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New Hampshire ranked smartest state in the nation, study finds

NEW HAMPSHIRE — A New England state has been ranked the smartest state in the nation, according to a new study. Research by free online education platform Guru99 analyzed six different metrics: average IQ, graduation rates, percentage of the population with low literacy rates, average SAT scores, % of the states that don’t have a high school diploma or GED and GDP per capita and ranked New Hampshire as the smartest state in the nation. When looking at the metrics, states were given a total score out of 60. New Hampshire scored a 56.82. “New Hampshire is the smartest state in America, data shows that on average the state has the highest IQs across the country with 103.2,” the platform said. “The state also has the smallest % of the population with low literacy skills with 11.5%. New Hampshire also has one of the highest GDP per capita with $74,663.” Here are the top 10 smartest states in the nation: New Hampshire: 56.82 Minnesota: 55.82 Wyoming: 54.98 Vermont: 54.91 Montana: 54.64 North Dakota: 54.38 Maine: 53.83 South Dakota: 52.61 Wisconsin: 52.45 Utah: 52.21 “America is home to many of the greatest educational institutions across the globe; as one of the world’s largest economies and powerhouses in industry and innovation, it’s pivotal that every generation continues to learn and develop, to progress the foundations that have already been built in the country,” said Krishna Rungta, Founder & CEO of Guru99. 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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Visible Mending: The Healing Powers of Knitting - The New York Times

I started making this short documentary as a response to my mom developing dementia in her early 60s and forgetting how to read a knitting pattern. After years of having her knit for me, I taught myself how to knit by watching YouTube tutorials. As I learned more, and my mom’s health declined, I began to understand the solace that knitting brings. I started interviewing members of the Merrymakers, a small group of older knitters in rural Shropshire, England, over five years ago. All the members had their own stories illustrating the therapeutic power of textile arts and how knitting granted them the time and space to process grief, frustration or health struggles. As the film started to take shape, I expanded my interviews to weave in more voices — Mike Donnelly, a Glaswegian knitter who makes baby shrouds for a hospital; Betsan Corkhill, an occupational therapist who explores how knitting alleviates physical pain; and Lorna Hamilton-Brown, an artist and community activist who uses knitting as a way to bring people together. I represent each voice with a knit character the participants made or chose. These characters come to embody the stories of their makers, illustrating that we can mend ourselves through creative acts. Sometimes emotional repair can be found in something as simple as a skein of yarn.

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10 must-read books that reimagine sex and power in 2024

Sign up for Reckon’s latest newsletter dedicated to the fight for reproductive justice, a weekly repro rundown covering the good, the fair-to-middlin' and the ugly in repro news. Enter your email to subscribe to Reproductive Justice with Reckon. If one of your new year’s resolutions is to read more books, Reckon has you covered. Whether you’re looking for a way to introduce healthy sex discussions to your children, or learn more about the history of abortion in the U.S., here are 10 sex-positive books to add to your collection in 2024. “Vaginas and Periods 101: A Pop-Up Book” by Christian Hoeger and Kristin Lilla Talking to kids about reproductive anatomy can be intimidating, but experts say that teaching children the correct terms for their genitals prevents shame and promotes bodily autonomy and safety. This intro to vaginas and periods book is visually interesting, informative, and inclusive. It features a pop up vulva to provide a more realistic idea of anatomy, explaining that varying shapes and colors are normal. According to the 2023 State of the Period survey, 90% of teens think schools should normalize menstruation and 81% said they wanted more in-depth education about menstrual health. This book provides a platform to introduce these conversations and answer some basic questions even adults may have wrong. “The Book of Radical Answers: Real Questions from Real Kids Just Like You” by Sonya Renee Taylor Award-winning poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor writes books that make seemingly big topics like puberty and gender approachable for young people, with Taylor’s idea of radical self love infiltrated through the messaging. This book includes questions asked by real kids between the ages of 10 and 14. Taylor approaches many of these questions using her own life stories to humanize the experience, and answer the questions as a friend, someone the reader knows, rather than an unapproachable health expert. “Red Moon Gang: An Inclusive Guide to Periods” by Tara Costello According to UNICEF, 1.8 billion people around the world menstruate monthly but menstrual health education in the United States is not sufficient. YouGov found that 48% of adults “were not very or not at all prepared” for their first period, in a March 2023 poll. In comes Red Moon Gang, which takes an inclusive guide into periods, hormonal fluctuations and what they mean, and how conditions like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome can impact one’s cycle. This book goes beyond what is typically taught in schools, explaining how periods can be especially challenging to people experiencing homelessness, as well as people with disabilities. “My Mom Had an Abortion” by Beezus B. Murphy For those who love visuals, this short and sweet graphic novel tells a coming of age story of a protagonist learning about menstruation, her body and abortion as it affected her family. This narrative puts the topic of abortion in context of a real-life situation, making the reader – especially those who have not experienced abortion themselves – question their own preconceived notions about abortion. “You’re the Only One I’ve Told” by Dr. Meera Shah Chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic in New York, Dr. Meera Shah, compiled a collection of abortion stories told to her, humanizing the experience and illustrating the wide range of circumstances that contribute to one’s decision to have an abortion. Shah shared an excerpt in Teen Vogue that tells the experience of a genderqueer teen in the Bible belt that needs their dad’s permission to have the procedure due to abortion restrictions in theri state. “No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right” by Becca Andrews Reckon’s very own former reproductive justice reporter Becca Andrews gives an in-depth look at the fight for Roe and the landscape left behind once it was overturned. This is a great read for anyone looking to catch up with how the battle for abortion rights has gone down, or for those looking for insight into the history that got us here. “Countering Abortionsplaining: How People of Color Can Reclaim Our Stories and Right History” by Renee Bracey Sherman and Regine Mahone Abortion and midwifery bans are rooted in white supremacy, as the existence of Black and Indigenous midwives stood in the way of white men’s obstetrics and gynecology practices, and enslaved women using cotton root to induce miscarriages threatened future generations for slaveholders to force into labor, according to New Lines Magazine. Abortion restrictions continue to disproportionately impact people of color, with 42% of people receiving abortions in 2021 identifying as Black. Yet, many prominent media abortion portrayals and the reproductive justice movement itself have been accused of being white-washed by women of color. We spoke with author Renee Bracey Sherman in October about her take on Britney Spears and the importance of sharing abortion stories. Bracey Sherman coauthors this book with journalist Regine Mahone, attempting to provide the full picture of the reproductive justice narrative, providing a history of people of color’s experiences with and contributions to the abortion justice movement. Scheduled to release in October 2024 “DIY: The Wonderfully Weird Science and History of Masturbation” by Dr. Eric Sprankle Science says that masturbation is healthy and normal, yet like other aspects of human sexuality, it is surrounded by stigma and shame. Sprankle writes about the history of masturbation suppression, including doctors who run treatment programs for masturbation addiction and pastors who preach believe that masturbation creates mermaids. On sale March 19, 2024 “The Furies: Women, Vengeance and Justice” by Elizabeth Flock This book crosses borders and cultures to explore how power dynamics and gender impact women’s safety. Author Elizabeth Flock centers the stories of an Alabama women denied protection of the Stand-Your-Ground law after she killed a man she accused of raping her, a leader of an Indian gang that claims to avenge victims of domestic abuse, and a member of an all-women militia that’s battled ISIS in Syria. According to the book description, each of these women “chose to use lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them—government, police, courts—utterly failed to do so.” On sale January 9, 2024 “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood” by Grace Howard Fetal personhood and pregnancy criminalization were major issues in 2023, but they aren’t a new phenomenon. Even before the overturning of Roe, people have been punished for the decisions they’ve made regarding their fetuses, with surveillance by healthcare workers contributing to cases against pregnant people. In this book, Howard analyzes thousands of arrest records documenting the history of pregnancy criminalization from eugenics to the present day. Scheduled to release in June 2024

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An urban vibe: These are the 10 best suburbs in Massachusetts, ranked

Looking for that urban vibe, but without the big-city prices, traffic and headaches that come with city life? Look no further. A new rankings list by the website StorageCafe runs down the 10 best suburbs that offer the best of city life, with the ease and proximity of suburbs. “One of the best things about Massachusetts is that moving to the suburbs doesn’t have to mean giving up on urban comfort,” StorageCafe’s Maria Gatea wrote. “You just need to know where to look. Some select, city-like suburbs in Massachusetts feature amenities and services comparable to those we can enjoy in a big city.” To reach those conclusions, StorageCafe analyzed 40 of the Bay State’s smaller cities and towns ― those with populations ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 people. Analysts considered such criteria as housing diversity and affordability, demographics, the business environment, health, education, public safety and transportation. The bottom line? “Burlington, Newton, and Wakefield emerge as the best suburbs in Massachusetts, skillfully combining the charm of suburbia with the convenience of city life.” “Somerville and Brookline are leading in house diversity, registering the highest share of apartments in their local housing stock,” and “Wilmington, Lynnfield and Dedham are top rated for the quality of their education,” according to the StorageCafe rankings. Burlington, in Middlesex County, tops the list because “this remarkable suburb manages to hold on to its historic charms while also stepping decisively into the 21st century,” Gates wrote. The community’s “business-related infrastructure is the best among the suburbs analyzed, with 50 businesses registered per 1,000 residents, as well as ample office and coworking space available. Looking at the residential front, there is construction activity, with almost eight building permits per 1,000 residents in 2022, and some housing diversity as well — about 28% of the housing units are apartments,” according to the website. Here’s a look at the rest of the communities: Newton: Ranked best for its health, transportation, business environment. Wakefield: Ranked best for its residential, health and education environment. Waltham: Ranked best for its business, transportation, and health environment. Woburn: Ranked best for its business, transportation, and health environment. Dedham: Ranked best for its amenities, education, and business environment. Brookline: Ranked best for its residential, transportation, and education environment. Norwood: Ranked best for its business, amenities and its population. Hudson: Ranked best for its education, health, and safety environments. Lynnfield: Ranked best for its education, residential, and business environments. “The best suburbs in Massachusetts for those who want to hold on to city-like living are all part of the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metropolitan area—hardly surprising considering that the huge metro area encompasses almost 5 million of the state’s 7 million residents,” Gates wrote.

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culture

The Threads of Identity in a Palestinian Craft

In 2021, UNESCO added Palestinian embroidery to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing it as “a widespread social and intergenerational practice in Palestine,” a symbol of national pride and a way in which women supplement family income. But like other Indigenous handicrafts across the world, it faces threats, including mechanization and abandonment of old styles of dress. Now there is a push to revive the handicraft in younger generations and to preserve old thobes that tell Palestinian history. Those efforts include plans to reintroduce embroidery in curriculums in Palestinian schools, to include it as part of school uniforms and to open an academy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank dedicated to the handicraft, overseen by the Palestinian Authority’s cultural ministry. In July, the museum inaugurated a Textile Conservation Studio to preserve Palestinian thobes and other heritage fabrics and to provide training for conservation and restoration. “We need to practice our heritage so we don’t lose it,” said Maha Saca, the founder and director of the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem, who helped submit the UNESCO application and is now working on opening the academy.

