oregon and Washington, D.C. are the only that have policies specific to higher education institutions, according to Inside Higher Ed. UIC currently houses 34 Aunt Flow dispensers across their East and West campuses. The Richard J. Daley Library holds the most, with six dispensers spread throughout three floors. Most of the academic buildings have one or two. A women’s restroom in UIC’s Lecture Center B holds one Aunt Flow dispenser which students can use to access free menstrual pads and tampons.Annabel Rocha “A lot of people who are facing financial crisis now don’t have to worry about access to period products, at least not on campus,” said Muhammad. Why do college students need free products? College students are notoriously broke and higher education is expensive. Federal data released this year by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) supports the notion that many students are struggling to get by. According to the data, 4 million college students experience food insecurity, and 8% of undergrad students are homeless. The average cost of college tuition, including books, supplies and living expenses averages out to $36,436 in the U.S., according to Education Data Initiative. Cost of tuition is $9,349 at the average public 4-year institution, but is 23% higher in Illinois. Attending a private university in the state is 7% higher than the national average. These costs are making students weigh out their needs. In September, intimate health brand Intimina revealed that their study of five universities showed that almost 19% of female college students said they’ve felt forced to decide between buying period products or meeting other expenses such as paying bills or buying food. A similar study by BMC Health in 2021 found that 14% of women attending college experienced period poverty in the past year, and 10% reported experiencing it every month. The American Medical Association has urged the IRS to consider period products a medical necessity, to remove barriers to accessing products in correctional facilities and prevent these goods from being taxed. The National Organization for Women estimated that menstruators spend about $20 per cycle, adding up to $200 to $300 a year, but Yahoo Finance reports that the prices of pads and tampons increased up to 10% last year. This generation of teens and young adults care about menstrual health. The latest State of the Period survey shows that 89% said they think that menstrual products are just as important as toilet paper or soap in public restrooms. “We don’t choose this… Free products are important for folks because for students, I think that’s a particular place in our lives where we’re trying to learn, we’re trying to focus in school and having to worry about that while on campus, while in a learning environment, and even off campus is something that is so basic and so easy to solve,” Abigail Suleman, co-founder of Blood Buds, said at IL Latino News and WBEZ’s Community Conversation earlier this year. Students have motivated universities in IL to implement free programs Though private schools are exempt from this policy, pressure from students has influenced universities to adopt similar measures on their own campuses. In 2022, Menstrual Equity Activists (MEA) at Northwestern University created a survey to understand the need for free menstrual products at Northwestern, generating 662 responses from students. 99% of respondents said it would be helpful to have menstrual products in residence halls/residential colleges, and 100% of menstruators said that they would use free menstrual products in dorms. Residential Services used this data, installed dispensers and now provides period products across campus. Students can even provide feedback on this online form to report dispensers that need to be restocked. A gender-neutral restroom in Northwestern University’s Shepard Hall holds packs of menstrual pads and tampons.Annabel Rocha “Unfortunately, we’re still working on getting every bathroom on campus stocked with products but any building you go to, any dorm that you’re living in, has them in at least one of the bathrooms,” said Lili Pope, co-president of MEA. At Loyola University, Students for Reproductive Justice (SRJ) started leaving free period products in plastic containers by the sink in both Lake Shore and Water Tower campus restrooms themselves in 2017. According to Ella Hansen, an SRJ organizer, the university agreed to take over responsibility of the Menstrual Equity Project in Fall 2019, but once the COVID-19 pandemic hit there wasn’t a need to follow up on the project with no students on campus. “Once we all returned in person, they had fully taken on the project, but there were a lot of issues with it,” said Hansen, citing inconsistent stocking and recurring transphobic instances. A 2019 video shared on Snapchat showed a man tossing out a box of period products meant for transgender men and gender nonconforming people using the men’s restroom. According to the Chicago Tribune, it earned over 1 million views. “We’ve been working with them to get dispensers permanently affixed to the walls to prevent that kind of stuff. And just to make it more concrete, you know, that they’re going to be there and they’re going to be free for a while,” said Hansen. SRJ’s goal has been to consistently provide free period products in the restrooms of all genders, in all buildings at Loyola – but it hasn’t happened. The organization says there has been continued conversation with Loyola Facilities, with renewed hope for thorough implementation of the Menstrual Equity Program as new administration has taken over the project at the university’s end. Blood Buds, MEA and SRJ are all very vocal about the importance of making these products accessible beyond women’s restrooms. “Most of the bathrooms with the products in the dorms are the gender neutral ones on the first floor. We were very grateful that residential services tried to be as inclusive as possible,” said Pope. “Nowadays there’s like way more people who don’t necessarily identify as a woman who can access the product so that was appreciated.” According to NPR, there is currently no list recording how many colleges and universities in the U.S. provide period products to their students for free. _____________________________________________________________________ Publisher’s note: This reporting is supported by a fellowship with the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS), in partnership with IL Latino News.

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The Nicest New Years Resolution I Ever Made - The New York Times

Between those reminders and the writing itself, I can feel myself slowing down. This is not the kind of writing I can blast through at a messy speed, correcting later. This kind of writing requires a deliberation that little else in my life requires: one thought, one word, one sentence at a time. In that sense, the letters are as much for me as for their recipients: a thin, scrawled thread connecting us across the miles, linking their grief with my grief, their joy with my joy, their generosity with my thanks. Sometimes this practice reminds me to act on my own generosity, a way to tell people I love or admire that I’m thinking of them. I like to imagine how surprised they will be to find a handwritten letter tucked among the bills and the ads they never glance at for products they will never need. Not that making time is easy. It may have been a mistake to have hit on such an ambitious project during a pandemic that keeps making nearly everything harder. But I don’t regret it. Despite one setback after another — the death of my beloved father-in-law, health issues in the family, major surgery — this project is self-rewarding, so I keep finding my way back to it, and to my grandmother’s secretary. Finding time for anything that matters will always be a challenge, but the notes themselves aren’t hard. All that dread, for years, always putting off and putting off the obligation of a thank-you note or the duty of a condolence letter — why did I waste so much time on dread? With every renewed effort, I marvel again at how easy it is. How it takes almost nothing to write just a few lines, nothing to fix a stamp in the corner, to walk the letter out to the mailbox and lift the little metal flag to tell the mail carrier to stop at this house. I wish I had known long ago how much pleasure I would take in lifting that little red flag. I wish I’d remembered how much I love the smell of paper and ink and the memory of my grandmother, sitting at this very secretary, the way she said, “You’re the writer in the family” and made it real. This is the 326th day of the year, and it is clear now that I will not come remotely close to making my goal of 365 handwritten notes. At best, I will hit 200. Still, I’ve spent this hard year being reminded, again and again, of the magic I recognized as a child at my grandmother’s elbow. As Thanksgiving approaches, I am filled with gratitude for the people I want to greet, the people I hope to console, the people I need to thank. And they’re all only a mailbox away. Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.” The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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The Book World Still Isnt Diverse. Dhonielle Clayton Is Trying to Change That.

The mastermind behind those fictional plots and dozens more is Dhonielle Clayton — a former librarian whose hyperactive imagination has spawned a prolific factory for intellectual property. Though her name doesn’t always appear on the covers of the books she conceives, she has quietly become an influential power broker in the book world. “She’s like a puppet master,” said the best-selling novelist Jason Reynolds, who attended the party and is a longtime friend of Ms. Clayton’s. “People don’t know Dhonielle’s hand is in everything.” In addition to running Electric Postcard, which she founded last year, Ms. Clayton is the president of Cake Creative, another packaging company that develops intellectual property for children’s books, and the author of more than a dozen novels. Like other packagers, Ms. Clayton, 40, comes up with plots for potential novels and hires writers to execute those ideas, then sells the books to publishers. Packagers have been a fixture of the publishing industry for decades, and have engineered hits like “Gossip Girl,” “The Vampire Diaries” and “Pretty Little Liars.” By farming out ideas to writers but holding onto the copyright, packagers can build up large and lucrative catalogs of intellectual property. While some offer authors a cut of the advance and royalties, allowing them to share in a book’s success, others pay only a negotiated fee, which can range from a few thousand dollars to the low tens of thousands. But Ms. Clayton has bigger ambitions, and set out to create a different kind of packaging company. She’s aiming to create a pipeline for fiction featuring racially diverse and L.G.B.T.Q. protagonists, as well as characters living with disabilities, and who come from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, to convince publishers that those stories can be commercial blockbusters. She works exclusively with writers from marginalized communities, and aims to give her authors a fair cut of the pay, and the tools to have their own careers.

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culture

The Book World Still Isnt Diverse. Dhonielle Clayton Is Trying to Change That.

The mastermind behind those fictional plots and dozens more is Dhonielle Clayton — a former librarian whose hyperactive imagination has spawned a prolific factory for intellectual property. Though her name doesn’t always appear on the covers of the books she conceives, she has quietly become an influential power broker in the book world. “She’s like a puppet master,” said the best-selling novelist Jason Reynolds, who attended the party and is a longtime friend of Ms. Clayton’s. “People don’t know Dhonielle’s hand is in everything.” In addition to running Electric Postcard, which she founded last year, Ms. Clayton is the president of Cake Creative, another packaging company that develops intellectual property for children’s books, and the author of more than a dozen novels. Like other packagers, Ms. Clayton, 40, comes up with plots for potential novels and hires writers to execute those ideas, then sells the books to publishers. Packagers have been a fixture of the publishing industry for decades, and have engineered hits like “Gossip Girl,” “The Vampire Diaries” and “Pretty Little Liars.” By farming out ideas to writers but holding onto the copyright, packagers can build up large and lucrative catalogs of intellectual property. While some offer authors a cut of the advance and royalties, allowing them to share in a book’s success, others pay only a negotiated fee, which can range from a few thousand dollars to the low tens of thousands. But Ms. Clayton has bigger ambitions, and set out to create a different kind of packaging company. She’s aiming to create a pipeline for fiction featuring racially diverse and L.G.B.T.Q. protagonists, as well as characters living with disabilities, and who come from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, to convince publishers that those stories can be commercial blockbusters. She works exclusively with writers from marginalized communities, and aims to give her authors a fair cut of the pay, and the tools to have their own careers.

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Empathy Is Exhausting. There Is a Better Way. - The New York Times

In mid-October, a few days after the attack on Israel, a friend sent me a text from a rabbi. She said she couldn’t look away from the horror on the news but felt completely numb. She was struggling to feel even the tiniest bit useful: “What can I even do?” Many people are feeling similarly defeated, and many others are outraged by the political inaction that ensues. A Muslim colleague of mine said she was appalled to see so much indifference to the atrocities and innocent lives lost in Gaza and Israel. How could anyone just go on as if nothing had happened? A common conclusion is that people just don’t care. But inaction isn’t always caused by apathy. It can also be the product of empathy. More specifically, it can be the result of what psychologists call empathic distress: hurting for others while feeling unable to help. I felt it intensely this fall, as violence escalated abroad and anger echoed across the United States. Helpless as a teacher, unsure of how to protect my students from hostility and hate. Useless as a psychologist and writer, finding words too empty to offer any hope. Powerless as a parent, searching for ways to reassure my kids that the world is a safe place and most people are good. Soon I found myself avoiding the news altogether and changing the subject when war came up. Understanding how empathy can immobilize us like that is a critical step for helping others — and ourselves.

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In the American Church, the Pope Has Critics Among Leaders and Laypeople

Pope Francis’s relationship with the conservative wing of the American Catholic church was already on shaky ground when reports surfaced this week of his plan to evict one of his most prominent critics from a Vatican-subsidized apartment in Rome. Cardinal Raymond Burke, who led dioceses in St. Louis and Wisconsin before moving to Rome, is a lion of the faith among conservative Catholics who see him a defender of tradition and orthodoxy in a dangerously unmoored church. The move comes just weeks after Francis fired another outspoken critic, Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was removed from his post in Tyler, Texas, following a Vatican investigation into his leadership. Both decisions prompted a public outcry from conservative church leaders, making it clear that restoring unity in the divided American Church will take more than swatting down a few high-profile clerics. The pope’s increasingly open pushback against theological and liturgical conservatives in the church has nurtured a deep wariness of his leadership among conservatives in the church, who exist at all levels of Catholic life in America.

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Blessing of Same-Sex Couples Rankles Africas Catholics

The Vatican’s recent declaration allowing the blessing of same-sex couples caused a stir around the globe, but perhaps most of all in Africa, a rising center of the Roman Catholic Church’s future. In one statement after the next, bishops in several countries spoke of the fear and confusion the declaration has caused among their flocks, and said it was out of step with the continent’s culture and values. The bishops also harbored a deeper fear: that in a place where the church is growing faster than anywhere else in the world, and where many forms of Christianity are competing for worshipers, the declaration could slow the church’s expansion on the continent. Bishop John Oballa of the Ngong Diocese near Nairobi said that a woman had written to him saying that a friend told her he wanted clarification on the declaration, or else he would convert to the Methodist Church. “There’s a lot of vibrancy in many, many dioceses of Africa,” Bishop Oballa said in an interview. “We need to safeguard against anything that might derail that growth.”

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For retired teacher Richard Muise, the pen is plenty mighty

As a retired educator, Richard Muise knows the importance good nutrition plays in preparing students to learn, so when he saw news accounts of the war in Ukraine, he wanted to take a turn in helping not only the children there but all people affected by the war. He’s making and selling pens as a fund raiser for World Central Kitchen, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that serves chef-prepared meals to communities impacted by natural disasters and during humanitarian crises. “My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine who have been terrorized by Russia,” Muise said. He’s making the pens blue and yellow — the color of the Ukrainian flag — and using a laser engraver to write “Slava Ukraine” (Glory to Ukraine) on them. They sell for $20 each, and all funds raised go to World Central Kitchen. Muise, 74, of Hampden, is a retired educator who got interested in woodworking in his mid 60s. He began with scroll work on a saw he purchased at a flea market and refurbished, working mostly on small projects like wooden jigsaw puzzles, picture frames and a cow-themed game he invented. “I’ve always liked working with my hands, and after I retired I wanted something to do,” said the husband, father of two and grandfather of two. His late father, Paul, was a construction electrician who built his Springfield garage with hand tools. Though he was not into scroll work or pen making, he instilled in his son a love for working with his hands. A woodworking hobby allows Muise now to “make things other people enjoy.” Richard Muise polishes a pen made to support Ukraine in his Hampden home woodworking shop where he makes custom wooden pens. (Don Treeger / The Republican) Over the years, he built up his basement workshop and began making pens during the COVID-19 pandemic. At first he used a used lathe a friend gave him then purchased a “PenPal” made by PSI Woodworking. “The nice thing about this is we travel. We’re campers. If I go away and I feel like making pens, it’s only 18 inches long so I can put it in the camper and take it with me,” said Muise, who is also an avid history buff and enjoys reading books about American history and World War II (with an emphasis on the Pacific Theater). Before he began turning pens, he read articles and watched videos and got advice from friends. “The learning curve is not that long, and the results are pretty interesting,” he said. He has made a number of rainbow pens for friends in the gay community; the first version was made of dyed wood, while his second version is made of colored craft tongue depressors laminated together before turning. Muise sells pens at some craft shows; they are $20 each with the profit used “to support my habit” of making pens, he said with a laugh. “I sell them at an affordable price so people can afford them without having to mortgage the house.” But all of the proceeds from the Ukraine pens go to World Central Kitchen. The idea for them went off “like a light bulb” when he was looking at the blue and yellow colors — the colors of the Ukraine flag —in a new dye kit. Muise sources wood locally for the Ukraine pens — sycamore (his favorite), poplar and maple. He begins with rough lumber, saws it into boards, cuts that into pen blanks then turns it. He has sold about 300 pens; about 50 to 75 of them are for the Ukraine fund raiser. Muise would like to see his pen business thrive because he wants to help feed “kids and other people displaced by this senseless war,” he said. “It bothers me that good folks have to go through that insanity.” The pens may be purchased directly from the maker by emailing rpmuise@gmail.com. There is an additional charge for shipping.

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Sweetie, Ill Be Back at 2 A.M.

Brianna Michaud’s ’90s childhood was filled with sleepovers at friends’ houses. Her mother sometimes came inside the house and chatted with the parents for a few minutes, but sensitive topics like bodily autonomy, gun safety or technology use — except for the rule that she not watch anything rated PG-13 or higher — weren’t the kinds of things discussed. “It was a different time,” Ms. Michaud, now 35, said. It may come as no surprise that parents are experiencing more anxiety in general these days. There is an increased awareness of issues like sexual abuse and gun violence, said Christy Keating, a licensed parenting coach based in the Seattle area. Almost half of parents in the U.S. describe themselves as overprotective, according to Pew research published last year. And perhaps no scenario tests a parent’s vigilance more than the prospect of allowing their child to sleep at another family’s home. For some parents, one solution to this is the “sleepunder” — also called a “lateover” — where children come to play, but they don’t stay to sleep. Qarniz F. Armstrong, a mother of three children, ages 12, 14 and 20, has never allowed her children to spend a night away from her, even with other family members. She does, however, want her kids to have normal childhood experiences, so she has settled on letting them attend parties if she can bring them home at bedtime — even if that means 2 or 3 in the morning. Considering the alternative — saying no altogether — Ms. Armstrong, who is 43 and lives in Murrieta, Calif., feels this is “a good compromise.”

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Overlooked Stories of 2023

Before the internet, there was no way for New York Times editors to know how many people had read an article. Stories that ran on the front page of the newspaper presumably were better read than ones on Page 36, but nobody could be sure. Now, digital tools allow us to know how many people read every story. This knowledge inevitably leads editors to track their favorites and say, “I sure wish more people read that one.” Every year, The Morning dedicates a newsletter to the stories that Times editors thought deserved more readers. We look broadly across our newsroom, selecting at least one story from each department. We hope you will discover some great reads here. THE LATEST NEWS 2024 Election Maine barred Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot, joining Colorado in declaring the former president ineligible because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot are pending in more than a dozen states. Nikki Haley, when asked about the causes of the Civil War at a town-hall event, did not mention slavery. She later walked back her response. Gen Z Republicans are open to backing candidates other than Trump, but most candidates have focused on older voters. More on Politics

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Arts Colonial Legacy: Congolese Masks Voice Aim Csaires Words - The New York Times

The idea for this film began when a friend was planning an exhibition featuring Congolese artwork. She was considering including the documentary “Under the Black Mask” (1958), by the Belgian filmmaker Paul Haesaerts, but was unsure how to present the piece, which contains voice-over and images that stereotype and exoticize Congolese culture. How could we adequately contextualize a work by a filmmaker from Belgium created in the final years of that country’s decades-long, brutal colonial occupation of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo? Even if the original film were presented with commentary, such critique typically appears offscreen, only available to those who choose to or are able to seek it out. I suggested that we instead create a new film that would reframe the original imagery. I began by selecting images from “Under the Black Mask” that gave me the feeling that the masks faced me directly, allowing them to momentarily escape Haesaerts’ frame. What would these images have said if they had a voice? We decided to replace the narration with excerpts from Aimé Césaire’s seminal work “Discourse on Colonialism,” which argued that colonization dehumanizes the colonizer and was published less than a decade before the original film was made. It was a text I had carried close to my heart for many years.

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Remember Those Who Are Less Fortunate This Holiday Season East Boston Times-Free Press

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. With Christmas fast approaching, most of us will be rushing about — either to the stores and malls or on-line — to do our holiday shopping in hopes of finding that “perfect” gift for our family members and loved ones. Although economic uncertainty, spurred by the after-effects of record-high inflation, continues to afflict almost every American household, most of us are doing okay, if not extremely well, thanks to unemployment rates that are near historically record-lows. However, the strong economy (from an employment standpoint) that is being enjoyed by the majority of Americans has not been shared by all. For a sizable number of our fellow citizens, the lingering effects of the pandemic, as well as the fraying of the fabric of our social safety net in recent years, have come together to represent an existential disaster. Millions of Americans of all ages, in a percentage greater than at any time since the Great Depression, are struggling financially, even if they have a job. To put it in stark terms, more Americans, including families in our own communities, are going hungry than at any time in our recent history. One in eight households (12.8 percent) experience food insecurity, defined as the lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet. An estimated 44.2 million Americans live in these households. A recent Feeding America survey found that 80% of network food banks reported either increased or steady demand for emergency food services, with almost 35% of responding food banks reporting an increase in the number of people they serve. In addition, thanks to the lack of affordable new housing and sky-high rents, far too many of our fellow citizens, including children, live either in shelters or in similar temporary housing arrangements — or on the streets — because our economy literally has left them out in the cold. Millions of Americans of all ages, including those in our own communities, are struggling financially, often through no fault of their own, thanks to a combination of low-wage jobs and a strong real estate market that ironically has made apartments (let alone buying a home) unaffordable. This dichotomy is most evident and acute in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and right here in Boston (most notably at the infamous Mass. and Cass intersection in the South End). Despite the vast wealth in those metropolitan areas, thousands of homeless Americans, including many who have full-time jobs, are living in tent and cardboard “neighborhoods” on city sidewalks. The homeless always have been among us, but the scope and depth of the problem is far beyond anything that has been experienced in our lifetime. The vast discrepancy between the enormous wealth enjoyed by some Americans and the abject poverty being endured by others is similar to what exists in major urban centers in South America and India — but it now is happening right here in the U.S.A. For these millions of Americans, the holiday season brings no joy. Psychologists tell us that the Biblical directive, that we should give to those who are less fortunate, is the best gift that we can give to ourselves. Helping others activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating the so-called “warm glow” effect. Never in the lifetime of anybody reading this editorial has the need for contributions to local food banks been more urgent. There will be ample opportunities in the coming days to make the holidays brighter for those who are less fortunate, whether it be donations to local food banks and toy programs, or even just dropping a few dollars in the buckets of the Salvation Army Santas. There simply is no excuse for those of us who are among the more fortunate for failing to make some effort over the next four weeks to make the holidays brighter for those who are less fortunate.

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Will Chatbots Teach Your Children?

Sal Khan, the chief executive of Khan Academy, gave a rousing TED Talk last spring in which he predicted that A.I. chatbots would soon revolutionize education. “We’re at the cusp of using A.I. for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” Mr. Khan, whose nonprofit education group has provided online lessons for millions of students, declared. “And the way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.” Videos of Mr. Khan’s tutoring bot talk amassed millions of views. Soon, prominent tech executives, including Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, began issuing similar education predictions.

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Is This the Year of the Bunk Bed? Some Designers Think So.

All of a sudden, bunk beds seem to be everywhere: You see them in upscale beach and ski homes, as well as boutique hotels like Freehand, Moxy and Proper. And why not? Stacked sleeping spaces have always been an efficient use of space, whether you’re making room for a growing family or entertaining a large crowd. And now that they’re getting the designer treatment with thoughtful touches that make them feel almost luxurious, bunk rooms are more appealing than ever. “We’re pretty much doing a bunk room in every house we work on,” said Jenny Keenan, an interior designer in Mount Pleasant, S.C., who creates built-in bunk beds that are appealing to children and adults. “We try to make them elevated enough that adults can stay in them,” Ms. Keenan said. “We want them to be fun, but we also want to make sure different types of people feel comfortable in them.”

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Healthy sips for a healthier new year

Well that was a doozy of a holiday run, was it not? We sang, we ate, we gifted, we partied like it was the end of, well, 2023. And now it’s time to pivot to some post-holiday cleansing. Even if you’re not into the idea of doing a dry January and don’t particularly feel like jumping on the rollercoaster of drastic diet change. there are plenty of beverages out there that you can easily sip to boost your health — in many different ways. For example? Let’s start with chaga teas. You may not have heard of these yet, but they’ve been around for eons; people in Eastern Europe have been drinking them for centuries. It’s made from chaga mushrooms, which usually grow on the trunks of birch trees. Studies have found that they may help prevent cancer and slow tumor growth, can help balance our immune systems, slow inflammation, and possibly even help protect our livers. A great and yummy one to try is from Boom Chaga (boomchagadrinks.com). If better sleep health is on your new year agenda, then lattes may well be your solution. That sounds a little counterproductive, I know, but give Beam Dream sleep powder (shopbeam.com) a shot and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s basically a cup of healthy hot cocoa —made of 5 natural sleep-friendly ingredients (nano hemp, reishi mushrooms, magnesium, amino acid, and melatonin) — that you froth up with a mini blender stick (you can buy one with the Beam powder) and drink about 30 to 45 minutes before bed. Anyone who’s been following all of the chatter about the importance of gut health over the last few years will know the blast of good that kombucha can provide. And one of new favorites is Huney Jun Kombucha (huneyjun.com). Instead of sugar, it’s cultured using raw honey and green tea, then infused with adaptogenic super-herbs, mushrooms, and botanicals known to boost immunity and lower internal stress responses. I love their flavors, too — blends like jasmine-rose, pear-lime with nettle and lemon balm, and lavender-berry with elderberry — all of them unpasteurized and full of probiotics. Meanwhile, of all the superfoods out there to pop into a smoothie, seaweed is a total powerhouse. It’s an excellent source of iodine, which is terrific for thyroid hormones that help regulate your metabolism. And it contains bioactive compounds and soluble fiber that helps lower blood sugar and improves insulin sensitivity. Moreover, it’s packed with amino acid glutamine that helps reduce inflammation. So for tasty flavor, grab some wild blueberry and ginger kelp cubes from Atlantic Sea Farms (atlanticseafarms.com) and whizz them up in a blender with some juice, yogurt, and you’ll be one giant and tasty step closer to good health in the new year.

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culture

What It Takes for Snoopy and Friends to Soar in the Macys Parade

It has become Paul Schwartz’s job to help ensure the safety of millions of Thanksgiving parade watchers — as New York City’s “chief balloon officer.” Mr. Schwartz, whose actual job is deputy commissioner of bridges, has earned the unofficial title from his colleagues because he leads a team of city transportation engineers who clear the floating behemoths in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for takeoff. The engineers have gathered detailed calculations on how high each of the 16 giant balloons this year — including the Pillsbury Doughboy and Kung Fu Panda’s Po — can safely go at various wind speeds. Over the course of several hours, they put the newest balloons through test runs at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to try to head off problems. And on parade day, they will spread out along the route with anemometers to monitor weather conditions in real-time.