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Dear Annie: Somehow an offer of beer turned into an unwanted love confession

Dear Annie: I was at home making a sandwich recently when my close friend’s wife from next door came through the back door. She called out and said she just wanted to see how I was doing. I said I was great and asked if she wanted a sandwich and a beer. She said no to the sandwich but yes to the beer, so I got her one and then sat down to enjoy my lunch. She continued standing by the counter while we talked, and then out of the blue she said she wanted to tell me something: that she had been really interested in me for years but never said anything. She then tried to kiss me, and I backed away immediately. I was shocked, surprised and dumbfounded all at once. I didn’t know what to say. But I did turn her down. I couldn’t do that, especially in my home, a home I share with the woman I married when she was 16 because I absolutely loved her and still do. I couldn’t believe what happened, and I sure can’t share it with my wife or her husband. They both would blow a gasket. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care to be around my friend and certainly not his wife. This is driving me nuts, and any suggestions would be appreciated. — At Wits’ End Dear At Wits’ End: It sounds like you handled the situation as well as you could have. It’s a shame your friend’s wife had to pull a move like that, because now the dynamic between the four of you will inevitably suffer. You did nothing wrong, though, and you should not let this woman’s misdeed drive a wedge between you and your wife. At this point, honesty is the best policy. If you refuse to see the neighbors and start acting strangely around your friend’s wife, your wife will know something is up and wonder what you are hiding from her. The truth is, you have nothing to hide, because you are innocent. Tell her what happened — you can spare her the details — and then you and your wife can decide together how to proceed. Dear Annie: My friend was VERY upset, and rightfully so, because her best friend committed suicide. But my friend was very angry with me and accused me of being a bad friend when I asked her not to call me every day and expect me to drop everything I was doing to listen. I did listen the first week after it happened and every night when she called me. Anything I suggested to help her with the grieving process was judged as “I didn’t care” and therefore, I was not a good friend. She also did this to her other friend. She wanted to talk about death and suicide every day to us, and her other friend has terminal cancer. I told her to seek some counseling, that I’m not a psychiatrist and am dealing with some health issues myself and can’t deal with more stress. — Struggling to Shoulder the Load Dear Struggling: While your delivery could have been gentler, you did the right thing setting a boundary for yourself and your personal peace. If anything, your friend’s behavior shows just how much she’s hurting. Being there for her doesn’t mean having to bear the brunt of her pain. Continue to support her in whatever way is possible for you and keep encouraging her to seek professional help. Once the initial shock of what happened subsides, I hope she will heed your advice, taking steps to properly grieve her late friend’s death and heal from this tragedy. “How Can I Forgive My Cheating Partner?” is out now! Annie Lane’s second anthology — featuring favorite columns on marriage, infidelity, communication and reconciliation — is available as a paperback and e-book. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

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Dave Chappelle Assumes Were Already Offended in His New Netflix Special

The wildest moment in the new Dave Chappelle special, “The Dreamer” (Netflix), arrives about two-thirds of the way through when the comic says he’s about to tell a long story. That’s not the unusual part. Some 36 years into a storied comedy career, Chappelle, 50, is better known for controversial yarns than carefully considered punchlines. At this point in the special, he tells the crowd in his hometown, Washington, D.C., that he is going to get a cigarette backstage, asks them to act as if he were finished and says he would prefer a standing ovation. He then does something I have never seen in a Netflix special: He walks off for a smoke and costume change, leaving the stage empty. He strolls back as everyone waits, politely clapping. No one stands. He sits down and even mentions that he didn’t get the standing ovation, grumpily. He could have cut that out but didn’t. Why? Was it to reveal that his crowd refused to be told what to do, how he doesn’t mind, as he said at another point, if most people didn’t laugh at some jokes? Was it to include a momentary reprieve from the self-aggrandizing tone of the hour, which begins with rock-star images of Chappelle walking to the stage in slow motion and ends with a montage of him with everyone from Bono and Mike Tyson to the Netflix C.E.O. Ted Sarandos? I have no idea, but what sticks with you in Chappelle’s sets these days is less the jokes than the other stuff, the discourse-courting jabs, the celebrity gossip, the oddball flourishes. Later, Chappelle says, “Sometimes, I feel regular.” As an example, he describes being shy at a club where a rich Persian guy surrounded by women recognizes him and the comedian imagines him telling the story of seeing Dave Chappelle the next day. The idea that this is Chappelle’s idea of regular is funny.

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At the Kennedy Center, an Ode to the Arts, and a Gentle Jab at Bidens Age

It was the only suggestion of politics in an apolitical, if quintessentially Washington event that sees throngs of dignitaries and politicians gather each year to pay tribute to the arts. On Sunday, the Kennedy Center honored artists who not only revolutionized their genres but transcended them: Billy Crystal, the actor and comedian; Barry Gibb, the musician and songwriter who rose to fame as the eldest member of the Bee Gees; Renée Fleming, the opera singer; Queen Latifah, the rapper, singer and actress; and Dionne Warwick, the singer. Ms. Warwick, who has performed five times at the Kennedy Center and previously appeared at the honors gala to perform tributes to two separate honorees, said her reaction to learning that she would be honored was: “Finally, it’s here!” “It’s a privilege to wear this,” she said, gesturing to the signature rainbow medallion given to each honoree.

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How The Nutcracker Has Been Reimagined, for Better and Worse

Brian Setzer’s career has been defined by a revivalist energy. First, his rockabilly group Stray Cats looked back to the rock ’n’ roll of the 1950s through the eyes of the 1980s. After the group split, he founded the Brian Setzer Orchestra, a boogie-woogie, jump blues band straddling originals and jazzed-up covers. “The Nutcracker Suite,” originally arranged for Les Brown and his Band of Renown by Frank Comstock, wasn’t the only time that the Brian Setzer Orchestra dabbled in classical rearrangements. In the 2007 album “Wolfgang’s Big Night Out,” Beethoven’s “Für Elise” became the Django Reinhardt pastiche “For Lisa,” and Johann Strauss II’s “The Blue Danube” became the bluesy swing chart “Some River in Europe.” An unlikely source brought the group’s take on Tchaikovsky into holiday tradition: Buddy, in the movie “Elf.” As the lights dim in Gimbels, the store that Buddy (Will Ferrell), has tasked himself with redecorating overnight, the Brian Setzer Orchestra trumpets strike up, playing the fanfare call from “March of the Toy Soldiers.” But what follows is not the impish, pizzicato response that usually accompanies the toys’ jolting movements: A drum kit crashes in, and snarling, swinging saxophones accompany Buddy’s commando rolls across the aisle behind a security guard. The whole arrangement pits clipped precision against swirling chaos. Drew McOnie and Cassie Kinoshi: ‘Nutcracker’

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Children of Jailed Narges Mohammadi Accept Her Nobel Peace Prize

Iran’s most prominent human rights activist, Narges Mohammadi, was supposed to be handed the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on Sunday. But, locked inside Evin Prison in Iran, Ms. Mohammadi, 51, was unable to attend and her 17-year-old twin children, Kiana Rahmani and Ali Rahmani, instead accepted medal and diploma on her behalf and read out a speech she had prepared. “I write this message from behind the tall and cold walls of a prison,” she said in her speech, making a plea for a “globalization of peace and human rights” in a world where authoritarian governments continue to commit abuses against their people. Ms. Mohammadi’s children have not seen their mother since 2015, when they fled Iran for France, and they have been unable to speak with her for two years, after Iranian prison authorities banned her from phone contact with them, according to PEN America, a free-speech group.

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Beyonc's Renaissance look sparks debate about colorism and white-fishing