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Massachusetts is home to one of the rudest cities in America, survey finds

BOSTON — Massachusetts’ largest city has one of the worst reputations for rudeness in all of the United States, a survey of Americans found. Business Insider and SurveyMonkey asked nearly 2,100 Americans to rank what they believed were the five rudest U.S. cities from a list of the country’s 50 largest cities. Those who were surveyed crowned New York City as the rudest in the nation. Boston didn’t finish far behind the Big Apple, checking in as the fifth rudest city. Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Chicago rounded out the top five rudest cities. The list of the top 50 rudest cities is as follows: 1. New York City 2. Los Angeles 3. Washington D.C. 4. Chicago 5. Boston 6. Detroit 7. Buffalo 8. Baltimore 9. Philadelphia 10. San Francisco 11. Birmingham 12. Atlanta 13. Las Vegas 14. Dallas 15. Miami 16. Austin 17. Jacksonville 18. Houston 19. Cleveland 20. Tampa 21. Sacramento 22. San Diego 23. Pittsburgh 24. Cincinnati 25. Charlotte 26. Hartford 27. Indianapolis 28. Seattle 29. San Jose 30. St. Louis 31. Columbus 32. Kansas City 33. Nashville 34. Portland 35. New Orleans 36. Memphis 37. Louisville 38. San Antonio 39. Oklahoma City 40. Orlando 41. Riverside 42. Virginia Beach 43. Phoenix 44. Denver 45. Richmond 46. Minneapolis 47. Salt Lake City 48. Providence 49. Milwaukee 50. Raleigh Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW ©2023 Cox Media Group

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Why Our Great Economy Is Making Young Americans Grumpy - The New York Times

As a part-time commentator on things economic, I’m often asked a seemingly straightforward question: If the economy is so good, why are Americans so grumpy? By many measures — unemployment, inflation, the stock market — the economy is strong. Yet only 23 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, a strong headwind for President Biden’s approval ratings. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s formidable base of disgruntled voters endures. As I’ve engaged with my many interlocutors, I’ve concluded that voters have valid reasons for their negativity. In my view, blame two culprits: one immediate and impacting everybody, and another that particularly affects young people and is coming into view like a giant iceberg. Both sit atop the leaderboard of reasons for the sour national mood. While inflation has provided the proximate trigger for unhappy feelings, an understandable grimness about our broader economic prospects, particularly for younger Americans, is playing a major part.

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culture

Antonio Negri, Philosopher Who Wrote a Surprise Best Seller, Dies at 90

Antonio Negri, an Italian philosopher whose essays and activism calling for a new workers’ revolution landed him in prison in 1979, and who two decades later became a global intellectual celebrity for writing “Empire,” a book hailed as the new “Communist Manifesto,” died on Saturday in Paris. He was 90. The philosopher Judith Revel, his wife, confirmed his death, in a hospital. Throughout his career, Mr. Negri was among the few academic thinkers who had the talent and charisma to make their ideas accessible to a broad audience. As a leading figure of the Potere Operaio (Workers’ Power) movement of the 1960s and ’70s, he inspired followers not just with his forceful essays but also with his willingness to go out to the streets and factories of northern Italian cities, organizing workers and calling for revolution. “Empire” (2000), which he wrote with Michael Hardt, a literature professor at Duke University, did something similar for a new generation of the left, offering what many found a compelling Marxist interpretation of globalization after the Cold War.

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Famous N.Y.C. Buildings, but Theyre Made of Gingerbread

Debek’s replica is one of 23 gingerbread creations featured in “Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off,” an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York through Jan. 15. The museum asked professional and amateur bakers to submit gingerbread designs that resembled “icons” across New York City. They turned 685 pounds of gingerbread and more than 160 pounds of royal icing into everything from theater marquees to baseball stadiums. Some entrants reproduced famous landmarks like 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the Brooklyn Bridge, but others recreated buildings that were meaningful to them. Debek, who moved to New York from Poland in the summer, decided to recreate the only building she knew well: the hospital complex across the street from the laboratory where she works. “That was the building I was the most fond of,” she said. Nishat Shahabuddin, an orthodontist, also chose a place with personal significance. She spent about 100 hours in her parents’ kitchen building a replica of 74th Street in Jackson Heights, an area she frequented as a child. Her model (at left in the photo above) includes real stores alongside imaginary ones that reflect her Bangladeshi heritage. Like many of the exhibit’s structures, her streetscape almost didn’t survive a few humid days in November.

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Comedy, Chocolate, and Seven More Things to Do North of Boston in January and February

It might be the depths of winter now, but we certainly don’t suggest hibernating. Take advantage of the off-season on the beautiful North Shore and visit some of the region’s top-notch cultural institutions, venues, and restaurants. Below, you’ll find information about artisan markets, shows and exhibits, and a couple of seasonally appropriate celebrations of chocolate. Read on for a few ideas to get you started this January and February. Market Daze at Barewolf Brewing Sundays, Jan. 7–April 28 Every Sunday now through April, head to Barewolf Brewing in Amesbury for Market Daze, featuring artisan vendors, musicians, chefs, and creators of all kinds. The indoor winter market runs from noon to 4 p.m. weekly. The family- and friends-operated brewery features a rotating selection of small-batch brews from its spot in an old Amesbury mill building. Grab a drink and a pub snack after shopping! barewolfbrewing.com Old Newbury Christmas Tree Bonfire | Photograph by Sara Willman Old Newbury Christmas Tree Bonfire Jan. 13 The Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury once again hosts the Old Newbury Christmas Tree Bonfire, this year on Saturday, January 13, from 3 to 8 p.m. The annual event features local food and drink vendors, and the bonfire begins at dusk. Parking is $20, cash only, at 5 Little’s Lane and 71 High Road, and proceeds from the event go to the Newbury Fire Department and Historic New England. facebook.com/ OldNewburyChristmasTreeBonfire PEM’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration Jan. 15 On Monday, January 15, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem once again celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. While you’re there, check out exhibits like “Let None Be Excluded: The Origins of Equal School Rights in Salem” and “Bethany Collins, America: A Hymnal.” pem.org/events/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-day-celebration Gloucester’s So Salty Jan. 20–21 Gloucester hosts its third Gloucester’s So Salty festival this year, the town’s answer to Salem’s annual Salem So Sweet. On January 20 and 21 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., visitors to downtown Gloucester can expect ice sculptures, live music, salty treats, and free children’s art activities. The Cape Ann Museum and Discover Gloucester host the free event, in partnership with other local businesses and cultural institutions. capeannmuseum.org/events/3rd-annual-gloucesters-so-salty Photograph by Paul Kravitz | Courtesy of Salem Comedy Festival Salem Comedy Festival Jan. 25–27 The Salem Comedy & Spirits festival returns to Witch City on the last weekend in January. Founded in 2016 by comedian Mark Scalia, the non-competitive festival is all about networking and having fun, drawing comedians from across the country. The fest features three nights of stand-up comedy performances at local Salem breweries this January 25 through 27. salemcomedyfestival.com Chocolate Expo | Photograph by Chuck Fishman Chocolate Expo Wilmington Jan. 27–28 The Chocolate Expo returns to the Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington this January, this time for a whole weekend of family-friendly fun. This year’s event, which runs on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. through 6 p.m., will host a reunion of four stars from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The expo also features samples from dozens of vendors including artisan chocolatiers, candy shops, bakeries, and wineries, along with the chance to chat with the makers. Timed tickets are currently on sale for $20 for adults and $10 for children. thechocolateexpo.com Salem’s So Sweet Feb. 9–11 The 22nd annual Salem’s So Sweet chocolate and ice sculpture festival returns to Salem this February 9 through 11. The weekend-long celebration kicks off on Friday with a welcome party, late-night shopping, and the installation of ice sculptures around town that’ll be illuminated each night of the festival. On Saturday and Sunday, keep an eye out for the Chocolate Hearts Challenge—scan the QR codes at businesses around town for the chance to win prizes, all while you’re stocking up on chocolate for Valentine’s Day! salemmainstreets.org/festivals/salem-so-sweet Salem Flea Feb. 10 The Salem Flea hosts one indoor winter market this season on Saturday, Feb. 10. The market will feature dozens of local purveyors of vintage and handmade goods at Ames Hall on downtown Salem’s Sewall Street. Salem Flea does an annual summer market series, too, running on every third Saturday from May through September. thesalemflea.com/salem-flea PEM “Our Time on Earth” Exhibit Feb. 17–June 9 Opening Feb. 17, “Our Time on Earth” at PEM is a celebration of the Earth’s biodiversity and of a potential shared future where both humans and the earth thrive together. The traveling exhibition from the Barbican Centre in London features interactive installations by artists, designers, and scientists that help viewers see the world through different lenses, peering at magnified plankton or the microscopic organisms inside a tree. Part of PEM’s Climate + Environment Initiative, the exhibit runs through June 9. pem.org/exhibitions/our-time-on-earth

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culture

Even Cows Need Some Holiday Cheer

About 200 carolers had just begun the second verse of the classic Christmas song “The Friendly Beasts” when a little girl let out a squeal of delight. About 20 feet below the balcony, on the floor of the large domed barn, two of the half-dozen dairy cows were butting heads. As the grazing heifers lifted their horns, their playful roughhousing seemed like a display of holiday cheer. On Saturday, the Churchtown Dairy in Claverack, N.Y., once again hosted a Yuletide tradition: caroling to the herd of 28 cattle that call the cathedral-like barn their winter home. What began a decade ago as a way for the farm’s staff and their families to celebrate the herd has since grown to an annual tradition that brings locals and out-of-towners to the farm’s 250-acre property each December. This year, preregistration for the two caroling events filled up within hours of going online. Farm staff fielded phone calls from frustrated would-be carolers, some of whom blamed an Instagram post advertising the event for its rise in popularity.

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culture

Opinion | On Satanic Idols and Free Speech

This claim is a Christianized cousin of the secular idea that defending the free-speech rights of those with whom you vehemently disagree is, in essence, providing aid and comfort to racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia. In this view, your role as a citizen is first to determine whether any given speech meets with your moral approval, and then — and only then — to rally to its defense. But this is dangerous nonsense. I’m the farthest thing from a relativist. Indeed, my evangelical Christian religious convictions place me in a cohort that includes a mere 6 percent of adult Americans who hold a set of decidedly non-relativistic beliefs, including about the divinity of Christ and the authority of scripture. I’m fully aware that if the terms of debate in America were based on a religious or moral consensus, my viewpoint would be immediately chased from the public square. And in fact, much of my legal career was dedicated to protecting minority religious expression — including evangelical expression — from censorship on American campuses and in American communities. In the course of that representation, I learned three practical truths of free expression. First, few people are more eager to take advantage of free speech rights than people who possess deep moral convictions. When you watch a furious campus debate, the last thing you think is, “Watch the relativists fight.” The combatants possess burning convictions about, say, the Gaza war, or race and justice in America or L.G.B.T.Q. rights. When I stood with Christians, Muslims, and Jews who faced exclusion and persecution, never once was I representing a relativist. These people believed in their core values so much that they refused to be silent. Second, humility isn’t relativism, and even people who believe that absolute truth exists should possess enough humility to recognize they don’t know all that truth. I’ve been an evangelical my entire life, but my faith certainly hasn’t insulated me from error. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been wrong. And, by the way, I haven’t learned from Christians alone. I’ve been profoundly influenced by people from virtually every ideological and religious background. I’m a better person for my relationships with people with whom I disagree. Imagine the arrogance of thinking that my tribe or my sect — which is inevitably chock-full of fallen, imperfect people — should be the arbiter of truth, much less liberty. Third, prudent people know that they will not always rule. This is the most pragmatic case for free speech. In a democratic society, no party or movement possesses permanent power, and when you limit the liberty of your foes, you give them the power to limit your liberty the instant you lose an election. An immense amount of censorship would evaporate overnight if angry activists truly imbibed the lesson that the standard they seek to impose on others can also be inflicted on themselves.

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culture

Rob Reiner Remembers Norman Lear: Weve Lost a Real Champion of America

Reflecting on Norman Lear’s death, Rob Reiner was understandably heartbroken on Wednesday. Not only because he loved Lear, whom he’d first met as an 8-year-old, like a second father, as Reiner put it, but because Lear exited this world during a resurgence of many of the problems he’d tried to air out and squash through his television shows — namely, intolerance and bigotry. “He just couldn’t believe that this was happening to America,” said Reiner, who had seen Lear several times in the past couple of months, in a phone interview on Wednesday. “He would always say, ‘This is not the America that I grew up in and that we fought for to preserve. Something’s happened to this country that’s gone so far away from everything it stands for.’” “We’d talk about this, and he would say, ‘It’s like Alice in Wonderland,’” said Reiner, 76, an Oscar-nominated director. Reiner won two Emmy Awards for playing the liberal son-in-law, Michael, of the close-minded racist Archie Bunker on Lear’s most famous sitcom, “All in the Family,” which ran from 1971 to 1979 on CBS. The show aired in the era of appointment viewing, when there were only a handful of TV channels and households across the United States tuned in to the same programs at the same time. The shifting habits of American viewers, who can much more easily silo themselves in echo chambers when it comes to viewing habits, has only contributed to the fracturing and divisions, Reiner said.

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culture

Beer Nut: Too many options are better than fewer

On a recent trip, I met a bartender named Nick who hailed from Belgium. Having never been there, I grilled him about certain Belgian beers and how they were viewed in his homeland. We covered a wide span of topics, but what found most interesting about our chat was Nick’s combination of semi-surprise and minor confusion – let’s call it puzzlement – over the seemingly endless plethora of beer choices outside his country. Belgium is known for some of the best beers going, but Nick said he was amazed about how many variations of the same styles can be found even in one bar. He said that in Belgium, most bars might have between five and eight taps, but also more bottled beer than in many other countries he’s been to. It certainly didn’t seem like a complaint. Likewise, I sometimes ruminate on the cornucopia of beer choices with at least a small bit of bemusement. And like Nick, my thoughts don’t represent any sort of criticism. But I do wonder if the seemingly endless parade of variety is necessary. There doesn’t seem to be any downside: “the more, the merrier” and all that sort of thing, right? And people love having choices and options. I know I do. But Nick mentioned one problem with having so many options in one bar. “It would be hard to control myself and not try them all,” he said, tongue in cheek. This led me to wonder if there is such a thing as too many choices. I’m sure we’ve all faced decisions where the options seemed overwhelming and we wished for a narrower field of choices. Sometimes certain details of a decision aren’t that important to us, and we’d just rather not have to deal with them. With beer, I have seen customers walk into a bar with dozens of beers on tap and look a bit bewildered. Maybe they’re new to craft beer or maybe they’re just casual fans. Now, let’s assume that they know they like IPAs in general, but aren’t overly familiar with all the nuances the style has to offer. They stare at the beer menu or lineup of tap handles and see four or five different IPAs (which isn’t unusual these days). While a lot of beer bars gladly give out samples, Nick winced a little about dealing with this type of situation. “I can see giving two or three tastes, but not five,” he said. And even for me, having a surfeit of choices can give me pause. Sometimes it’s just difficult to make up your mind. What if you choose wrong? Well, the good thing about beer is that you can always choose again. And that’s better than having restricted options, right?

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culture

Lab partners: Dog visits make tough days better for Westfield middle schoolers

WESTFIELD — Once a month, a group of dog owners bring their pets to Westfield Middle School. They’re not ordinary dogs, but specially trained therapy dogs. These exceptional four-legged visitors spend about two hours every third Friday with seventh and eighth graders. They’ve been trained to work as therapy dogs by volunteers from the local chapter of the Love on a Leash program.

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Springfield Marine training in Japan near Mount Fuji (Photos)

COMBINED ARMS TRAINING CENTER CAMP FUJI, Japan — As part of the only permanently forward-deployed artillery unit in the Marine Corps, a Springfield service member is taking part in warfare exercises at the foot of Mount Fuji. U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jovanni Belloflores is part of the team that practiced deployment of the M240B machine gun, made by FN Herstal of Herstal, Belgium, on Nov. 29. The work performed at the training center increases the readiness and skill of the Belloflores’ unit, Alpha Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marine Littoral Regiment, 3rd Marine Division.

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culture

Home of the Week: Two-story living area is main event in Boston riding club condo

Year built 1920 Square feet 690 Bedrooms 1 Baths 1 full, 1 half Fee $417 month Pets Yes, one dog or cat per unit with trustee approval. Tenants may not have pets. Taxes $6,039 (2023) We’re going to let the Landmarks Commission take the lead here: “BUILDINGS WE LOVE: THE NEW BOSTON RIDING CLUB.” That’s the headline on the commission’s entry on what was once the place for Boston’s toniest set to show off their horsiest skills, but is now the 21-unit Mews Condos, many of which have a horse collar on the wall in a genuflection to the building’s past. Advertisement The building, which spans from Norway Street across to Hemenway Street (where the Badminton and Tennis Club has been operating for the past 90 years), is also on the National Register of Historic Places. “An outstanding and rare local example of half-timbered Tudor Revival/Queen-Anne style architecture, the New Riding Club preserves nearly all the elements of its original design, including half-timbering, projecting gables, sandstone sills and lintels, red brick quoins, and beltcourses,’’ the registry concludes. The building offers 21 units. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans Number 4, the unit for sale in this history-rich building, is on the second floor and spans two levels. The entry opens into a short hallway with hardwood flooring, which can be found everywhere in the home except for the kitchen and baths. On the left is a closet with white bifold doors. A few steps beyond and on the right is the 54-square-foot kitchen. The counters are white quartz to match the white Shaker-style cabinets. The appliances (the stove is electric) are stainless steel. The flooring is a ceramic blue-patterned tile. The pass-through provides the perfect way to hide the dinner dishes: Reach in and put them in the kitchen sink. The kitchen features white cabinets and stainless steel appliances. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans Opposite the kitchen is a half bath with natural stone tile flooring and a corner cabinet with arched doors. A two-part mirror hangs above it. Advertisement The vanity in the half bath is a corner unit. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans Just off the kitchen, an open space combines the dining and living areas for a total of 130 square feet. The dining area is positioned next to the pass-through to the kitchen. In the living area, the ceiling climbs two stories. Natural wood beams, two rows of windows with wood sills, and a fireplace with a wood mantel and a green tile surround stand in stark contrast to the white walls and ceiling. The fireplace is wood-burning and functioning. The unit comes with a functioning wood-burning fireplace. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans As one steps onto the stairwell, take a pause: A hitching post once used to keep horses in place is on the column on the right. Yes, it’s original. The stairwell has two landings and leads to the second-level loft/bedroom area. The loft is 228 square feet and is open to the floor below it. Natural light arrives via the upper bank of living room windows. The space has a ceiling fan, and two columns that look like balusters buttress a pair of soffits. The space has a walk-in closet with custom shelving. The en-suite bath (30 square feet) has a single Shaker-style vanity with a black granite counter, a shower/tub combination with a backsplash composed of white square tiles, and a black natural stone tile floor. The loft-style bedroom gets light from the living area's upper windows. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans The full bath is shower only. Hicham Bensaoui/Realty Plans There’s a washer/dryer connection in the bedroom closet. Ali Joyce of William Raveis in Boston has the listing. The monthly fee includes water, sewer, master insurance, laundry facilities, elevator, exterior maintenance, and snow and refuse removal. Advertisement Follow John R. Ellement on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Send listings to homeoftheweek@globe.com. Please note: We do not feature unfurnished homes unless they are new-builds and will not respond to submissions we won’t pursue. Subscribe to our newsletter at Boston.com/address-newsletter. John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.

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Toy for Joy 2023: Gift honors memory of Michael Cooley, victim of accident on State Street in Springfield

The impact of the sad and tragic loss still stings. The impact on the community and those who knew Michael Cooley is powerful and real. The 68-year-old Cooley died on Nov. 14 of injuries sustained just over two weeks earlier when he was struck by a car while crossing State Street in Springfield in the area of Springfield Central Library outside his home at Classical Condominiums. David G. Sacks, retired as a judge in Hampden Probate & Family Court, and his wife, Deborah Leopold, of Holyoke, did not hesitate to find a meaningful way to keep Cooley’s memory alive. “Michael was just a really sweet guy. Loved sports. Very active in the community and a great, great memory,” said Sacks, whose $150 donation in Cooley’s name to the Toy for Joy campaign is among the recent contributions received. Now in its 101st year, Toy for Joy is a collaborative effort by the Salvation Army with The Republican, Reminders Publishing, El Pueblo Latino and MassLive. The campaign goal is to raise $150,000 by Christmas eve. Generations of Western Massachusetts residents have seen Toy for Joy as a way to remember departed friends and family while also helping make Christmas a happier time for underprivileged children in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties. Sacks said he and his wife are proud to put Michael Cooley’s name amongst those so recognized. Springfield lost one of its most beloved citizens when Cooley died, according to Sacks. Cooley was developmentally challenged, but that didn’t stop him from living a full life of joy, optimism and volunteer activities that included work with the Salvation Army, a co-sponsor of Toy for Joy. His willingness to help others was both inexhaustible and inspiring, according to the judge. Cooley’s job at the Hampden County Registry of Probate was important work that Sacks, who worked with him, said Cooley did flawlessly and with great attention to detail. “Michael could remember all the case numbers. Our files at probate were kept in the vault, and lawyers, judges and clerks would call out for one and the staff had to keep track,” Sacks said. “I’d see Michael at the doorway, holding out a file we needed, and it made my day. Those are great, great memories.” Cooley’s late father, Sidney Cooley, a longtime District Court judge, was, like his son, active in service to the community, died at age 100 in 2014. “He was a peach of a guy, too,” Sacks said. Donations to Toy for Joy go directly to youths ages 16 and under who might otherwise be left out of the joy of Christmas. Children of eligible families receive an age-appropriate toy and a book, promoting happiness and literacy in the true Christmas spirit. Gift distribution will be conducted in mid-December from Salvation Army locations in Springfield, Holyoke and Greenfield. The coupon published with this story may be used to submit a contribution by mail to The Republican, 1860 Main St., Springfield, MA 01103. Donors can also make online contributions at SalvationArmyma.org/toyforjoydonation. Here is a list of the latest contributions: In loving memory of our darling Colleen. Never forgotten $50 In loving memory of our parents and sister Linda $100 In memory of Michael Granger, Charlotte Granger and Dottie Pelter $100 In memory of Al and Lucy DiStefano, Al, Carol and Angie $20 Merry Christmas from the Hosmers $50 In memory of Alyssa S. Huntley $50 In memory of the Barry and the Maloney families $100 In memory of Mike Haskell $100 Wishing my good friend Johann a merry Christmas from C. $25 From all our family that have passed from Ron Kaddy and family $100 Merry Christmas from Taffy, TJ., Miss T., Toby and Tucker $130 In memory of Dad F., aunts, uncles and Mom and Dad $50 From Dolly Bagge, in memory of St. Jude $200 Merry Christmas. Love, Santa $100 Merry Christmas and happy new year from Walt and Judy $100 For the children from Jack, Laura, Evan and Mark Nelson $100 In memory of the O’Connor and O’Neil families $50 In memory of Hazel and Athas Rossi and their children, Peter, Nola, Susan and Tina $20 In memory of my wife Kathleen Cournoyer $100 In memory of Marion and Daniel Bisi $100 Cheryl $15 In memory of Salvatore and Filomena Ragone $25 Celebration of family and God’s many blessings $100 In honor of Herbert and Geraldine Bock $100 In loving memory of Kenneth and Virginia Peterson $40 Remembering Joe, Jack and Flo $25 To Tom’s boys $20 Merry Christmas from Scott and Chris $40 In memory of wife Beverly and son Daniel $25 In loving memory of our Papa, God bless. Love, Colby and Shelby $25 In memory of Grammy $33 In memory of Sheila and William Herchuck $100 In loving memory of my husband Harding J. Stewart from Bev $50 In memory of Edward, Mary and Peggy Girotti $50 In lieu of Christmas cards this year from H.H. and K.H. $25 Merry Christmas and peace to all from Bill and Rita $100 Merry Christmas, Steve. Love always, Mom, Dad and Mike $25 In memory of Dennis $25 Colleen and Loy $250 For the Gil, Gardner, Fuller, Wayner and Trimboli family members who have passed from John and Debra $25 Miss you and love you tons and tons kiddo. I am always here for you, and I love you forever. Love, Dad $20 In memory of Joseph Caldwell $50 In memory of Michael Cooley from Deborah Leopold and David Sacks $150 In memory of Stanley and Mabel Chrusciel $25 To Danielle LaTaille and all of the Salvation Army: Thank you for all that you do for Springfield! $50 Brenda $500 For my mom, Elizabeth, and my sister, Annie $50 Lissa $150 Merry Christmas from Michael and Beth Crowley $500 Susan $500 Janice $300 Joan $25 In memory of Jean Caldwell $50 Tim $125 Merry Christmas to all and peace here and abroad $200 In memory of Nancy & Roger Gauthier, with love from the Marcotte family $100 Received: $5,088 Total to date: $10,265 Still needed: $139,735

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Opinion | Knowing When They Means One

I have a proposal about our new usage of “they” to refer to individual people, as in, “Irene? Oh, they left an hour ago” or “Bernard cut themselves by accident.” Because it is so hard to change language by fiat, I know that my proposal here must qualify as modest. But propose it I must: Might it make the new “they” a little easier to handle if it were used with singular tense marking? I have often been asked by people over 35 or so, “Are we supposed to say ‘they want’ or ‘they wants’?” I always answer that the proper form is “they want,” but must it be? Instead, we could say this, which would make perfect and intuitive grammatical sense: Singular: I want, you want, he/she/they wants Plural: we want, you want, they want Under the current dispensation, “they want to trim the cat’s claws” can refer to an individual or more than one person. Context usually makes the meaning known, but surely it would make things a little clearer if we could use “they wants to trim the cat’s claws” when referring to just one person. Poor little “they” has had it rough over the years. For ages, we have been taught that it is an error to use “they” in the singular — “A person can’t help their birth” — because there is supposedly something inherently and ineradicably plural about “they.” Never mind that even Chaucer used “they” in the singular and that the example sentence I just used is from Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.”

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MassLive wants your suggestions for LGBTQ+ leaders to celebrate in Mass.