A weekly newsletter for the chronically online and easily entertained. Honey dishes us savvy analysis on culture, entertainment and power to make you the group chat MVP. Subscribe today! Music icon Beyoncé has once again ignited conversation about race and identity with her latest look. On Nov. 25, global superstar Beyoncé Knowles hosted the world premiere of her film “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé,” a movie chronicling the journey of creating and performing the “Renaissance” Tour, in Los Angeles. On the chrome carpet, she wore a long silver Versace dress complete with platinum hair. While many social media users loved the metallic look now synonymous with the tour, others questioned if the singer was trying to look lighter than what she truly is. “Can we just keep it funky and acknowledge that Beyoncé looks light enough to be white in those photos? And we know sis understands lighting, so publishing photos looking like Khaleesi was…a choice,” X user Donovan Ramsey said in a Nov. 28 post. People quickly came to Knowles’ defense, including her own mother, Tina Knowles. “She does a film where the whole theme is silver with silver hair, a silver carpet, and suggested silver attire and you bozos decide that she’s trying to be a white woman and is bleaching her skin? How sad is it that some of her own people continue the stupid narrative with hate and jealousy,” Knowles said in a Nov. 28 post on Instagram. As her mother said, the commentary surrounding Beyoncé's premiere look is sparking conversations around “racism, sexism, [and] double standards.” Along with this, the differences between “white-fishing” versus “Black-fishing” and representation are being discussed online as well, according to a Nov. 29 Cosmopolitan UK article. This isn’t the first time in her decades-long career this issue of colorism has come up. In 2008, the company L’Oréal was accused of altering Beyoncé's complexion to look lighter for their hair care advertisement with her. In 2021, Tiffany and Co. in their own advertisement with Beyoncé were accused of lightening her skin as well, worrying fans. These conversations are part of “the longstanding pattern in the entertainment world of assessing women more for their appearances and what they are wearing than discussing the actual projects on which they have worked,” Cornell University professor Riché Richardson said. The public’s reproach From artist Katherine Harris’ perspective, she saw the critiques of Beyoncé “attempting to look more white” as delusional. “Beyoncé constantly uplifts women and especially Black women. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but it’s crazy to watch people try to find something wrong or something to criticize about almost everything in life. Most melanated individuals experience various appearances based on environment, lighting, and appearance enhancers such as makeup,” Harris said. After a white journalist from TMZ reached out to Beyoncé's hair stylist Neal Farinah for a statement on Beyonce’s skin tone, Knowles had enough. Posted along with a fan edit of Beyoncé to her song “Brown Skin Girl,” Tina Knowles wrote that the situation “made my blood boil, that this white woman felt so entitled to discuss her Blackness. What’s really most disappointing is that some Black people, yes you bozos that’s on social media. Lying and faking and acting like you’re so ignorant that you don’t understand that Black women have worn platinum hair since the Etta James days,” asking if the other Black celebrities who have worn platinum hair are trying to be white as well. Despite public denial, X user Shaniqua in a Dec. 2 post said that “one of the biggest lies to emerge in recent years is the ‘white women want to have Black features’ claim. In reality it’s the exact opposite. The biggest Black superstars want to be white. Beyonce is the perfect example.” White-fishing and colorism “White-fishing” is a term used to describe when people of color adopt physical or cultural attributes typically associated with whiteness. Critics of Beyoncé's look argue that it perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Black beauty and contributes to the erasure of Black identity. Critics jumped to the conclusion that Beyoncé is trying to promote Euro-centric features, author Elena Chabo said in her Nov. 29 Cosmopolitan UK article. According to author Jacqueline Arias in a 2019 article for Preen.PH, white-fishing and Black-fishing are both forms of erasure that promote Euro-centric features while ignoring minority communities. There is evidence of Beyoncé proudly claiming her Black culture throughout her career. For example, her 2016 song “Formation” and its following music video was seen as a “deeply personal look at the Black and queer bodies who have most often borne the brunt of our politics,” writer Syreeta McFadden said in a 2016 article for The Guardian. In her 2020 song “Black Parade,” released on Juneteenth weekend, Knowles celebrates her Blackness. She sings about getting peace and reparations for her people, letting her natural hair free and showing Black love to all. “During the past decade, as an artist, Beyoncé stood at the forefront of Black activism and showcased the platforms of such movements as Black Lives Matter, #SayHerName, and #TakeAKnee in her artistry, particularly in work such as ‘Formation’ and on the larger ‘Lemonade’ album. It’s not fair to attempt to troll her or to brand her as any kind of ‘sellout,’ Richardson said. Despite Beyoncé not having issues when it comes to skin whitening, that doesn’t mean that this and colorism aren’t prevalent issues in the music industry. Artists such as rapper Lil Kim have been accused of changing their Black features to meet Eurocentric standards. In a 2000 interview with Newsweek, Lil Kim said that “I have low self-esteem and I always have. Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-hair type. Really beautiful women that left me thinking, ‘How can I compete with that?’ Being a regular Black girl wasn’t good enough.” A 2021 survey done by Black Lives in Music found that out of the Black women surveyed, 48% said they were far more likely to be forced into altering both their behavior and their appearance (44%). Another 2021 study focusing on the differences in disadvantages between light skin and dark skin Black women found that “darker skin was associated with disadvantage across socioeconomic, health, and psychosocial domains.” Research and data suggests that colorism is still an issue today. A study by Villanova in 2011 found that “light-skinned Black women served 11% less time in prison than dark-skinned Black women.” In pop culture, there are examples of colorism, a form of discrimination or prejudice that favors people with lighter skin over those with darker skin, still being prevalent. Experiencing colorism can lead to those to face mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression. The phenomenon also has an impact on how successful a person can be in the entertainment industry. For example, singer Chris Brown allegedly said in 2021 that he allows “no darkies” in his club section, causing controversy. Shows such as “Grown-ish” in 2018 have been called out for a lack of dark-skinned characters, despite covering topics such as colorism on their show. Even when it comes to reality TV, the hit show “Real Housewives of Potomac” had a spotlight put on them earlier this year for how the dark-skinned cast members are unable to express themselves like their light-skinned peers. Looking back at colorism’s history, “for a long time, advertisements in the Black press for skin lighteners and hair straighteners proliferated and were very real. Similarly, depictions in the Black media as well as in the cultural mainstream, particularly in the years prior to the Black Power movement, tended to embrace more Eurocentric beauty standards…,” Richardson said. What’s next with this complex issue? On the flip side, musical artists have also been accused of “Black-fishing” in order to gain personal profit and approval. “Black-fishing” “refers to a non-Black person’s manipulation of Black aesthetics for the purpose of attaining social capital or monetary benefit,” according to a 2022 article from Ms Magazine. Some recent artists accused of “Black-fishing” include singer Jesy Nelson of girl group Little Mix, singer Rita Ora and rapper Iggy Azalea. Journalist Taylor Crumpton sees Black-fishing as a way for non-Black people to be able to profit off of the attention and movements around Black identity and culture. “It would be remiss not to connect the wave of ‘Black-fishing’ social media influencers to digital campaigns around #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackGirlsRock. If whiteness is power and Blackness is currency, then white people will always feel an incentive to adorn Black elements and components in order to get rich,” Crumpton said. As Chabo said in her Nov. 29 Cosmopolitan UK article, accusing someone of “white-fishing” is a way to try to make “Black-fishing” seem invalid. In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of colorism, and there are a number of organizations and initiatives that are working to combat it. For instance, organizations such as The Representation Project are working to raise awareness around these issues and increase the representation of girls and women of color in the media. They release films such as “Miss Representation” and “The Mask You Live In” to be able to tell the stories of those that are often ignored in society. “No matter who you are or where you live, intersectional gender stereotypes are hurting you and those you love. Through film, education, and activism, The Representation Project awakens consciousness, spotlights the cost of these stereotypes, and invites everyone to build a more equitable future,” the organization stated. It remains to be seen if the issues of Black-fishing, representation and colorism will be properly addressed in our society. “Conditions must improve and barriers must be removed for Black artists to be themselves, which means interventions and change must be enacted at all levels for artists in order to be free,” said Crumpton. “As Beyoncé says on ‘Church Girl,’ ‘I was born free.’ Work has to be done for all of us to be able to enjoy our freedom.”

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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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culture

Wu announces free museum admission for BPS students and families

Twice a month, Boston Public School students and their families will be able to visit multiple museums and attractions without paying a dime. “Starting in February, on the first and second Sundays of each month, BPS students and their families will get free admission at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Science, The Boston Children's Museum, the New England Aquarium, and the Franklin Park Zoo,” said Mayor Michelle Wu in her State of the City address on Tuesday. The announcement follows a trend of increased accessibility at Boston-area institutions. Last year the Harvard Art Museums announced free admission for all visitors year-round, joining other museums with free admission such as Fuller Craft Museum, the McMullen Museum at Boston College and the Mass Art Art Museum. Currently general admission costs a family of four (two adults and two teenagers) $74 at the Museum of Fine Arts, $63 at the Franklin Park Zoo and $136 at the New England Aquarium. Vikki N. Spruill, president and CEO of the New England Aquarium, is proud to partner in this program that she says will help inspire more young people. She wrote to WBUR in an email following the announcement, “We applaud Mayor Wu and her team for creating a program that prioritizes increased accessibility and inclusivity for students and families throughout Boston." "We are thrilled to partner with the city and our colleagues to bring free cultural experiences to BPS students and their families,” wrote Museum of Science president Tim Ritchie in an email. “One of our highest priorities as an institution is creating a learning space that is inclusive, equitable, and accessible for all. The beauty of scientific discovery should not be a privilege, but rather a birthright for every child in the city. We cannot wait to welcome even more BPS families through our doors and to help spark their lifelong love of science.” In her speech, Mayor Wu recounted the role that free museum admission played in her own life. Wu’s immigrant mother often didn’t have enough money to spend on things like museum admission. “But on this day, none of that matters, because itʼs a Tuesday—and on Tuesdays, the big art museum downtown has free admission,” she said in her speech. “So sheʼs there with her little girl, in a little pink stroller, staring up at a painting of a cliff full of wildflowers. And, in this moment, this mom with no money and no words in this language feels like the best mom on earth because she has given her daughter the world for a day.” Mayor Wu has continued to demonstrate a strong tie to the arts. She’s continued to play piano in adulthood and last year she joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a performance at Symphony Hall.

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Willa Cather and Yehudi Menuhin: An Unlikely, Unwavering Friendship

When Menuhin was navigating young love, Cather was a font of advice — “I always have your future very much at heart,” she told him in one letter — and gushed over his marriage to Nola Nicholas. “No artist ever made such a fortunate marriage,” Cather wrote to her friend Zoë Akins. “Yehudi loves goodness more than anything, (I mean beautiful goodness) and she has it.” When Cather was homebound for four weeks with bronchitis, Yehudi and Nola Menuhin visited her nearly every day; he tended to the fire, and she made tea. He was even more of a solace as Cather experienced loss: the deaths of her brothers and of her old friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg, who had introduced Cather and Menuhin. Little, however, could lift her from the depressive isolation that followed her surgery for breast cancer in early 1946. She wasn’t seeing any friends, “not even Yehudi,” and wasn’t even listening to music, she wrote to her sister-in-law Meta Cather. “I have simply had, for the present, to cut out all the things I loved most.” Cather would make it out again; her last night on the town was to see Menuhin play at Carnegie Hall. Then, in March 1947, he visited her at home with his two children. Hephzibah was there, too, with her husband and two boys. “Here we all were (the children only were new), the rest of us were sitting in these rooms just as we used to meet here every week 10 and 12 years ago,” Cather recounted in a letter the next day. The Menuhins were stopping by on their way to board the Queen Elizabeth. About an hour and a half before it was to set sail, they “quietly rose,” Cather recalled, then “without any flurry, dropped in the elevator to the street floor.” Seemingly understood but unspoken was that this would be the last time they saw one another. Cather died in April. In the letter about that final visit, Cather said that this friendship had been “one of the chief interests and joys of my life.” She went as far as to say that she would rather have almost any other chapter of her life left out than that of her time with Menuhin and his sisters. Even then, as adults, they felt like dear children to her, Aunt Willa. “Today,” she said at the end of the letter, “these rooms seem actually full of their presence and their faithful, loving friendship.”

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culture

Caribbean Splurge: A Sailboat of Your Own (Well, Sort of)

Waves slap gently against the shore along the southeast coast of Australia, the morning sun glittering on the horizon. A cheerful swimming teacher is giving her students instructions and then suddenly, panic: A shark appears. It soon swims off, but leaves something behind. Everyone panics again: It’s a severed human arm. This is the opening scene of a recent episode of “NCIS: Sydney,” the fifth series in the long-running crime procedural franchise, which premiered on CBS earlier this month. But it could be the opening scene of almost any episode of any “NCIS” series, or of almost any episode of any network crime procedural, from “Law & Order” to “Bones” to “Criminal Minds.” The genre is among the most steadfast in television, drawing in many millions of viewers each week with a format that has hardly changed in more than three decades. This new spinoff is more of the same, and that is entirely by design. “There’s definitely a template that I’ve managed to extract from watching hundreds of hours of the show, a kind of typical ‘NCIS’ structure,” Morgan O’Neill, the creator and showrunner of “NCIS: Sydney,” said in a video interview. “That’s the overall architecture of the show, and it’s always going to be that.” “It still works,” O’Neill added. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The popularity of these shows bears out this wisdom. Television has been in a near constant state of volatility and change in the two decades since “NCIS” premiered, in September 2003, a period that has seen the flourishing of reality and prestige programming, cord-cutting and the fading of cable, and the rise of streaming platforms and their more recent consolidation. Through it all, one constant has been the popularity of procedural franchises like “NCIS” and “Law & Order,” which have thrived as purveyors of familiar predictability.