Massachusetts was the site of the first legal gay marriage ceremony in the United States nearly 20 years ago. Many LGBTQ+ leaders make this state their home, and MassLive is looking to celebrate them. We are reaching out to ask our readers who is making a mark in areas such as business, art, music, politics, advocacy, activism or education. Please nominate individuals by filling out the form at this link or in the embedded form below and be sure to include contact information for how we can reach the person. We will feature Massachusetts LGBTQ+ leaders during the month of February. Thank you for your help!

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Welcome to Tel Aviv, the gayest city on earth

Well folks, it’s time to set out a plate and a fork, because I’m about to eat my words. I’ve had the good fortune to visit plenty of LGBT-friendly utopias, and I couldn’t imagine Tel Aviv snatching the title, tiara, and sash away from locales such as San Francisco, Berlin, or Amsterdam as the place to go for gay. TEL AVIV — I read the lists and saw the surveys proclaiming Tel Aviv to be the most gay-friendly place this side of the Emerald City. I’m paraphrasing here, but travel guides usually characterize Tel Aviv as gayer than a Neil Patrick Harris pool party. Advertisement Tel Aviv is, for lack of a better description, super gay. It could even be characterized as post-gay. Most urban centers have a concentrated epicenter affectionately called a gayborhood or a gay ghetto. Tel Aviv doesn’t need to bother with such a dated concept. Get The Big To-Do Your guide to staying entertained, from live shows and outdoor fun to the newest in museums, movies, TV, books, dining, and more. Enter Email Sign Up “Everything in Tel Aviv is gay, inherently gay,” said Leon Avigad, who owns two very chic boutique hotels with his partner Nitzan Perry. “The people are creative, open-minded, liberal, accepting, and daring. Tel Aviv is very open to new forms of art, new musical styles, everything is very accepting.” A sign at a cafe on Rothschild Boulevard says it all. christopher muther/globe staff The long-standing rule of thumb is that 10 percent of the population is gay, give or take. The estimate by officials in Tel Aviv is 25 percent of its population is gay. I’m no Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, but according to my remedial math ski lls and the calculator on my iPhone, if the population of Tel Aviv is 420,000, that means 105,000 people in the city identify as LGBT. This was not what I was expecting, but I love a good stereotype-shattering trip as much as I like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Tel Aviv exists in a secular bubble. Shabbat is observed beginning at sundown Friday, but the folks here are so ready to make merry that even though the roads empty of cars, the clubs are jammed and there are even some open restaurants. As soon as the sun goes down on Saturday night and the stars emerge, Shabbat is over. Stores and restaurants reopen and stay open late. Advertisement I walked for miles along the sunny beaches that circle the city and saw same-sex couples holding hands. I glanced across the street and there were two women pushing a smartly dressed tyke in a stroller. In the other direction a party boy had his face buried in his phone making plans for a night of hedonism. Perhaps hedonism is a good place to start in describing my experiences. I came elbow-to-elbow and cheek-to-cheek (you can go ahead and pick which cheeks) with Tel Aviv’s carnality shortly after I arrived. It was an ordinary Wednesday night, yet the weekend had unofficially begun. At a gay dance party called Dreck, the crowd didn’t arrive until 1 a.m., and the evening wasn’t in full swing until about 2 a.m. There was no apparent reason for the thump-a-thump-a-thump of the midweek electronic music except that it’s fun to stay out very late. It’s far less enjoyable to wake up the following morning with glitter stuck to your scalp and the smell of vodka oozing from your pores. “It’s like this all the time,” Guy Leitersdorf, the developer of an app that tracks the club scene, told me matter of factly. Leitersdorf laid out an itinerary for me, and between the jetlag and the late nights I was struggling to stay vertical by the end of the trip. I began to wonder if the mandatory Israeli military service included training for party endurance. There are a few gay specific clubs, but most of the scene involves attending a weekly gay dance party at an otherwise heterosexual club. Each night it’s a new party, a new theme, and a night that can go to 4 a.m. or later. Advertisement As the weekend approached, the parties truly blossomed. I was repeatedly told I needed to return during the massive June Pride celebration, which brings together an estimated 180,000 locals and tourists. The beaches of Tel Aviv are as hospitable as the people. christopher muther/globe staff That’s almost half the city. I heard laments from the women I chatted up that it’s impossible to find a single, heterosexual male in Tel Aviv in June. “It’s usually the best time to get out of town,” said a clearly disgruntled — and single — Rachel Perutz. Man cannot subsist on parties and falafel alone, so I spent my days exploring the city’s diverse neighborhoods and enjoying a bit of cafe culture. Tel Aviv is a small city and easy to traverse on foot if you bring comfortable shoes and sunscreen. When I mapped out any location it always seemed to be a 15 or 20 minute walk. There is also an impressive bike share program which makes it easy to buzz along the ocean promenade or the tree-lined bike path that cuts through Rothschild Boulevard. The essential Tel Aviv experience is an architecture tour. I generally avoid group tours the same way I avoid using the word “meninism.” But the best way to make sure you see the 1930s German-influenced Bauhaus architecture, and get a sense of its importance here, is to find a knowledgable guide and join a tour. Try the Bauhaus Center tour on Fridays at 10 a.m. (about $17) or the free Bauhaus tour offered by the city on Saturday mornings at 11 a.m. Advertisement Tel Aviv has the largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings in the world in various states of restoration and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It also has a unique and booming restaurant scene that reflects the Mediterranean climate, Middle Eastern roots, and European-influenced chefs. Aside from the old city of Jaffa, Tel Aviv is a young metropolis, so don’t come for history. However, you should come for the local produce at Carmel Market, cocktails in the hipster ’hood of Florentin, shopping at Jaffa Railway Station and Old Tel Aviv Port, and the lobby bar scene at places such as the Norman and Hotel Montefiore. Did I mention there’s a thriving gay scene? The question I posed to everybody I met, even the octopus of a man whose hands seemed to be everywhere but on his own cocktail, was why the gays had flocked here? One of my favorite theories involved the Eurovision Song Contest. Israel’s entry into the 1998 edition was the Tel Aviv-based transgender singer named Dana International. A more plausible explanation may be that Tel Aviv is the most gay friendly city in the Middle East. It’s a welcoming destination for residents of less hospitable territories. The government funds the massive Pride celebration, along with the Tel Aviv Municipal LGBT Community Center. The center hosts a gay parents support group, a queer cinema workshop, painting lessons, a kindergarten, a medical clinic, performance space, and nearly any other service you can imagine. Advertisement The day I met with Avihu Mizan, the center’s cultural events coordinator, I tripped over children’s shoes that littered the halls as he apologized for the screaming horde of kids playing on the second floor. They were at the center for afterschool programs. Gay life in Tel Aviv isn’t all parties and skimpy bathing suits at Hilton Beach. There is a gayby boom happening here, and there are plenty in the LGBT community who have no interest in staying up until daylight. But I was very interested in these rave-ups. At the Penguin Club, I stumbled across a party called 1984 with a mixed gay and straight crowd. This edition was dedicated to David Bowie, which seemed fitting given his penchant for playing hopscotch with identities, sexuality, and musical genres. “Hey babe, let’s go out tonight!” the stylishly attired and sweaty pack yelled along to Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel.” It was the siren song that summed up the ethos of my week. Voices raised, fists pumping in the air, they sang with conviction. This was escapism at its finest. It was as if Bowie had written the song for this moment. “You like me, and I like it all. We like dancing and we look divine.” christopher muther/globe staff Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Muther and on Instagram @Chris_Muther.

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What Happens When the Happy Holiday Memories Fade - The New York Times

My happiest Christmas memories take the form of snapshots, or the briefest of video clips, though in most cases no actual photographic documentation exists. Even when I study on them, even when I work in earnest to call them up again in some fuller form, they remain only flashes. Such memories exist entirely as fragments, freeze-frame likenesses of ephemeral joy: The held breath just before my husband pulls down the creaky attic ladder in the hallway outside our sons’ bedrooms. That midnight pause, year after year, as he listens for any stirring behind their closed doors. The Christmas tree we installed outside the front window the year our middle boy, barely toddling, wouldn’t stop eating the ornaments, and the Christmas tree we encircled with chicken wire the year our first puppy wouldn’t stop eating the ornaments. The giggling from our oldest son’s room long before first light because his brothers always climbed in bed with him as soon as they woke up. Our children dressed in bathrobes and towels in the Christmas pageant. This snapshot comes with a soundtrack: “There. You look just like a shepherd,” my husband is saying. “I look like a guy with a towel on his head,” our youngest son is saying back.

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Gearing up for the 250th Boston Tea Party anniversary

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What Social Trends Taught Us About the 2023 Economy

This year, the world learned that some men just can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire. Over here at The New York Times, we can’t stop thinking about what social trends like that one tell us about the American economy. We had no shortage of viral memes and moments to discuss in 2023. Americans flocked to Paris (and overseas in general). Millennial women stocked up on the Stanley thermoses their dads used to use, one of a range of female-powered consumer fads. Thanks partly to Barbie, Birkenstocks also came back harder than a ’90s trend. People spoke in Taylor Swift lyrics. Social developments like those can tell us a lot about the economy we’re living in. To wrap up 2023, we ran through some of the big cultural events and what they taught us about the labor market, economic growth and the outlook for 2024. ‘He’s Just Ken’ Had Labor Market Tiebacks “Barbie,” the movie that launched a thousand think pieces, hit theaters this summer with a telling promotional catchphrase: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”

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Westfield library, childrens museum, playground impacted by budget cuts

WESTFIELD — The Westfield Athenaeum and Amelia Park Children’s Museum have had their earmarked funding halved as a result of Gov. Maura Healey’s recent 9C budget cuts, as have plans to rehabilitate the Cross Street Playground. The cuts, which total $375 million, come as a result of lower-than-expected state tax revenues. “It’s very disappointing that we are not going to be able to get the funds,” said Diane Chambers, the museum’s executive director. Amelia Park Children’s Museum Inc. was originally set to receive $10,000, and will now receive only $5,000.

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The old Black church is leaving Boston due to costs, changing areas