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Whats Ahead in 2024? The Cookie Cutters Tell All.

Ben Clark may be uniquely qualified to predict the outcome of the next presidential election. He’s not a pollster or political strategist. He makes cookie cutters. The metal baking tools are an uncanny cultural bellwether, said Mr. Clark, who runs Ann Clark, the largest cookie-cutter manufacturer in the United States. Just after the 2016 election, he noticed that percentage sales of his Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump cutters roughly aligned with the vote. Last spring, guitar and musical-note shapes began selling at a rapid clip, just as Taylor Swift was starting her Eras tour. In July, cookie cutters shaped like lipsticks and convertible cars picked up steam, thanks to Barbie mania. On a recent morning at the factory in Rutland, Vt., Mr. Clark was puzzling over next year’s election — specifically, how to create a cookie cutter of President Biden, whose silhouette isn’t all that recognizable. Suddenly, it hit him.

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Beatles Biographer Grapples With the Paradox of George Harrison

In a new biography, Philip Norman writes about the “paradox” of George Harrison, a man who was “unprecedentedly, ludicrously, suffocatingly famous while at the same time undervalued, overlooked and struggling for recognition.” This was the central contradiction that made Harrison, the composer of classics like “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Taxman,” a fascinating figure, both as a Beatle and after the band broke up, as Norman explores in his book “George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle.” Norman tackled his latest subject after writing celebrated biographies of Paul McCartney and John Lennon, as well as “Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation,” a book that Harrison was critical of. Harrison lived several separate lives. He was a rock star. A follower of Hinduism. A prolific film producer who came close to financial ruin. A philanderer who had an affair with a former bandmate’s wife and once had a guitar duel with Eric Clapton (also the subject of a Norman biography) over Pattie Boyd, Harrison’s first wife, whom Clapton fancied and later married. Image Credit... Scribner “The complexity of his character was something that hadn’t really been noticed before,” Norman said, adding, “Actually taking the whole elusive man, a bundle of different personalities, that was what was fascinating.”

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Mike Grgich Dies at 100; His Wine Stunned the French by Besting Theirs

Mike Grgich, the winemaker at Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley, and his staff were taken aback on May 25, 1976, after they received a surprising telegram. It read in part, “STUNNING SUCCESS IN PARIS TASTING.” What tasting? What success? Without their knowledge, Montelena’s 1973 chardonnay had been entered in a blind tasting held in Paris the day before. The tasting pitted American wines against some of France’s most famous, hallowed bottles. Nine French judges, including some of the leading names in the French food and wine establishment, had selected the Montelena chardonnay as their top white. This result was indeed shocking. American wines back then were considered simple and rustic at best, and no match for the majestic French wines. While the French judges shrank in embarrassed bewilderment, the Americans celebrated. “Not bad for kids from the sticks,” said Jim Barrett, the owner of Montelena. But it was Mr. Grgich, who died on Wednesday at 100, who had made the wine.

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Heiress Seeks 50 Austrians to Give Away $27 Million

In the coming days, about 10,000 Austrians will find an invitation in their mailboxes from an heiress asking for their help spending 25 million euros, or about $27.4 million, of her inheritance. It is not a scam or a clever marketing gambit. Rather, the heiress, Marlene Engelhorn, said it was an attempt to challenge a system that has allowed her to accumulate millions of euros in the first place. Ms. Engelhorn, 31, grew up in Vienna and for years has been campaigning for tax policies that would redistribute inherited wealth and address structural economic inequality. Without those tax laws in place, she is turning to the public to decide how her money should be spent.

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Lessons From the Past Year of Wordle

People like playing Wordle. In the past year, millions have played the game every day, and then shared, discussed and debated how they tried to win. For the first time, we’ve analyzed how people played in half a billion of those Wordle games and compared them with the strategies that our WordleBot recommends. Below are four things we learned. 1. Of the top 30 starting words, ADIEU is the most popular but least efficient. Many, many words have been written about the best opening word for Wordle. Answering this question, in fact, was one of the motivations behind WordleBot’s development. In its robot brain, a handful of words — SLATE, CRANE, TRACE — are best. For human Wordle players, the most popular opening word by some margin is ADIEU. AUDIO, another four-vowel word, is the fourth-most popular.

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The Best Metropolitan Diary of 2023: The Readers Speak

The Winner Image Valuable Tips Dear Diary: I was taking a walk in the Wall Street area a few years ago when I decided to pop into a deli. I ordered a sandwich and began chatting with the proprietor as he made it. Our conversation eventually turned to the shop’s location. I asked whether being in the financial district ever caused him to play the stock market or led to his getting valuable tips from informed customers. He paused his sandwich-making, put down his knife and looked at me with a perplexed expression. “Every day, those brokers come in here,” he said. “They get their bagels, sandwiches, doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes … ” He paused again and pointed toward the door of his shop. “ … and every day, they’re out there on the sidewalk, pushing and shoving on a door that is clearly marked ‘pull.’” — Steven Scharff

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The best queer media of 2023

Boston's official Christmas tree, an annual gift from Nova Scotia, was lit Thursday night during an annual concert and celebration on Boston Common. The event was hosted by Anthony Everett and Shayna Seymour of WCVB's Chronicle, with special performances by Maroon 5's PJ Morton, "Moulin Rouge! The Musical," Spectrum of Sound, Nova Scotia's COIG, and Owen "O'Sound" Lee.Jennifer Hudson, one of the youngest performers to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and a Tony, and Santa Claus joined the festivities as special guests. When Santa arrived, he asked Hudson to lead the crowd in a sing-along. The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony-winning performer led the crowd in "Jingle Bells." Video below: JHUD leads sing-alongBefore and during the celebration, a group of approximately 100 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on the corner of Boston Common near Park and Tremont Streets. Boston police had increased their precautions in the area following a protest that led to arrests in New York City during the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, but the night here appeared to go smoothly. Boston's official 2023 Christmas tree is a 45-foot white spruce. A tree is delivered each year from Nova Scotia to show appreciation for Boston's help after the Halifax Explosion in 1917.Video below: Light that tree! Boston's official Christmas tree, an annual gift from Nova Scotia, was lit Thursday night during an annual concert and celebration on Boston Common. The event was hosted by Anthony Everett and Shayna Seymour of WCVB's Chronicle, with special performances by Maroon 5's PJ Morton, "Moulin Rouge! The Musical," Spectrum of Sound, Nova Scotia's COIG, and Owen "O'Sound" Lee. Advertisement Jennifer Hudson, one of the youngest performers to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and a Tony, and Santa Claus joined the festivities as special guests. When Santa arrived, he asked Hudson to lead the crowd in a sing-along. The Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony-winning performer led the crowd in "Jingle Bells." Video below: JHUD leads sing-along Before and during the celebration, a group of approximately 100 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on the corner of Boston Common near Park and Tremont Streets. Boston police had increased their precautions in the area following a protest that led to arrests in New York City during the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, but the night here appeared to go smoothly. Boston's official 2023 Christmas tree is a 45-foot white spruce. A tree is delivered each year from Nova Scotia to show appreciation for Boston's help after the Halifax Explosion in 1917. Video below: Light that tree!

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culture

A Cannoli Recipe Thatll Bring Sicily to You

The dough here is relatively simple and comes together easily by hand. Because it must be rolled out very thinly — more on why below — it’s kneaded for several minutes to develop the gluten it requires to extend without breaking. However, you don’t want too much gluten, which can make the resulting shells tough. To create the necessary balance, cannoli dough contains two important ingredients: lard and wine. The lard (or another saturated fat, such as refined coconut oil) is worked into the dry ingredients so it coats some of the flour, which inhibits gluten formation and staves off toughness. The wine (red, white and Marsala are all common) contains alcohol, which hydrates the dough without developing gluten so it’s workable but not too strong. In my research, I came across multiple theories about what produces cannoli’s bubbly exterior. Some sources said it was the result of the alcohol in the wine evaporating quickly on contact with the frying oil, others said it was prolonged kneading of the dough, which traps air bubbles. While there’s truth to both, all of my testing indicated quite simply that bubbles form when a well-hydrated dough is rolled very thinly and fried.

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3 Sumptuous Palaces to Explore on Your Spanish Vacation

One of the most important cultural events in Madrid in recent years was the public opening, just before the pandemic, of a collection that had been sitting behind the closed doors of a private palace for about 200 years. The Palacio de Liria, the grand 18th-century home of the Alba family — among Spain’s (and Europe’s) oldest and most storied aristocratic families — is set in a tranquil garden just steps from the bustling Plaza de España in central Madrid. Often compared to the Prado Museum and the Royal Palace of Madrid for the masterpieces it contains and the noble residents who lived there, the house is filled with works by Titian, Rubens, Velázquez, Goya and other artists favored by the Spanish court. There are also vast literary and historic archives, as well as letters written from the Americas by the explorers Columbus, Pizarro and Cortés. Since assuming the title in 2014, the 19th (and current) duke, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, through the Casa de Alba Foundation, decided to share his family’s treasures with the world — an effort that began in 2015 with the opening of other singular family properties like the Palacio de las Dueñas in Seville and the Palacio de Monterrey in Salamanca. Here is a tour of those three sumptuous palaces, along with a stop in the small town of Alba de Tormes.

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culture

Maria Callas Was Operas Defining Diva. She Still Is.

She left her husband for the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, largely giving up performing in the process. When Onassis eventually married Jackie Kennedy instead, Callas was alone and bereft, without either the vocation that had given her purpose or the man who had replaced it. Living mostly in seclusion, though always harboring hopes of returning to the stage, she became for many a kind of saint or martyr, an embodiment of the hopelessly loving, direly abandoned characters she had played. “Until the end,” a friend said, “she continued her vocal exercises.” As Callas’s life fades ever further into the distance, her voice is more and more what we are left with. “Generally, I upset people the first time they hear me,” she told a biographer, “but I am usually able to convince them of what I am doing.” Francesco Siciliani, an impresario who engaged Callas as she rose in the late 1940s, was right when he said, “Parts of the voice were beautiful, others empty.” But the flaws that grew more prominent over time — the thinnesses and wobbles, the metallic harshness and questionable intonation — were, as she knew, usually convincing, not least because her sound, for all its troubles, was so instantly recognizable, and such a perfect vessel for extreme emotion. There was always that sense of every phrase being considered, without feeling studied — of a voice with a purpose. We can see from photos the amazing ability of her face — and, perhaps just as important, her hands — to capture anguish, authority and charm. But among the most pernicious stereotypes about Callas is that she was an actress who could barely sing, who got by on charisma alone. The records disprove this. Listen to her tender “O mio babbino caro.” Listen to her delicate yet commanding “D’amor sull’ali rosee.” She was always a bel canto singer at heart. In the early 1970s, when she led a series of master classes at the Juilliard School, a student defended herself after a bad high note by saying it was meant as a cry of despair.

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culture

Daylight savings 2024: When to spring ahead to daylight saving time

Another blast of Arctic air was roaring across the Midwest on Friday on its way to the eastern United States, where snow was already falling in New York and other areas, some schools were canceled and officials warned of dangerous driving conditions. The forecast called for up to six inches of snow for an area from Baltimore to central New Jersey, and up to eight inches in parts of the Philadelphia area. A foot of snow could fall in the mountainous regions of the Central Appalachians and along the eastern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan, forecasters said. Elsewhere, a few inches of snow was forecast from Kentucky to Vermont. Officials warned that snow and plunging temperatures were making roads dangerous. Officials from Indiana to Tennessee reported that trucks were sliding off icy highways and bridges. The governor of Tennessee closed state offices on Friday, citing the hazardous travel conditions. Kentucky’s governor closed all executive branch state office buildings. In Huntsville, Ala., where the roads have been coated in ice and slush this week, the police said they had responded since Monday to nearly 200 car accidents, 37 of which involved injuries.

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How to Feel Alive Again

It all started with a Post-it note. “Go for a walk,” it said, the no-nonsense command perched in a prominent spot above Katherine May’s desk. Ms. May, a British author who wrote the best-selling memoir “Wintering” about a fallow and difficult period of her life, had come across more hard times during the height of the pandemic. She was bored, restless, burned out. Her usual ritual — walking — had fallen away, along with other activities that used to bring her pleasure: collecting pebbles, swimming in the sea, savoring a book. “There was nothing that made the world feel interesting to me,” Ms. May said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I felt like my head was kind of full and empty at the same time.” In Ms. May’s latest book, “Enchantment,” she describes how a simple series of actions, like writing that note, helped her to discover little things that filled her with wonder and awe — and, in turn, made her feel alive again.

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Mass. State Lotterys $50 ticket released Feb. 2023 is best-selling in country

Massachusetts is pretty used to being number one — especially when it comes to the lottery. The $50 lottery scratch ticket called “Billion Dollar Extravaganza,” released by the Massachusetts State Lottery in early 2023, topped not only the statewide charts in ticket sales, but it also has become the best-selling lottery ticket in the country. “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” was released on Feb. 7, 2023. It made history by offering Massachusetts’ highest scratch ticket prize ever at $25 million. There were three grand prizes available to win, which were all claimed by the end of 2023. The Massachusetts State Lottery reported over $900 million in sales over the last year for the $50 ticket, making it not only the state’s most popular ticket, but the best-selling game across every lottery in the United States. “Part of it is the culture of the Northeast; if you look at Northeast lotteries, they tend to do well,” Mark William Bracken, director of the Massachusetts State Lottery, said. “But that being said, no state offers the prizes, and the payouts, and the propositions that the Massachusetts State Lottery does. Numbers are numbers... people buy tickets in Massachusetts, because you can win on tickets in Massachusetts,” Bracken said. Bracken gave the example of the Texas Lottery’s two $100 scratch ticket games, which have much lower grand prizes than Massachusetts’ $50 scratch ticket. The first $100 ticket released in Texas had a top prize of $20 million; its second was just $7.5 million. And though Florida is the only other state to offer a $25 million prize for its $50 ticket, also with an 82% prize payout, Bracken explained Massachusetts is paying out more to its players than any state. The prize payout, or the amount of the prize turned over to the winner, is comprised of the money left after the lottery turns over its mandatory compensations, such as overhead or administrative costs. Bracken said Massachusetts’ transparencies on its games, the amount of prizes left, its odds and payouts contribute to its unique success with prize payouts. It also has the most lottery agencies per square mile and per capita in the country. As of late December, about 70% of “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” tickets have been distributed and about 67% have been sold, Bracken said. There are still four, $2 million prizes remaining to be claimed in the game as of Jan. 2, along with five $1 million prizes and 65 $50,000 prizes. Every winning “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” ticket has a minimum prize of $100. The game offers over $1 billion in total lottery winnings besides its grand prizes, with five $2 million prizes and 15 $1 million prizes released at the start to win. The overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 4.1. The success of the $50 ticket this past year papered over concerns the Massachusetts State Lottery had over meeting its 2023 fiscal year goal. And Bracken again reiterated the need for more advertisement funding if the lottery hopes to continue breaking national records — especially without an online lottery. “As the numbers show, we’re being saved by this $50 ticket,” Bracken said. “And as a lottery, I don’t want to be in a position that I’m getting saved because of one particular product.” Massachusetts had joined more than a dozen other state lotteries offering a $50 ticket. The previously highest-priced scratch ticket available in Massachusetts was $30, and was first introduced in 2014. According to the lottery, Massachusetts was the first state to create a scratch ticket game for players, which was in May of 1974. It released a $1 ticket called “The Instant Game,” and the lottery said the invention “revolutionized the industry and established Massachusetts as a lottery innovator.”

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Ninety-one is a lot (Bostons version)

Beth Wolfensberger Singer is a Boston-based artist. You can see more of her work at Bethwolfensbergersinger.com.

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Eradicating the Stigma: jarrett hill

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! Editor’s note: For World AIDS Day 2023, Reckon interviewed people from across the U.S. about living with and battling the persistent stigma that people living with HIV/AIDS still confront today. From those deeply personal, wide-ranging interviews, we published profiles of five people about their journey and fight to eradicate stigma. On World AIDS Day 2021, jarrett hill, 38, shared his HIV status publicly for the first time, a stark contrast to his 2012 diagnosis when he was muzzled by stigma and shame shaped by his religious upbringing. Since then, the award-winning journalist, professor, author, and co-host of the FANTI podcast has made a splendid slice of life for himself in Inglewood, California. But this rich-fueled life of opportunity, love, and community wasn’t always something hill thought was possible. For the first time, hill shared with Reckon his experience living with HIV and his hopes for eradicating the stigma. “I completely shut down, never talked about it with anyone, and ignored it for a very long time. When [I received] my diagnosis, I remember immediately thinking, ‘Who’s gonna love me now?’ Like that would not be a possibility for me as a person who’s always been a hopeful romantic,” hill tells Reckon. At the time, the 26-year-old hill didn’t have health care insurance, was unaware of the resources available to him and stigma kept him from inquiring to seek treatment. For years, every time he had a headache, caught a cold, or nicked his finger, hill thought, ‘This is going to be the thing that kills me.’ “I lived with that for years and years and eventually did get sick enough that I got concerned because I had started to lose weight, and it was different than just having a cold,” he says. Eventually, hill found community resource AHF, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and got access to treatment and a therapist. “It was lifesaving and affirming because it was a community built for people like myself and a full circle moment as I previously worked at AID Atlanta prior to my diagnosis, helping to organize their AIDS Walk,” he says. Today, being positive isn’t something hill thinks about every second of his day. According to hill, even when taking a pill, HIV is not something that he worries about nor does he fear the things that concerned him before. Fully aware of the magnitude of the disease and better equipped with education about treatment, hill knows that the depictions in society and media of HIV as this “horrible, terrible alternative life” and othering is far from reality. “I live such a full life that has so many other things to be concerned about than HIV. I’m really grateful for that, but I don’t know that I would have expected that when I got my diagnosis,” he tells Reckon. The silence that stigma causes loomed, the weight exacerbated by working in a public-facing career. For a long time, he was concerned about not using his platform and influence to share this part of himself until very recently. “I want to combat the stigma of people who are living with HIV feeling like they can’t talk about it and be safe to share. I know people get awful responses when coming out about it, but ultimately, the freedom of it is much better than the prison of the secret,” he says. Not until hill watched FX’s Pose did he see an accurate depiction of his experience receiving his diagnosis. In one episode, Billy Porter’s character, Pray Tell, gets diagnosed with HIV; he chooses not to share and live with that secret. “I didn’t do a good job of pretending and just shut down. But I wonder how my life would have been different if I had told someone or if I would have felt safe to; I wasn’t ready,” he says. This World AIDS Day, hill says the best way others can show up for folks living with HIV is to educate themselves on what it’s like to live with the diagnosis today. “I think it would be incredibly valuable for us all. I’m still sometimes surprised by how many people don’t know much about HIV/AIDS and how far medication has come along to help you be able to live a full life,” he says. As a person who grew up Christian and immersed in church, hill believes communities of faith should be thoughtful about the ways that they engage conversations and people aboutHIV/AIDS. “We have pastors, preachers, ministers, etc., tasked with service within churches who are doing a lot of harm, sometimes without even knowing it. I’ve heard my own pastor refer to having HIV/AIDS amongst being a murderer, you know, all of these other terrible things. Communities of faith are tasked with being welcoming, inclusive, and sharing love, and I don’t believe many of them are doing that as well as they could,” he says.

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Sea Creatures From the Deep, Captured in Glass, Rise at Mystic Seaport

Leopold, who hailed from Bohemian glassworkers, started out making jewelry and then glass eyeballs both for humans and taxidermy. He also made stunning glass flowers, producing more than 4,000 with his son for Harvard. What’s surprising is that these two artists in landlocked Dresden could have replicated marine species so accurately. Leopold did in fact glimpse live jellyfish in all their glass-like luminosity years before he started making them, while sailing across the Atlantic to the U.S. in the early 1850s. By the late 1870s he and his son had acquired a seawater aquarium and ordered live animals that came wrapped in seaweed from marine stations throughout Europe. (Much of what we know of them comes from their archives at the Corning Museum of Glass.) Zoological illustrations were also essential. Early on, Leopold emulated drawings of anemones by Philip Henry Gosse, the Victorian naturalist and collector of marine species known as the inventor of the modern aquarium (and for trying to reconcile his creationist beliefs with his scientific findings). Later, the Blaschkas borrowed illustrations from Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist and skilled artist who cataloged many of the thousands of marine species pulled up by the HMS Challenger, a British ship that spent three and a half years, starting in 1872, gathering data from the ocean’s depths. “There was so much documentation of marine invertebrates in the 19th century,” Rose said. “Citizen scientists were walking the shores noticing these things.”

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The Envy Office: Can Instagrammable Design Lure Young Workers Back?