ABINGTON — A pile of debris, broken tiles scattered about, electrical wires strewn all over the floor. These were the last remnants of what was once a Mastrangelo Family Catering function hall on the eastern edge of town. But something new is taking shape in this most unlikely setting: a church. This story was produced by the Globe’s Money, Power, and Inequality team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here . And not just any church but the Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is departing the historically Black South End, where it has been a fixture for 152 years, for an almost all-white suburb 22 miles to the south. Advertisement It is a seemingly startling relocation, but one that the Rev. Carl Thompson had no difficulty explaining as he walked around the church’s soon-to-be home. In this little town of 17,000, he believes, the Ebenezer can afford to fulfill his vision of what a congregation can be. Get Money, Power, Inequality A weekly newsletter connecting you with news about the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston, along with solutions being proposed to bridge the gap. Enter Email Sign Up “Take a look around,” Thompson said on a recent Thursday morning. “We’ll have a brand-new audiovisual system, a playground, a basketball court, a concession stand, a lounge for culinary arts.” All of it, Thompson says, is his idea “to rebuild and rebrand the church.” Three years ago, the Ebenezer congregation held its last service in Boston’s South End. Since then, church services have been scattered: at various function halls and schools, and broadcast to remote-worshipers on Zoom. The Ebenezer is part of a larger migration. A Globe review identified about a dozen Black churches that have left Boston in recent years — or are considering it — for new chapels in nearby suburbs. Their reasons vary. Some cite the changing demographics of Boston’s neighborhoods, the cost of real estate, declining membership, even the lack of available parking. In the case of the Ebenezer, the new structure in Abington will better accommodate an aging congregation and possibly attract new members. Abington is just four miles from Brockton, a city which is 40 percent Black. Advertisement The Rev. Tammy Thurman Brown was moved to tears as vocalists performed alongside a band during a recording of an Ebenezer Baptist Church service at the ABCD office in Mission Hill. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Ramona Rogers, a member of the L. Whitmore Sr. Ushers Ministry folded her hands in prayer during Sunday Service at Concord Baptist Church. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff) A church member prayed during the Sunday service at New Hope Baptist Church. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff) It is difficult to determine precisely how many Boston churches have relocated. No city or state departments track such information. Even property tax data, which could help estimate the number, doesn’t show the full scope because many Black churches don’t own their buildings. A Globe review of such data from the 2002 and 2022 tax years shows that of roughly 160 apparently Black congregations that owned properties, more than a dozen have left Boston or closed down entirely. About a dozen others moved to a different neighborhood in the city, and the status of 27 others could not be determined. What is clear, though, community members say, is that as each church departs for cheaper and more expansive pastures, pieces of history and culture go with them. These are faith communities that have driven social justice movements, fed the hungry and housed the poor, and served for decades as Black Boston’s heartbeat. “We’re losing cultural, social, and financial capital,” said Jaronzie Harris, director of the Black Church Vitality Project, a partnership focusing on supporting the city’s Black churches. “We’re losing … memory of Black history in the city.” Will Dickerson III, the city’s faith-based community liaison, said officials meet with religious leaders to address neighborhood concerns and to direct them to available resources, including funding through the Community Preservation Act. He also recognized, however, that “inflation is a universal problem in Boston that impacts all sectors of community life.” Advertisement Church members including Yvonne Jones (left) greeted each other amid tables full of toys that the ABCD office had collected for their toys for tots drive as the Ebenezer Baptist Church used the space to record their Sunday service in Mission Hill. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff “Our religious community is strong and essential to the city’s sense of belonging,” Dickerson said. “I encourage faith leaders to continue to express their needs so we can work together to ensure that Black churches remain in Boston.” The movement of the churches, in many ways, mirrors that of their Black congregants, subjected over generations to the push and pull of discrimination and segregation, forced to pack up and search for new opportunities. In the 1800s, for instance, most Black churches were concentrated in the West End and Beacon Hill, where many Black people, including enslaved people, lived. But over time, churches began to move to or be founded in the South End and Lower Roxbury, as rising rents and crumbling housing pushed the Black community south. Certainly, this is the origin story of the Ebenezer Baptist Church at 157 West Springfield St., where formerly enslaved people settled in 1871 after the Civil War, and where their descendants remained for generations. Today, history is repeating itself. The South End is becoming younger, less Black, and more expensive. New luxury developments are popping up, sometimes even replacing the historic Black churches that called the neighborhood home. Many of the Black businesses and restaurants have been displaced, too, by a gentrified array of yoga studios, a Whole Foods Market, high-end tapas bars, and vegan dessert shops. And as Black residents leave, the leaders of neighborhood’s historic churches are asking themselves how long they can — or should — remain. Advertisement The quandary presents itself not only in the South End, but in other mostly Black neighborhoods as well, and at smaller congregations that cater to Black immigrants. The Redeemed Christian Church of God-Cornerstone Miracle Center, a Nigerian congregation that began gathering in Roxbury in 2010, is now in Billerica. New Life United African Church, once near John Eliot Square, is in Randolph. Haitian immigrants formed The New Jerusalem Evangelical Baptist Church in 1979, and they gathered at a storefront near Codman Square for decades. In 2017, they relocated to a former synagogue in Randolph. The current state of the inside of the former South End site of Ebenezer Baptist Church on West Springfield Street. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff “Costs, land, parking ... every church in Boston is now facing the same crisis,” Thompson said. “The prominent historical churches [that] are still in the city ... now, they may have to face those same type of decisions.” For the Ebenezer, a beam that had fallen in the South End sanctuary — luckily, when no one was around — served as the tangible sign that it was time to move on. The Ebenezer paid $1.6 million for its Abington property in 2022, a bargain compared to Boston prices and millions less than what the church had sold the historic South End building for. Now, the future of the old Ebenezer building is also under construction. A developer who bought the property for $4.7 million in 2022 is turning it into nine luxury condos, with parking, bike storage, and open space. Based on the history of condo developments in the neighborhood, the condos could sell for millions apiece. Advertisement At the former South End home of the 85-year-old New Hope Baptist Church, for instance, the six condos that replaced the congregation are worth upward of $5.8 million, according to the real estate marketplace Zillow. New Hope Baptist had been gathering since 1968 in the aged building that once housed the Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal Church. But the Rev. Kenneth Simms said the church could no longer keep up with repairs. By the time he became pastor in 2012, the church was spending at least $250,000 a year to maintain the Gothic-style, 161-year-old structure. So, in late 2012, New Hope sold its church to a private developer for $3.6 million and closed on a $1.8 million Catholic church in Hyde Park two years later. Ethel Sykes (right) embraced Sylvia Williams during the Sunday service at New Hope Baptist Church. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff “We had to come to grips [with the fact that] we had outlived that neighborhood, and it was perhaps time for us to move on,” Simms said. Now, what were once places of ministry are the gleaming preserve of those in the neighborhood who can afford to buy in. For those who cannot — people who have been priced out and whose churches followed not long after — what’s left is a longing for the past. At Concord Baptist Church in Milton, an hour before a recent Sunday service, several older women chattered in the pews. They cackled at one another’s jokes, passed around strawberry bon-bons, and exchanged mailers. They love to loiter for a bit here but still miss the church’s old home in the South End. Sammie Banks, an Alabama native who joined the church in 1965 when it was still at the corner of W. Brookline Street and Warren Avenue, said the congregation would linger well after the final prayer, chatting over meals about whatever and whoever. There was no a rush; most of them lived a few minutes’ walk from the chapel, anyway. But now, “we get up and go home,” she said. Just over a decade ago, the church sold its site in the South End — a half mile away from the Ebenezer church — to a private developer for nearly $3.1 million. Today, the building houses nine luxury condos, replete with lancet windows and high cathedral ceilings. The most expensive unit is listed for $6.3 million. The listing price for a single garage parking space under the building is more than $300,000. Following the trail of its congregants, the church moved into a former synagogue in Milton. The suburb is wealthy and mostly white, but it has a larger Black population than most suburbs and is closer to the neighborhoods where the church’s congregants resettled — Mattapan, Roslindale, and Hyde Park, and south of the city in Brockton, Randolph, and Stoughton. Still, the Rev. Conley Hughes Jr. said the decision to move was difficult: Many of the churchgoers wanted to hold on to key life events that had taken place in their South End chapel — weddings, funerals, baptisms. Senior Pastor Conley Hughes Jr. prayed over Micaiah Elow before baptizing him with the help of Deacon Andrew Watson at Concord Baptist Church. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff “All of the rituals you have in life were done in that building,” Hughes said. Marc Banks, who volunteers at the church as a children’s teacher, grew up in Concord Baptist. He lives in Hyde Park now, and relishes the quicker drive to the Milton church. But it means giving up what the South End sanctuary had meant to him. When you lose a Black church, “you lose a part of the culture, a part of the history,” Banks said. “Black churches just have a certain way of doing things,” he added. That’s why some congregations find themselves at a crossroads, struggling to find a place here in Boston but determined to stay. Three years ago, the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church sold its building at 541 Massachusetts Ave. for $2.2 million, with a plan to find a new place in Boston. It is still looking. “We want to continue being a blessing for the Boston area,” said the Rev. George Bullock Sr., the church’s pastor. “Because when you take away a spiritual foundation from an area, you’re leaving a void for something to fill it.” These days, Mt. Calvary churchgoers who once studied the Bible under the shady trees of Chester Park resort to singing God’s praises from a Zoom link. Only on rare occasions, such as at a recent Christmas banquet in Codman Square, can congregants gather in person. In Grove Hall, the 52-year-old Bethlehem Healing Temple is falling apart. In August, a hollow sidewalk leading to the church’s entryway collapsed, causing a woman to fall 10 feet and break her leg. Half of the property has been demolished, so that renovations can begin — costly fixes that the congregation is struggling to afford. “You can’t squeeze the juice out of an apple that doesn’t have any,” said Bishop Joe Swilley, the church’s pastor for 23 years. Still, Swilley said, he’s set on staying in Grove Hall, saying it is as crucial now as ever to serve as a pillar of support for residents in the neighborhood. The church is in talks with a developer to raze the old building and construct a new one with some affordable housing units, to fund the costs. “We’re determined to stay and work with the neighborhood and help as many people as we possibly can,” Swilley said. “Why move?” A deaconess adjusted the cloth covering the Communion table before the start of Sunday service at Concord Baptist Church. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Tiana Woodard is a Report for America corps member covering Black neighborhoods. She can be reached at tiana.woodard@globe.com. Follow her @tianarochon.

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Opinion | Antisemitism: A Guide for the Perplexed

In a season of widespread condemnation of antisemitism, many struggle to define it. I can imagine having this conversation with any number of people trying to understand this age-old phenomenon: Question: I’m having trouble making sense of some of the claims and counterclaims being made about what is, or isn’t, antisemitic speech and behavior. To be honest, it doesn’t help that so many prominent Jews have sharply different takes on the subject. Answer: Two Jews, three opinions. That sounds like a stereotype. It is. It’s also one of the few things that most Jews agree is true of us as people. OK, so in your opinion and a half, what is antisemitism? It’s a conspiracy theory that holds that Jews are uniquely prone to use devious means to achieve malevolent ends and must therefore be opposed by any means necessary, including violence. Is that the commonly accepted definition? No, it’s my own. A more widely cited definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which defines antisemitism, in part, as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” But the phrase “a certain perception” raises more questions than it answers.

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Mixtapes, T-Shirts and Even a Typeface Measure the Rise of Hip-Hop

For the last year, celebrations of hip-hop’s first five decades have attempted to capture the genre in full, but some early stars and scenes all but disappeared long before anyone came looking to fete them. Three excellent books published in recent months take up the task of cataloging hip-hop’s relics, the objects that embody its history, before they slip away. In the lovingly assembled, thoughtfully arranged “Do Remember! The Golden Era of NYC Hip-Hop Mixtapes,” Evan Auerbach and Daniel Isenberg wisely taxonomize the medium into distinct micro-eras, tracking innovations in form and also content — beginning with live recordings of party performances and D.J. sets and ending with artists using the format to self-distribute and self-promote. For over a decade, cassettes were the coin of the realm in mixtapes, even after CDs usurped them in popularity: They were mobile, durable and easily duplicated. (More than one D.J. rhapsodizes over the Telex cassette duplicator.) Each new influential D.J. found a way to push the medium forward — Brucie B talks about personalizing tapes for drug dealers in Harlem; Doo Wop recalls gathering a boatload of exclusive freestyles for his “95 Live” and in one memorable section; Harlem’s DJ S&S details how he secured some of his most coveted unreleased songs, sometimes angering the artists in the process.

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South Koreas City of Books

The book city’s mission — to “actively support culture and arts based on books” — can be seen in buildings all over town. Photopia, a serene purple structure curved like an ocean wave, serves as a photography production and processing studio. One publishing company, Dulnyouk, has its headquarters in a towering, geometric structure that resembles the kind of cumbersome transport vehicle found in “Star Wars.” Quaint cafes, where visitors can sip their drinks while reading, dot Paju’s street corners. Everything is designed to preserve and spread a love for books. At the core of Paju Book City is where Lee works, the Asia Publication Culture and Information Center, a five-story complex that includes an education facility, events hall and exhibition space, and that serves as a social and professional nucleus for local publishers. The center draws almost 10,000 visitors a year. On the building’s first floor is the Forest of Wisdom, a central library with tens of thousands of books on display and tens of thousands more in storage, according to Lee. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, some more than 25 feet tall, line the walls. Though visitors are not allowed to check out books — fiction and nonfiction, reference texts, picture books and other works — they are welcome to browse the shelves and read in common areas. The seemingly boundless collection means guests include families with children, young couples on dates and groups of older people on social outings. The center includes a hotel for anyone who wants to spend the night.

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culture

South Koreas City of Books

The book city’s mission — to “actively support culture and arts based on books” — can be seen in buildings all over town. Photopia, a serene purple structure curved like an ocean wave, serves as a photography production and processing studio. One publishing company, Dulnyouk, has its headquarters in a towering, geometric structure that resembles the kind of cumbersome transport vehicle found in “Star Wars.” Quaint cafes, where visitors can sip their drinks while reading, dot Paju’s street corners. Everything is designed to preserve and spread a love for books. At the core of Paju Book City is where Lee works, the Asia Publication Culture and Information Center, a five-story complex that includes an education facility, events hall and exhibition space, and that serves as a social and professional nucleus for local publishers. The center draws almost 10,000 visitors a year. On the building’s first floor is the Forest of Wisdom, a central library with tens of thousands of books on display and tens of thousands more in storage, according to Lee. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, some more than 25 feet tall, line the walls. Though visitors are not allowed to check out books — fiction and nonfiction, reference texts, picture books and other works — they are welcome to browse the shelves and read in common areas. The seemingly boundless collection means guests include families with children, young couples on dates and groups of older people on social outings. The center includes a hotel for anyone who wants to spend the night.

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The Best State Parks to Visit This Winter

With the new year come wonderful new opportunities to explore the Golden State. California has 279 state parks, which cover more than a million acres in all, from 230 feet below sea level at the Salton Sea to more than 10,000 feet above at the snowy summit of Mount San Jacinto. The state park system, the biggest in the nation, preserves impressive waterfalls and wildlife reserves, some of the world’s largest trees and the state’s most stunning flowers. Today, I have some recommendations for state parks to visit in the winter, no matter what sort of vacation you’re craving. And you can now check out free vehicle day-use passes for most state parks from your local library. Happy traveling. Learn more about the infamous Donner Party. Donner Memorial State Park, a 10-minute drive west of Truckee, is a window into the travails of the 87 members of the Donner Party, settlers who were snowed in while trying to cross the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-47 and who resorted to cannibalism to survive. The park offers miles of hiking trails and ranger-led snowshoe walks, as well as gentle terrain for cross-country skiing. Get up close to elephant seals. Año Nuevo State Park is one of my favorite places to visit in winter. It’s one of the few spots in North America where you can see elephant seals, massive animals who have made a remarkable recovery from the brink of extinction. They can be seen at the park year-round, but December through March is when they come ashore to mate, give birth and nurse their young. Park docents offer guided walks every day until March 31. Read more about reserving a spot on a tour.