Inside the “blueberry muffin” conference room, the walls are, naturally, painted blue. Not just any blue — it’s the calming color you might find a baby’s bedroom, what the paint can refers to as “sea to shining sea.” Anchoring the room is a table, red and oblong, adorned with fake succulents in purple pots. Nearby is the “fruity” conference room, with “razzle dazzle” red walls and vintage chairs upholstered in yellow pineapple printed cloth. Down the hallway is “maple waffle,” the room where the company holds its more serious meetings with investors. There, the walls are a subdued shade of brown. This is the office of the cereal brand Magic Spoon, which was introduced in 2019 and, starting last year, called its roughly 50 employees back to in-person work, at least two days a week. At Magic Spoon’s SoHo space, which was designed right around the company’s return-to-office push, the conference rooms are meant to feel like cereal boxes. “One of our core company values is, ‘Be a Froot Loop in a world of Cheerios,’” said Greg Sewitz, a Magic Spoon co-founder. “We wanted the office to underline that.”

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The Harriet Tubman? The Anne Frank? House Layout Names Draw Criticism.

From the outside, the adobe-style ranch house on the outskirts of Albuquerque appears to be like any other three-bedroom house. But its designers took inspiration from an unusual source. In fact, the person for whom the design is named probably never stepped foot in New Mexico at all. “Just like Harriet Tubman, the icon of American courage and freedom, this home stands out amongst the crowd,” read a home listing on Zillow, highlighting the home’s “‘entertainers’ kitchen with a bar top between the kitchen and the great room.” The listing quickly found itself attracting the scrutiny of Zillow’s social media watchers, who criticized Abrazo Homes, a production homebuilder in Albuquerque, for tastelessly commercializing the revered abolitionist. The company also named a home layout after Anne Frank, who hid from Nazis in an annex in the Netherlands before being killed in a concentration camp. The designs appear to have been available for years, but they did not pique interest on social media until this week.

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Music, photography from across the Jewish diaspora reach Boston for Hanukkah

Art has the power to bind, even across contentious borders and over long centuries. That power is evident as Boston residents usher in Hanukkah with music and traditions from across the vast Jewish diaspora. Musician Ira Klein, who grew up in Israel before attending the Berklee College of Music, is sharing a wide variety of Jewish music from Spain, Algeria and Turkey this season. One of his performances is at the annual “Hanukkah: Festival of Lights” held at the Museum of Fine Arts Thursday evening. "The idea is really: How can we use music as a bridge? A lot of people may think of that as a cliche, but that’s what music does. It brings people together across political lines,” Klein said. Joining Klein at the MFA is Beth Bahia Cohen, playing violin and yayli tanbur, a fretless Turkish instrument. Leading up to Hanukkah, Klein shared an excerpt from a 14th century Jewish manuscript from Spain, The Catalan Mahzor, at the Vilna Shul in Beacon Hill last week. Ladino art and culture in Boston Becky Behar, a photographer born in Colombia, is a Sephardic Jew who traces her family roots back to the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal during the 1492 Spanish Inquisition. Her pop-up photography is among the art showcased this year at the MFA's annual event. Both Behar and Klein are familiar with the significance of the Ladino language, a tongue blending Spanish and Hebrew that artists and historians are working to preserve. Two years ago, Klein founded the Boston-based ensemble Convivencia to revive and celebrate the Ladino tradition. Much of the Ladino culture hearkens back to a time of pluralism and artistry, including between Muslims and Jews, before the Inquisition. It's that joy and peace that Hanukkah is known to bring each winter. “I think we in the Jewish community, and broader community, could all really use a moment of connection and beauty and joy,” said Laura Mandell, the executive director of Jewish Arts Collaborative, one of the partners in the MFA event. Speaking to GBH's The Culture Show earlier this week, Mandell said that "Hanukkah is the antidote" to darkness and challenges. Note: The "Hanukkah: Festival of Lights" event runs from 5- 10 p.m. Thursday at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and is included with general admission.

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Food sovereignty movement sprouts as bison return to Indigenous communities

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Egyptian officials said Hamas was preparing to release 14 Israeli hostages Saturday for 42 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, as part of an exchange on the second day of a cease-fire that has allowed critical humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and given civilians their first respite after seven weeks of war. On the first day of the four-day cease-fire, Hamas released 24 of the about 240 hostages taken during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war, and Israel freed 39 Palestinians from prison. Those freed from captivity in Gaza were 13 Israelis, 10 Thais and a Filipino. On Saturday, Hamas provided mediators Egypt and Qatar with a list of 14 hostages to be released, and the list has been passed along to Israel, according to a Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to talk about details of the ongoing negotiations. A second Egyptian official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the details. Under the truce agreement, Hamas will release one Israeli hostage for every three prisoners freed, and Israel’s Prison Service had already said earlier Saturday it was preparing 42 prisoners for release. It was not immediately clear how many non-Israeli captives may also be released. Overall, Hamas is to release at least 50 Israeli hostages, and Israel 150 Palestinian prisoners during the four-day truce, all woman and minors. Israel has said the truce can be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed — something United States President Joe Biden said he hoped would come to pass. Separately, a Qatari delegation arrived in Israel on Saturday to coordinate with parties on the ground and “ensure the deal continues to move smoothly,” according to a diplomat briefed on the visit. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to do discuss details with the media. The start of the truce Friday morning brought the first quiet for 2.3 million Palestinians reeling and desperate from relentless Israeli bombardment that has killed thousands, driven three-quarters of the population from their homes and leveled residential areas. Rocket fire from Gaza militants into Israel went silent as well. For Emad Abu Hajer, a resident of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza City area, the pause meant he could again dig through the rubble of his home, which was flattened in an Israeli attack last week. He found the bodies of a cousin and nephew Friday, bring the death toll in the attack to 19. With his sister and two other relatives still missing, he resumed his digging Saturday. “We want to find them and bury them in dignity,” he said. Israeli soldiers stand on Salah al-Din road in central Gaza Strip on Friday, Nov. 24, 2023, as the temporary ceasefire went into effect.AP Photo/Hatem Moussa The United Nations said the pause enabled it to scale up the delivery of food, water, and medicine to the largest volume since the resumption of humanitarian aid convoys on Oct. 21. It was also able to deliver 129,000 liters (34,078 gallons) of fuel — just over 10% of the daily pre-war volume — as well as cooking gas, a first time since the war began. In the southern city of Khan Younis on Saturday, a long line of people with gas cans and other containers waited outside a filling station hoping to get some of the newly delivered fuel. As he waited for fuel, Hossam Fayad lamented that the pause in fighting was only for four days. “I wish it could be extended until people’s conditions improved,” he said. For the first time in over a month, aid reached northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive. The Palestinian Red Crescent said 61 trucks carrying food, water and medical supplies headed to northern Gaza on Saturday, the largest aid convoy to reach the area since the start of the war. The U.N. said it and the Palestinian Red Crescent were also able to evacuate 40 patients and family members from a hospital in Gaza City, where much of the fighting has taken place, to a hospital in Khan Younis. The relief brought by the cease-fire has been tempered, however, for both sides — among Israelis by the fact that not all hostages will be freed and among Palestinians by the brevity of the pause. The short truce leaves Gaza mired in humanitarian crisis and under the threat that fighting could soon resume. Amal Abu Awada, a 40-year-old widow who fled a Gaza City-area camp for Khan Younis with her three children earlier in November, ventured out Friday to a U.N. facility looking for food and water, but said there was none available. “We went back empty handed,” she said. “But at least there are no bombs, and we can try again.” FIRST HOSTAGES FREED After nightfall Friday, a line of ambulances emerged from Gaza through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt carrying the freed hostages. The freed Israelis included nine women and four children 9 and under. The released hostages were taken to three Israeli hospitals for observation. The Schneider Children’s Medical Center said it was treating eight Israelis — four children and four women — and that all appeared to be in good physical condition. The center said they were also receiving psychological treatment, adding that “these are sensitive moments” for the families. At a plaza dubbed “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv, a crowd of Israelis celebrated at the news. The hostages included multiple generations. Nine-year-old Ohad Munder-Zichri was freed along with his mother, Keren Munder, and grandmother, Ruti Munder. The fourth-grader was abducted during a holiday visit to his grandparents at the kibbutz where about 80 people — nearly a quarter of all residents of the small community — are believed to have been taken from. The plight of the hostages has raised anger among some families that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to bring them home. Hours later, 24 Palestinian women and 15 teenage boys held in Israeli prisons in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem were freed. In the West Bank town of Beitunia, hundreds of Palestinians poured out of their homes to celebrate, honking horns and setting off fireworks that lit up the night sky. The teenagers had been jailed for minor offenses like throwing stones. The women included several convicted of trying to stab Israeli soldiers, and others who had been arrested at checkpoints in the West Bank. According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, Israel is currently holding 7,200 Palestinians, including about 2,000 arrested since the start of the war. A LONGER PEACE? The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages, including babies, women and older adults, as well as soldiers. Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, said the hope is that momentum from the deal will lead to an end to the violence. Qatar served as a mediator along with the U.S. and Egypt. Israeli leaders have said they would resume fighting eventually and not stop until Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for the past 16 years, is crushed. Israel has set the release of all hostages as the second goal of the war, and officials have argued that only military pressure can bring them home. At the same time, the government is under pressure from the families of the hostages to make the release of the remaining captives the top priority, ahead of any efforts to end Hamas control of Gaza. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza government. Women and minors have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead, though the latest number was not broken down. The figure does not include updated numbers from hospitals in the north, where communications have broken down.

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National Gallery of Art Receives Major Gift of Joseph Cornell Boxes

Joseph Cornell, who died in 1972 at the age of 69, belongs to the tradition of the homebody-artist. A gray whisper of a man, he eschewed the excitements of travel in favor of a tea-filled life in his house on Utopia Parkway in Queens. His medium was the Box — that is, the Victorian-era shadow box, and he spent his days in his basement workshop, assembling cork balls, paper cutouts of birds and other dime-store material into improbably poetic arrangements that owed something to French Surrealism. Among the cities he never visited was Washington, D.C. So one wonders what he would make of the news that the National Gallery of Art has just acquired a veritable truckload of his work — some 20 boxes and seven collages from throughout his career. The gift comes from Robert and Aimee Lehrman, Washington collectors. Robert Lehrman, a trustee of the Hirshhorn Museum and a grandson of the co-founder of Giant Foods, a supermarket chain, has lectured extensively on Cornell and bought his first piece in the early 1980s. “It was a white dovecote box that had a childlike mystery about it,” he said. “I like that his work is both very simple and very complex.”

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Get In the Holiday Spirit at These Pop-Up Bars Around Boston

Loco’s Fenway outpost is transforming into “Santa’s Cantina” for the holiday season. Starting on Friday, December 1, and running through New Year’s, Loco is launching a holiday-themed bar menu featuring drinks like the Merry Merry, with cinnamon-infused tequila, and the Lo Fi Amaro, a sparkly red concoction made with edible glitter and decorated with a green sprinkle rim. (The bar menu is also available at Loco’s South Boston location.) The restaurant is also hosting a three-course, $55 holiday lunch with options like a chorizo and lobster chowder and tres leches cake available from Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., from November 29 to December 29.