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Norman Lear, Whose Comedies Changed the Face of TV, Is Dead at 101

But Mr. Lear also had his share of flops. In 1975, his “Hot L Baltimore,” a sitcom set in a run-down hotel and based on a play by Lanford Wilson, lasted 13 weeks on ABC. And after a few more short-lived shows, his hot streak was over by the mid-1980s. Some later projects — among them “704 Hauser” (1994), about a Black family living in Archie Bunker’s former home — were on the air for only a few weeks; others never got off the ground. Working Till the End Mr. Lear nevertheless kept his hand in television. In 2003, he helped write a few episodes of “South Park,” the taboo-breaking animated series that was the “All in the Family” of its day. (The show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have said that their bile-spewing character Eric Cartman is partly based on Archie Bunker.) In 2009, Mr. Lear developed a series about professional wrestling for HBO, although it was not picked up. For several years he found no takers for his proposed series about retirees in Southern California, “Guess Who Died?”; that changed in 2017, when NBC committed to produce a pilot, but a year later the network declined to pick up the show. Still working into his 90s, Mr. Lear was the executive producer of a new version of “One Day at a Time,” centered on a Latino family, for Netflix. That series made its debut in 2017, to enthusiastic reviews, and lasted three seasons. In July 2021, on his 99th birthday, TBS announced that it would develop a reboot of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” starring Emily Hampshire, with Mr. Lear as an executive producer. The show has not yet begun production, but at his death Mr. Lear had other projects in the works, including an animated version of “Good Times”; a reboot of “Who’s the Boss?”; and a sitcom, starring Laverne Cox and the comedian George Wallace, about a man who learns that his adult son has transitioned. In May 2019, Mr. Lear and Jimmy Kimmel hosted a TV special on which episodes of “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons” were recreated live by an all-star cast, including Woody Harrelson as Archie Bunker and Jamie Foxx as George Jefferson. The special was produced by Mr. Lear, Mr. Kimmel and others as part of a deal Mr. Lear had signed with Sony that included an option to reimagine his past shows and potentially produce reboots. A second special, recreating episodes of “All in the Family” and “Good Times,” aired that December; a third, recreating episodes of two other series Mr. Lear’s company had produced, “The Facts of Life” and “Diff’rent Strokes,” was broadcast in 2021.

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culture

Two Boys on Bikes, Falling in Love

Eleven-year-old Eric Darnell Pritchard was a solitary kid. They preferred reading romance novels to playing sports, and watching soap operas to hanging out with the neighborhood kids. Although they were obsessed with love, they felt too different to find a romantic connection of their own. Then, a cute boy moved in across the street. To Eric’s surprise, they both “like liked” each other. But when Eric told the wrong person about their new boyfriend, things quickly spun out of control.

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Community comes together to help after fire that killed four children in Conn.

As the Somers community mourns the heart-wrenching loss of four children who died in a fire, community members are taking action. They are finding ways to support and assist a family that has not only lost children but two families that have lost their homes and everything in them. With the motto "Somers Strong," community members are spreading hope. They said they just want to be good neighbors. “The community came together instantly and said, ‘What do we do to support?’,” said Michelle Wink, co-owner of Sue's Shirt Creations. Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters. When she got the news of the tragedy, like many others, she was in utter shock. “I stopped breathing for a second and Immediately thought of the family, I thought of the children, I thought of the school, and I thought of the fire department, and I thought Somers,” Wink explained. So, Wink made a post about the shirts and by the morning she'd already received dozens of orders from people who want to give support. While NBC Connecticut was visiting Sue's Shirt Creations, the owner of another business that's chipping in to support the cause stopped by. Wink had called him to drop off the signs DG Graphics is making. “I’ve never really seen a community come together like they have in the past couple of days. It just kind of reminds you how important your neighbors are,” said Sean Coonery, the owner of DG Graphics. While it wasn't his idea to make the signs, Coonery jumped at the opportunity to support these families facing such grief. “A community member came in to DG Graphics just yesterday, the day after the events, and asked if we were willing to support and donate some signs and we are happy to do that," Coonery explained. "And that community member, Colleen, is going to then sell the signs to people who want to support and rally around families. All the money that is raised from those sales is going to go to the Angel Fund.” Coonery said this is just the least DG Graphics could do to support. "There’s nothing that we could actually say or do to express the appropriate amount of condolences for this family but I think everybody’s doing the best that they know how and I’m sure they will feel that love over time,” he said. To order a T-shirt from Sue's Shirt Creations, go to www.sueshirts.com and click the "Somers Strong" tab. One hundred percent of the proceeds will go to the Town of Somers' Angel Fund for the families.

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Explaining the South on Instagram, One Custom at a Time

Since February, Landon Bryant’s posts have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, many from around the world. Credit... Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times

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Arts Beat: New venues, returning directors in local performing world in 2023

It has been a milestone year for several organizations. The Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra both celebrated their 80th anniversaries. Goodspeed Musicals and Hartford Stage celebrated their 60th anniversaries. Jacob’s Pillow presented its 90th season of live dance performances. Hartford Symphony celebrated its anniversary announcing that its musicians had signed a new four-year agreement, and Maestra Cariolyn Kuan committed to three more seasons. Springfield’s Symphony emerged from the pandemic with Paul Lambert appointed as its CEO, and a two-year agreement with its musicians, although the SSO is moving forward without a music director. Under Lambert’s direction, the SSO gave a free Juneteenth concert, and is experimenting with start times to better accommodate its audiences.

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Ask Amy: I was shocked to read your advice, but heres what happened next

Dear Readers: Periodically, I ask for “Updates” regarding questions which have been published in this space. I am naturally curious about how things might have turned out for people who have received my advice. This column is devoted to a Q&A that was originally published in 2021. You can read the original question, followed by my answer. The update follows that. Dear Amy: My boyfriend of almost three years is very childish. If I do something he does not like, he will try to get me back or even the score in some way. For instance, I do not want to do a particular act in the bedroom. It makes me super-uncomfortable. No matter how many times I explain this, he says it’s his favorite thing and if I don’t do it, then it’s a deal-breaker. So sometimes I suffer through it, but other times I flat-out refuse. Well, the other day, I refused. Now he won’t kiss me. He says that since I won’t do that for him, kissing is off the table until I do it. How is that fair? How can we navigate through this without calling it quits? I want to make him happy, but I also don’t want to do what he’s asking me to do. Your advice would be greatly appreciated! – Underperforming in Rhode Island Dear Underperforming: I wouldn’t describe your boyfriend’s behavior as “childish,” so much as “deeply troubling,” “manipulative,” and “abusive.” Those are only some words that come to mind. (There are other words, of course, but – they aren’t publishable.) Couples definitely bargain and negotiate with one another over all sorts of things, including “acts in the bedroom.” This is not a negotiation. This is … game over. He is coercing, manipulating, and – I assume – cornering you into doing something you have stated many times that you don’t want to do. Then, when he is not able to force you to do his “favorite thing,” he punishes you. This is pretty much the definition of domestic abuse. Now he is withholding affection. Later, he might punish you in other ways and for other reasons, if you don’t “make him happy.” This is not love. This is control. Regular readers know that I rarely say this, but – get out. I’ll come and get you, myself. The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7. Their impressive website (RAINN.org) offers a wonderful “chat” function, available all-hours. You could “gut check” my reaction by calling or chatting online with a counselor: (800) 656-HOPE (4673). Dear Amy: I’m happy to provide this “update.” I was really surprised to read your response and I was even more taken aback when I realized that everything you said was true. I stayed with my now ex-boyfriend until we were a little over three years into our relationship. Sadly, nothing changed. Our relationship actually got worse. The last straw for me was when he flat-out started verbally abusing me, calling me names and yelling at me – in front of my daughter. I broke it off right then and there. It took five months for him to move out, begging me to give him another chance. He never changed his behavior during that time, and was still withholding affection whenever he felt like I needed to be punished. He tried to “propose” (with no ring), and even cried about our breakup, but when I said no to getting back together, he laughed in my face because he said he’d been lying when he said he was sorry. Thankfully, after he moved out (which was well over a year ago), I have not heard from him since! I just want to thank you immensely for helping me to see things clearly! I am finally FREEEEE!! – No Longer Underperforming Dear No Longer: Your “update” is a gift! I’m so glad I didn’t have to come get you – that drive to Rhode Island is a long one. Dear Amy: I was quite disgusted by your sarcastic tone in your response to “Frustrated in Texas,” when you wrote: " It’s a shame that caring for your dogs and horses is preventing you from caring for an elderly human.” Humans have choices. Animals don’t. They are helpless. You owe this person an apology. – Upset Dear Upset: Many readers called me out for that line. I maintained that “Frustrated” was using her responsibilities with her animals as a reason not to assist her elderly mother-in-law, who was also helpless. Regardless, I do apologize for the sarcastic tone. (You can email Amy Dickinson at askamy@amydickinson.com or send a letter to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter @askingamy or Facebook.) ©2023 Amy Dickinson. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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culture

Woburn mans ashes will fly into space with those of Gene Roddenberry

A Woburn, Massachusetts, native will soon share a spacecraft with several actors from the original “Star Trek” series, heading out into deep space on a flight referred to as the Enterprise flight. However, it’s not for a new movie or TV series. Some of the ashes of Francis “Fran” Gillis, along with the DNA and ashes of 264 individuals, will be aboard a spacecraft heading for deep space launched from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 8. Gillis, 67, died on July 20, 2018, according to his obituary shared by Celestis, a company that conducts memorial spaceflights that orbit remains, DNA or digital make-ups and genetic codes on MindFiles around Earth, the moon and, beginning on Jan. 8, into deep space. “He would talk about ‘adventure,’” his sister Jacqueline Gillis, of Hudson, said to MassLive. “He was an avid reader of science fiction, an adventurer; he loved the outdoors and had an interest in science and was a ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ fan. He knew after he died, he wanted to go into deep space.” Gillis went to Woburn High School and was active in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, eventually receiving an Army scholarship to Northeastern University and serving 22 years in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel. All throughout his life, he was active in the Boy Scouts of America, now known as BSA Scouts, and had an appreciation of the outdoors. He served as scoutmaster of Troop 629 in Johns Creek, Ga., until his death. Gillis died suddenly while making a drive up to the Continental Divide in Canada after meeting with a nephew in Idaho — “He loved to drive,” Jacqueline said. He was a bachelor and a loyal brother to five siblings, uncle to eight nieces and nephews and great-uncle to eight grandnieces and grandnephews, as well as a devoted scout leader. With Gillis’ journey into the final frontier, Jacqueline said the family was curious about watching a part of their loved one be sent into space, someone who she always saw “with a science fiction novel in his hands.” In discussing his will, an accountant expressed uncertainty over spending Gillis’ money to send some of his ashes into space. It was at that moment, according to Jacqueline, that a light overhead in Gillis’ house flickered. The moment assured her that her brother’s final wish to go into deep space “was meant to be,” she said. The inaugural flight, called the Enterprise Flight, but properly known as the Deep Space Voyager Mission, will house on the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket the partial remains and DNA of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife and “Star Trek” actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, along with actors Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley — who played Lt. Uhura, engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, respectively — among others from the show. Capsule containing the remains of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, along with several actors from the original series, will be launched into deep space from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 8. Courtesy of Celestis Memorial Spaceflight.Celestis Part of Gillis’ ashes interred at Arlington National Cemetery were removed and sent to Celestis, Jacqueline said. The request made of her was to send two grams of ashes, one to go onboard the Enterprise flight and another as a backup in case there is a problem with the launch. Majel Barrett watched Celestis’ first commercial spaceflight in 1997, Celestis president Colby Youngblood told MassLive on Friday. When she spoke with CEO Charles Chafer, he promised her that he would send her and her late husband’s ashes into space one day. Over time, the company became close with actors from the original series, Youngblood said, and they made it their wish to have part of their remains sent into deep space one day. Even Roddenberry and Barrett’s son, Rod — “very much alive,” Youngblood noted — has a DNA swab from his cheek inside a capsule that will also take part in the Enterprise flight. The craft will even have hair samples belonging to former presidents George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. The company was gifted a collection of hair samples of historical figures and celebrities with the idea they could one day be launched into deep space, Youngblood said. “We chose three presidents who we felt would be honored by this first voyage into deep space,” he said, adding that approval was made with the estates and foundations of the three American presidents. Capsules containing remains of over 200 individuals, including "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and "Star Trek" actors Majel Barrett, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols and James Doohan, will launch into deep space on Celestis Memorial Spaceflight's Enterprise Flight on Jan. 8, 2024. Courtesy of Celestis Memorial Spaceflight.Celestis The rocket will launch a Peregrine Lunar Lander on the Moon carrying 70 capsules, while the Enterprise flight will continue into an orbit around the sun, Youngblood said. Once orbit is achieved, the Enterprise flight — by then referred to as the Enterprise Station by Celestis — will become the human race’s “furthest outpost — where it will journey endlessly, perhaps awaiting discovery by a distant-in-time civilization.” Celestis was founded in 1994 by a team of entrepreneurs, retired astronauts and pioneers of the commercial space age. Since 1997, it has launched 17 missions into space and as a company “engages licensed funeral directors, maintains a trust fund licensed and audited by the Texas Department of Banking, and is a proud member of the Better Business Bureau,” its website said. Memorial spaceflight experiences through Celestis range in price. The starting price to be launched into space and then brought back to Earth is $2,995, while being launched into Earth’s orbit hikes up to $4,995, according to Celestis’ website. Being launched to the moon to go either into its orbit or land on its surface starts at $12,995, and being part of the Deep Space Voyager missions shares the same starting price. “We have to price them so that every person can partake in (a space flight),” Youngblood said. “How do we do that? We take our largest missions, like the Voyager Mission, or the lunar service, and we price those competitively with the average U.S. funeral, which is $15,000.” While each of these options creates what the website describes as “permanent memorials,” the Earth orbit service ends in the spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere and “harmlessly vaporizing like a shooting star in a final tribute.” The launch is expected to be at 2:18 a.m. on Monday, Jacqueline said. In case of any delays, she said it could be pushed to Jan. 9, Jan. 10 or Jan. 11 at around the same time. One of Gillis’ nephews will go to Florida to watch the launch, while Jacqueline and the family hope to be awake to say one more farewell. “I’m thrilled for him,” she said. “What fun! What a bang for his buck.”