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Ailey Looks Back to Black Joy and Longing With 1930s Jazz

The dancers don’t so much step onto the stage in Amy Hall Garner’s “Century” as burst within it like a glitter bomb, showering the space in pink and gold. For “Century,” her first work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, performed on Friday at New York City Center, it’s clear that Garner doesn’t merely know a party when she sees one — she knows how to dream one up. A metallic curtain hangs in the back as dancers, looking like fuchsia flowers, vibrate from their shoulders to their feet like petals caught in a breeze. Wearing dresses featuring feathered skirts and striped bustiers and, for the men, tight pants and short-sleeve shirts so form fitting that they could be painted on, the dancers are clearly committed to a celebration. But Garner adds another element to their flash: breathtaking speed. A rising choreographer who will present a new work at New York City Ballet this spring, Garner, here, takes inspiration from her family. She regards “Century” as an early birthday present to her grandfather Henry Spooner — he turns 100 on Dec. 30 — and has built a score for it based on his taste, which includes songs by Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Rebirth Brass Band from New Orleans. One section ends with a voice-over by Spooner that speaks to his longevity: “Why my life was extended I don’t know and I don’t question it. Something must be doing good, I’m still here.”

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Gen Z-ers might be taking their birthday celebrations too far. How saying Happy Birthday became a high-stakes game

A weekly newsletter for the chronically online and easily entertained. Honey dishes us savvy analysis on culture, entertainment and power to make you the group chat MVP. Subscribe today! Gen Z-ers might be taking their birthdays too far and it’s all playing out on TikTok. Many have been sharing their set of birthday rules on the social platform for months, ranging from a 7 shot minimum to no salads and water for dinner. Twenty-four year old Tiktok user and “The Corporate Baddie” Deandre Brown says that the birthday person should pay for the whole dinner. While twenty-five year old comedian and Tiktok user Daniela Mora wants you to know that on her day, “you are the step sisters with the weird noses” and she’s Cinderella. Regardless of where one stands on the topic, these birthday rules according to other creators are opening the door for larger conversations about social classes, friendship and how toxic social media can be. Blame it on social media When comparing how birthday parties of the past compare to today, 29-year-old comedian Jasmine Ellis, who posted their own Tiktoks discussing the topic, said that it used to be about just having fun and being in the moment. “It wasn’t about capturing the moment later to prove to people you had a good time. So many parties are about pictures these days that I kind of wish people would pay for a photographer, the same way they do for a wedding,” Ellis said, sharing that there should be a predetermined time for pictures so the rest of the event can be enjoyed fully. “The quest for content has made everything less fun and birthdays are just a symptom of that.” Birthday celebrations can turn from an intimate time to celebrate to an all-out brawl, as seen in social media influencer Victor Christian’s Tiktok where the group is arguing over splitting a $4,600 dinner bill. Other viral Tiktoks been criticized for the lack of consideration for the birthday guests. Tiktok user and Youtuber Janeé,” for example posted her birthday trip rules on April 8. “It’s my trip. It’s my birthday. We’re going to do everything that I want to do. I do not care about what you want to do. Come back on your own time,” they said. Other rules included not taking pictures for anyone else and not coming if you don’t have the money for a luxury experience. Comments ripped into her rules, with Tiktok user Isidora Obradovic stating, “so you’re paying then, right? Cause I know your friends are not expected to endure this on their own dime lmao.” A report from Forbes found that an estimated 4.9 billion people use social media platforms around the world in 2023. These platforms not only create a place for people to share these birthday ideas, but to also share their “perfect life,” according to a 2023 article from Psychology Today. Numerous Tiktok posts share how to get the best birthday post, like from Tiktok user Nicole Meso. However, constantly recording and posting your life rather than living in the moment can do more harm than good, according to a Medium post from data analyst Vanessa Dailey. Does classism and entitlement play a role? Twenty-seven year old wellness and lifestyle content creator Aley Arion, who also posted their own videos sharing their opinion on the topic, stated that the root of these controversial rules could be entitlement. “I think when you have the right friends and right people around you, it’s understood that you will be taken care of. But I think if people have been let down in the past or people haven’t necessarily shown up for them when it’s ‘their day,’ then they have these big rules and high expectations that make it hard to be let down on the day of,” Arion said. A YouGov survey conducted on Nov. 2022 found that 47% of those surveyed overall felt neutral about their birthday. But being let down on your birthday can lead to negative feelings surrounding the special day, or even birthday depression. Also known as the “birthday blues,” its symptoms include crying more than usual, a lack of interest in what you usually enjoy, and isolation. While posting on your birthday and getting the likes and recognition could provide some satisfaction, it is only temporary, according to a study by anthropologist Daniel Miller. Celebrating your big day has become more about getting recognition on social media rather than your loved ones, as seen with X user and reality TV star JeLaminah. “It seems like every year one of my family members on my dad’s side gets mad at me for not posting them on social media for their birthday. For the life of me can someone explain why people get mad about this?!? Especially when I pick up the phone and call you for ur bday,” they said in a Nov. 14 post. Social media is exposing these rules, for better or for worse, according to Arion. “I do think some of the people who are the big voices when it comes to conversations come from a particular economic class, where splitting the bill or taking care of the whole table is nothing to them because that’s just how they move economically. I think that’s just exposing the different class differences that do affect birthday culture,” Arion said. The highest paid influencers on Tiktok brought in $55.1 million collectively in 2021, according to a 2022 Forbes article. Seeing how others are having extravagant lifestyles on their birthday and beyond across social media platforms can bring up feelings of envy, according to a 2018 article from JSTOR. The unhealthy comparison of what one sees online to their peers and celebrities they admire can also lead to a lower self-esteem, depression and anxiety, according to a 2020 Nursing Times article. Social media and its influencers can set unrealistic expectations for their followers to try to replicate, which can make you feel like a failure, including on your birthday, a 2019 article from PennMedicine states. How to take the drama out of your birthday It remains to be seen if birthday culture will go back to what it used to be or evolve to be more social media centric. However, Ellis says the first place to start is with who you are surrounded by. “I think we’ve gotten to a point of over connectivity that makes everyone feel entitled to attend everyone’s everything. It feels like a failure if you throw a birthday party and you don’t have a lot of friends surrounding you…I’m OK with my birthday gatherings being small and intimate. I’m OK if my birthdays are just being celebrated between me and the friends,” Ellis said. Arion has her own set of rules she follows on her birthday to ensure a drama-free day. “A rule of mine is on the day that I was born, no one gets to touch that day,” Arion said, naming the COVID pandemic as a reason why her views on her birthday have changed. “If you’re having a party, send out little house rules that you’re expecting your guests to go in with …Remember that it is your day, but if you’re inviting people to be part of your day, just be courteous to that.”

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I Just Arrived in London. Can I Come to Dinner?

The Massachusetts lottery player who picked up a “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” scratch ticket won the grand prize of $25 million. The scratch ticket was sold at Red’s Dairy Store in Fall River, according to the Massachusetts State Lottery website. It was claimed on Wednesday. Overall, there were nine people who claimed a prize of at least $10,000 playing the “Billion Dollar Extravaganza” game Wednesday. There is still one more $25 million winning ticket waiting to be claimed from the $50 scratch ticket game. Three lottery players each claimed a $50,000 prize on Wednesday, with one ticket sold in Concord, one sold in Marlborough and the other sold at Quincy Market Store in Quincy. Two $20,000 winners purchased their tickets at a Sunoco Mart in Middleboro and at The Store in Mansfield, respectively. This was followed by seven $10,000 winners who purchased their tickets at a 7-11 in Lowell, a Mobil gas station in Hanover, a Pearl St. Mart in Brockton and a Route 16 Smoke Shop in Everett, respectively. The latest Powerball winner in Massachusetts won $50,000 on Monday after a purchase at Chadwick Food Mart in Worcester. Mega Millions players in the commonwealth this week only won $1,500, specifically two Tuesday winners who purchased their tickets at Corner Variety in Beverly and Handy Spa in Belmont, respectively. Overall, there were at least 414 lottery prizes worth $600 or more won or claimed in Massachusetts on Wednesday, including 12 in Springfield and 23 in Worcester. The Massachusetts State Lottery releases a full list of all the winning tickets each day. The list only includes winning tickets worth more than $600. The two largest lottery prizes won in the state of Massachusetts so far in 2023 were $33 million and $31 million Mega Millions jackpot prizes. The tickets were each sold a week apart.

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Recovery program absolute game changer for first responders in Massachusetts