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culture

Date for 2024 Boston Pride Parade announced

The date for the largest Pride celebration in New England has officially been announced. Boston Pride 2024 will be held on Saturday, June 8, the event said in a Instagram post Monday, Jan. 8. This is the second year that the organization Boston Pride For The People (BP4TP) is hosting the celebration. “We are thrilled to be back for a second year helping our City and region celebrate the LGBTQ+ community’s vibrancy and joy,” Adrianna Boulin, president of BP4TP, said in a statement according to NBC10 Boston. “We are committed to creating a Pride that is built by us and for us, that reflects and honors our rich culture and diversity,” Boulin continued. The Boston Pride Parade returned to the city last year for the first time since 2019. The parade was put on hold following the COVID-19 pandemic. It did not return in 2022 after restrictions loosened. Read More: Boston Pride Parade marks its comeback in Copley Square after hiatus since 2019 The parade’s original nonprofit organizer, Boston Pride, also dissolved in 2021 amid a boycott over issues of race and transgender inclusion, and complaints of excessive commercialization of the parade, MassLive previously reported. No new organizer picked up the event in 2022. More than 1 million people attended the parade in 2023, NBC10 Boston reported. This year’s parade will start in Copley Square and make its way through the South End before finishing at Boston Common. Read More: How to find the best sledding spots in the Greater Boston Area Two festivals will take also place throughout the day including an all ages festival on Boston Common and a 21-plus festival at Boston City Hall Plaza, according to NBC10 Boston. BP4TP is also seeking volunteers to help with the event. Volunteers will have to attend weekly committee meetings from January to June. Applications will be accepted until Saturday, Jan. 13. Click here to apply.

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Excitement and joy: Bostons Latin Quarter celebrates Three Kings Day

Leeya Aman, 14, of Dorchester passed out gifts and candy to children as she played the role of King Melchior. The three kings marched around the room, getting others up to dance with them. Children made crowns and placed them on their heads, while others dressed up as kings in colorful robes. A centuries-old celebration came alive Saturday in Jamaica Plain’s Latin Quarter, with families gathering to celebrate Día de Los Reyes, or Three Kings Day. Dereck Medina (left), Leeya Aman (center), and Dayane Vieira don their Three Kings outfits before performing at the annual Three Kings celebration held in the Latin Quarter at the Hyde Square Task Force hall. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff “We went through the audience and gave out things to represent the gifts,” said Aman. “We’re supposed to represent these graceful, proud, bold kings,” But for Aman, the anticipation begins the day before. Advertisement “The night before there is so much excitement and happiness built up. Especially as a kid you are like ‘are the three kings coming?’ and we try to stay up and see them. You just feel all this excitement, like a rush every time,” said Aman. Also known as the Feast of the Epiphany, the celebration commemorates the biblical story in which three kings followed a star from the East to Bethlehem to find a newborn king, the baby Jesus. They brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the little king. The celebration is popular in Latin American communities, particularly in the Caribbean countries like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, according to Celina Miranda, executive director of Hyde Square Task Force. As part of the celebration, many people make wishes or promises to the kings. “The day really is a celebration of children, the concept of making a wish or a promise really looks to the future to celebrate children,” said Sheilagh Carlisle, director of development & communications at HSTF. In Puerto Rico, children put boxes under their beds for the kings to leave them gifts, and in return leave fresh-cut grass for the camels. Advertisement “It’s about the continuation of the celebration of Christmas and holding onto something you were hoping would happen in the New Year,” said Miranda. Levar Espar, 2, grabs on to his crown during the annual Three Kings celebration. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff The afternoon event was festive with a reading of Sheila Colón-Bagley’s “La Noche Before Three Kings Day” narrated by José Massó. The recently published children’s book touches on the traditions of Three Kings Day, including feasts and the making of wishes. There was also a music performance by group Sharina y su Conjunto Guajiba. “[It’s] very joyous, wonderful music. We have a folkloric group here that is with us showing us through music what the celebration sounds like in various places where the Three Kings Celebration is recognized, particularly in Puerto Rico,” said Miranda. The annual Three Kings celebration was held Saturday afternoon at Hyde Park Task Force’s main office in Jamaica Plain, which is used for community gatherings and events and has classrooms and art studios. The celebration, organized by Hyde Square Task Force, has been going on for decades and with the aim of keeping traditions alive. The organization focuses on celebrating Afro-Latin culture and heritage to create a diverse, vibrant Latin Quarter. Maria Elena Little Endara can be reached at mariaelena.littleendara@globe.com.

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culture

Can Divorce Be Affordable? Yes, but Only if Spouses Want It to Be.

Vanessa McGrady, a writer in California who was married for three years and who became a parent during that time, said that she “realized there were some insurmountable issues” with her former husband and chose to use the document service We the People for her divorce. “It was not contentious, and it was easier because we didn’t have assets together,” she said. “We had no I.R.A.s. It was my condo and I was making the payments.” She recommends having a lawyer review a document divorce to ensure that it is done correctly. The process took a year and cost less than $2,000 because she had hashed out issues with her ex before their divorce proceedings, she said. Ms. McGrady, 55, was glad to have saved thousands of dollars for her own retirement or for her daughter’s future needs. “I don’t know anyone who’s had as simple and easy a divorce as we did, even though it was frustrating and sad at times,” she said. “Before you go down the rabbit hole of rage and revenge, think where you want your money to go.” Caitlin Steele, who lives in Seattle, used a mediation service from a start-up called Wevorce, which cost $750 when she got divorced in 2017. At the time, Ms. Steele, a senior design manager at Atlassian, a software company, had little disposable income and no children. She had witnessed a friend experience the emotional and financial fallout of an embattled divorce that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars and limited access to his child for six years. She had been married for 10 years when, she said, “the wheels started to fall off.” She filed for divorce, which was finalized six months later. Her husband was making $180,000 to her $90,000 a year, which in San Francisco left her, at the age of 38, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate.

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Norman Lear Reshaped How America Saw Black Families

As a birthday present for Tyler Perry last year, a mutual acquaintance arranged for him to meet one of his heroes, Norman Lear. Perry grew up watching Lear’s groundbreaking television shows, and was awed by how several presented a fuller version of Black lives onto American television screens for the first time. Long ago, Perry had hoped to have a storied career that would emulate a speck of what Lear’s shows such as “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons” displayed: that Black people can share opinions, fall in love, laugh and be fearful just like anyone else. “Had it not been for Norman, there wouldn’t have been a path for me,” said Perry, whose film and TV empire has made him one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. “It was him bringing Black people to television and showing the world that there’s an audience for us.” Perry departed his meeting with Lear, who was 100 years old at the time, with a deeper appreciation for the craftsmanship of the pioneering television writer and producer who died at 101 on Tuesday. The reality of Lear, a white man, being responsible for bringing a fuller picture of Black lives to American TV screens was a product of the era, when most doors were still closed to Black producers and creators. Some characters in his shows were the source of flare-ups, particularly when some Black cast members complained about stereotypical portrayals, which are still debated today.

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Newborns celebrate first Christmas in style at Boston hospitals (photos)

Oh baby, these Boston newborns have the best holiday fashion in all the land. The infants of the newborn intensive care units (NICUs) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General for Children (MGfC) got to celebrate their first Christmas season in style. The annual tradition that started as a photo keepsake for families many years ago “has turned into a bright spot for patients and our community,” a spokesperson with the hospital told MassLive Thursday. Babies were adorned in holiday attire, including Santa and elf costumes. The infants also got to have their first encounter with Santa Claus, played by Dr. Kevin Raskin, chief of the Orthopedic Oncology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. You can scroll through the gallery of holiday baby photos below:

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Baystate Medical, other Mass. hospitals now require face masks at all times

Baystate Medical Center in Springfield has joined the list of hospitals in the state requiring people to wear a mask at all times inside the building. Signs on the walls of the hospital asks that people wear a mask at all times. This is a change from the guidelines in the fall when visitors were required to wear a mask in patients’ rooms and “patient care areas.” Masks were optional in common spaces such as cafeterias and corridors. Now, all visitors over the age of 5 are required to wear masks at Baystate Medical Center, Baystate Children’s Hospital, Baystate Noble Hospital, Baystate Wing Hospital, and Baystate Franklin Medical Center and the D’Amour Center for Cancer Care, Baystate Medical Center said in a press release sent Friday. In other “ambulatory settings,” like Baystate Medical Practices offices, and in non-patient care locations, wearing a mask is strongly recommended, the Springfield-based hospital said. More information about the policy can be found here. Baystate Medical Center’s team of experts meets regularly to evaluate the local and regional environment to ensure they are responding to the changes in COVID-19 cases, the hospital said. “We are taking this step to protect our patients, their care partners, and our team members while continuing to provide excellent and compassionate care,” Baystate Medical Center said. Over the summer, many hospitals in Massachusetts lifted their COVID-19 mask requirement as coronavirus cases fell. But, since mid-November, state data show cases have crept back up again, prompting many Massachusetts hospitals to reimpose mask mandates. The Mass General Brigham Hospital network, which includes Salem Hospital and Mass General Waltham, is requiring staff and doctors to mask up when they are in exam rooms. Dana Farber Cancer Institute is also requiring masks to be worn. Sturdy Memorial Hospital requires all visitors and those receiving outpatient services to wear a mask while in the hospital, according to its website. The University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center is requiring all members of its staff to wear a mask starting Jan. 2., GBH reported. Meanwhile, Tufts Medicine will reimpose masking requirements on Jan. 3. Cape Cod Hospital requires all visitors, patients and staff to wear a mask in situations including a COVID-19 outbreak, a suspected infection or close contact with someone with COVID-19, according to its website. The state Department of Public Health tracks confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases each week. In the last reporting period, Dec. 17-23, it reported 6,038 confirmed and probable cases throughout Massachusetts. That compares to 2,957 such cases from Nov. 19-25 and 848 from July 2-8. The state DPH also reported that 16.7% of emergency department visits the week since Dec. 23 were due to acute respiratory disease, including COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Dr. Armando Philip S. Paez, chief of infectious diseases for Baystate, told the Republican last week his colleagues are back to emphasizing common-sense precautions not only about COVID-19 but flu and RSV: Get vaccinated and boosted, wear a mask in crowded indoor settings, wash hands, wipe down surfaces, test yourself, stay home if you are sick. “Contact your primary care provider if you get sick,” Paez said. Read more: Baystate Health reinstates mask requirement as COVID rises It’s never too late to get the COVID-19 vaccine, he said. It typically takes a few weeks for immunity to build after the jab, but protection can last for months. Nearly one in eight people seeking treatment in one of the state’s emergency rooms are there for a respiratory infection, Dr. Larry Madoff, medical director for the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at Massachusetts Department of Public Health, told the Republican last week. “That’s telling us that there is a lot of activity out there,” he said. “It is that time of year,” Madoff said. “This is definitely the respiratory virus season.” Nationally, test positivity, emergency department visits and hospitalizations remain elevated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Why the seasonal pattern? Madoff said it’s something doctors were familiar with even before the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020. Paez said the weather has a lot to do with it. Cooler weather means more time spent indoors and around other people. Madoff said lower humidity, and the irritation that causes to the respiratory system, might also play a role.

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What Haunts Child Abuse Victims? The Memory, Study Finds

For generations, our society has vacillated about how best to heal people who experienced terrible things in childhood. Should these memories be unearthed, allowing their destructive power to dissipate? Should they be gently molded into something less painful? Or should they be left untouched? Researchers from King’s College London and the City University of New York examined this conundrum by conducting an unusual experiment. Researchers interviewed a group of 1,196 American adults repeatedly over 15 years about their levels of anxiety and depression. Unbeknown to the subjects, 665 of them had been selected because court records showed they had suffered mistreatment such as physical abuse, sexual abuse or neglect before age 12.

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These Boston tourist traps are actually worth going to, Eater Boston says

If you’ve ever been to Boston, you’ve probably asked yourself if the line outside of Mike’s Pastry is worth the wait, or if the pizza at Santarpio’s is really that authentic. Well, according to Eater Boston, these are among several of the city’s tourist traps that are actually worth checking out. The outlet, which is known for reporting on the best places to dine in Boston, compiled a list of Boston’s “Tourist Trap Restaurants That Are Actually Good” this month. The list is composed of classic Boston eateries that Eater Boston staff would “happily take visitors to.” Below are the restaurants that made the list: Click here to check out the list.