First responders devote their lives to helping others, but what happens when they need help themselves? Given their line of work, first responders “share a lot of the same traumas,” Chris Rodriguez, 34, of Springfield, a correctional officer for the state of Connecticut, told MassLive. He said emergency workers are conditioned to bury their feelings and emotions while dealing with tough mental health conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Without developing healthy coping mechanisms, first responders are at risk of developing an addiction to drugs or alcohol that is also fueled by their work culture. “It’s very accepted to go to a bar or a hangout after work and not really talk about your feelings, but kind of numb them with substance or alcohol,” Rodriguez explained. To cater to their needs, Recovery Centers of America (RCA) in Westminster has a program that specifically helps first responders who are struggling with substance abuse. The Frontline Program is available to doctors, nurses, therapists, counselors, pharmacists and any other emergency personnel struggling with addiction to drugs or alcohol. The inpatient program lasts 3-4 weeks and focuses on providing trauma care coupled with addiction and recovery education. The program also intentionally places first responders with their peers who are going through similar journeys, which Rodriguez says truly sets RCA’s program apart from those at other recovery centers. “They’re not only in a safe space around people that also do the same work as them, but they’re in a place where they’re going to be expected to do certain things and meet some certain requirements,” said Rodriguez, who went through a 30-day Frontline Program to treat alcohol addiction. “When I was in a place where I could be vulnerable, around people that understood what those situations were like, it made it a place where I understood where I wasn’t unique any longer,” he added. The Frontline Program uses specialized clinical workbooks and the guidance of assigned therapists who host discussions in individual and group sessions, according to the program’s website. Participants are also treated with several evidence-based clinical approaches, including cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps “patients re-conceive distorted and self-defeating patterns in thought, emotion and action, replacing counterproductive with productive ones,” and positive psychology, which “develops a more positive perspective toward life and others, finding more joy, freedom and meaning in the process through community activities and therapy.” “The people we get here that come to RCA are some of the most dynamic, intelligent, resilient people on the planet,” said Dr. Renee DuVerger, who is the clinical supervisor for RCA and runs the Frontline Program. “I think that’s why we do the job is because we see the progress that people make.” DuVerger said first responders need specific care because they are constantly dealing with critical situations and experiencing burnout. “As resilient as the population is, you can only take so much,” she said. “We need to get society to use care along the way, along the job, so that we can be preventative rather than responsive or reactive with addiction treatment.” Therefore, DuVerger credits the success of the Frontline Program to being solely dedicated to emergency personnel and addressing the specific set of issues that are not commonly felt by the general public. “If you haven’t been on the front line, it’s a very different set of issues rather than the general population who are in recovery,” she explained. “You really need to have that safety in a specialized program. Otherwise people can’t relax, can’t heal, and it can’t feel safe enough to really talk about what’s going on.” Additionally, DuVerger said, the program helps to remove the stigma surrounding first responders — or anyone — getting help for their addiction. This was something Rodriguez experienced firsthand. “I tried to break that stigma,” he said. “It was definitely a hurdle I had to jump over. That I knew I wasn’t weak for doing that, and I was actually saving my life.” Recovery Centers of America in Westminster, Massachusetts.Google Maps Street View Rodriguez started drinking at age 13 or 14 and would drink at any chance he could while in high school. He was also surrounded by people who did the same. Rodriguez’s drinking worsened during his college years, where he started to black out on a regular basis. “Drinking made me make a lot of decisions that made my life unmanageable,” he said. “I gave away two full scholarships for football and lacrosse due indirectly to drinking. I neglected my schoolwork and didn’t show up for classes. The consequences didn’t occur to me. I blamed it on everyone else. The truth is it was me. I was the problem.” Rodriguez later enlisted in the Army and left the military in 2010. In 2014, he became a correctional officer and has held the role for the last nine years — but his drinking did not stop throughout. Rodriguez tried getting sober multiple times for three years, but he was in and out of rehab before being directed to the Frontline Program at RCA by his Employee Assistance Program (EAP). RCA’s business office works directly with EAPs to help first responders get treatment, according to DuVerger. Rodriguez joined the Frontline Program, which he said came highly recommended, on June 9, 2022. Rodriguez considers that day his sobriety date. The program proves to first responders that they can keep working while living a life of sobriety. Rodriguez said the program reintroduced a sense of structure in his life, which was ideal for him given his military background. “I was able to translate that from this facility into my life and carry that on and continue on with that regimented schedule,” he said. “This was an absolute game changer for me.” Read More: Major grocery chain becomes first to entirely stop using plastic shopping bags From its strong alumni network to outpatient programs, RCA helps first responders avoid a commonly felt isolation by continuing to offer them resources and support even after they complete the program. “It’s not just a, you know, come and stay for a certain period of time and then you’re on your own, they still make themselves very available and useful in your recovery well after you leave,” Rodriguez said. The 34-year-old has even given back to RCA himself. Rodriguez has participated in outpatient programs and spoken to current and former Frontline patients. He said it all goes back to giving people the motivation to continue their treatment by hearing the success stories of others. “That’s really a part of it is coming back into this facility specifically where I started my journey in trying to help and instill some hope and inspiration into another person, especially in this unit,” he said. “I feel like it’s absolutely essential for me to continue on my road to recovery to now give back what was freely given to me.”

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Family, Food and Memories From the Midwest - The New York Times

I was not raised in a family of cooks. My parents grew up in the Midwest, in the second half of the last century, during a period in which a great deal of culinary knowledge was lost. Our signature meals came out of cardboard or cellophane or, most often, some combination of the two. My dad who, for the region, is something of an epicure, loved to “spice up” boxed holiday stuffing by tossing it with lightly sautéed onions and peppers. My mom took many a weekday dinner out of the chest freezer in the basement. My first experience of what I would think of as “good food” — when I was around 10 years old — was a bacon blue cheese burger. The details of time and place are lost to me, but I still remember the euphoria of that first bite. I was transported, caught in a delirious tide of new textures and bright, tangy umami flavors, and I was determined to return. Though I could not tell the difference between cilantro and thyme (all small green things were interchangeable to me) and wasn’t familiar with any stovetop setting other than “high,” I spent many prepubescent hours in the kitchen attempting to recreate recipes from Alton Brown, Ina Garten and Giada De Laurentiis. I loved the way the chefs spoke about unfamiliar places. I loved how they whisked me to a world where it mattered how you cut an onion. My pursuit of culinary knowledge became an escape from the mundane, the provincial, the working class. Tossing a soft-boiled egg and nori into a bowl of rehydrated noodles, I could forget that I’d never had ramen that didn’t come out of a 30-cent packet. Pulling together a budget imitation of savory, ricotta-filled crepes, I could pretend the real thing wasn’t more than an hour outside of town. Cooking was freedom from poverty and suburban boredom. To the degree that it existed, my parents’ culinary snobbery manifested in taking extra care with one Midwestern staple: potatoes. My mom was raised on instant mashed potatoes and loathed them. Her small protest against the product was an overflowing bowl of russet potatoes next to the stove, which I don’t recall ever being empty in more than 18 years of cohabitation with her. And while my dad was happy to serve us frozen pizza, his face would twist with revulsion in the face of dried, flaky bits of tuber. Their disavowal of what was once a family staple instilled in me the realization that sometimes, something better to eat waited on the other side.

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Italian History Club Presents a trip to Italy

Springfield - The Italian History Club is sponsoring a trip to Tuscany Italy, Lake Como, Florence, Milan, Venice and Verona, April 15 through 25, 2024. The trip is nine nights, eight breakfasts, three lunches and seven dinners. Featuring daily tours and tour guide. Bus leaves Springfield to Boston and return, fly to Italy on Lufthansa Airway from Boston to Italy and return. Cost of the trip is $3,950 per person (double), single is an additional $500. Deposit of $1,000, balance due, on Jan. 10. Minimum passengers 36. For further information or reservations, call Giuseppe at 413-262-6562, Regina at 413-785-5168 or Paula at 413-525-6030.

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L Street Brownies take annual Polar Plunge in South Boston - Boston News, Weather, Sports

Hopefully, you have good tread on your tires and a good pair of windshield wipers because they're going to come in handy Monday morning. The storm that rolled in Sunday has kept dumping rain overnight, so you'll likely see some water accumulation on the road during your commute. So far, there hasn't been any severe flooding but puddles and water buildup on the shoulders of the highway and in some low-lying areas. That's going to increase chances of some skidding, hydroplaning and spinouts. Not to mention, under those puddles, there may be potholes. The constant rain and the traffic usually cause road erosion and driving over a pothole could do a number on your car. Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters. You may also see some debris as you drive along some of the more residential parts of the city. Branches and twigs here and there. That might tempt some to want to swerve into another lane and possibly lose control. So, in other words, be on the lookout and take it easy. Give yourself 15 to 20 extra minutes Monday morning because traffic will be slower, especially if there's an accident. In fact, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation reported a crash in Somerville on Interstate 92 southbound at exit 20. Two lanes were closed but have since reopened. In Framingham, a road on Route 9 west, between Temple Street and Interstate 90, was closed because of downed power lines. Also Monday morning, just over 5,000 Massachusetts residents reported that they were left without power, according to National Grid's website. In New Hampshire, over 400 residents lost power because of the storm, reported Eversource. Over in Connecticut, multiple roads throughout the state, including in Hampton and Newtown, were shut down because of flooding and downed trees and wires, according to NBC Connecticut.

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You can see original artifacts from the Boston Tea Party for free; heres how

President Emmanuel Macron of France stood behind a tough immigration law that Parliament passed this week with unwanted support from the extreme right, causing fissures in his governing coalition. Dozens of lawmakers voted against the new law, which also prompted Aurélien Rousseau, his health minister, to resign in protest. Still, Mr. Macron said he considered the law “a good law” in a television interview on Wednesday evening, calling it necessary to deal with the increasing pressure of migrants illegally entering the country. “It is the shield we were missing,” he told “C à Vous,” a national television program. “All the good souls who explain to me that what you are doing is not right — these are all the people who have governed for 40 years,” he added, assailing them for failing to act on issues like immigration and unemployment. “And what made extremist forces rise? That.” No one in the government was irreplaceable, he said, “myself included.” But later, with a steely flair, he added: “I still have three and a half years ahead of me. I have no intention of stopping.”

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Dear Annie: How do I politely tell people my co-worker is flat out wrong?

Dear Annie: I have a co-worker who consistently spreads misinformation in order to get out of doing her job. She often makes up policies that don’t exist to try to trick other departments in our workplace into doing her work (even when that means the work gets done incorrectly by people not trained for the job we do). In the past, I’ve tried printing out policies and coming to her with physical evidence that what she’s saying is not true, but she gets very verbally aggressive, citing her many years of experience, and always has an excuse for why she shouldn’t have to do her fair share of work. Since we work in the same department, it makes my job much more difficult when I have to explain to others what the real policies are and the proper procedures for the work we do. I’m unsure of how to respond when co-workers ask me why they’ve heard differently from what I explain to them in this regard. I don’t want to speak negatively about my co-worker, especially to people from other departments who I hardly know, but I’m not sure how to delicately explain that she was being untruthful. She has a significant amount of seniority, while I’m a relatively new grad with less than two full years of experience, so I doubt she’d face any corrective action if this was brought to HR, as others have made complaints before me, and with her aggressive personality, I know I need to be careful in how I handle this so as not to incur her wrath. Can you suggest a way to graciously explain to co-workers from outside departments why they’ve received incorrect information? — Honest Worker Dear Honest Worker: This is exactly the type of problem that you should bring to HR, especially since you’ve already tried confronting her directly with no luck. It shouldn’t be on you to undo her damage, and HR shouldn’t be deterred by the fact that you’re a recent grad while your co-worker has some seniority at the company. Assuming they take their work seriously, they will be your advocate. Another idea is to consult your direct manager, assuming she is also the manager of your co-worker. Be sure to articulate how her behavior is hindering the company’s productivity as a whole — not just inconveniencing you. Dear Annie: I would caution “Regrets Being Nice,” the person who allowed a homeless man to move into their house, that in many jurisdictions, the friend will have established tenancy under the law. They should consult a lawyer before doing anything else. It’s quite possible that a formal eviction process is required if the friend refuses to leave, even if they paid no rent. — Trying to Help Dear Trying: Thank you for this advice. It’s always wise to consult a professional. Many readers wrote in suggesting that “Regrets Being Nice” seek legal counsel. “How Can I Forgive My Cheating Partner?” is out now! Annie Lane’s second anthology — featuring favorite columns on marriage, infidelity, communication and reconciliation — is available as a paperback and e-book. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

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How Cave Canem Has Nurtured Generations of Black Poets

The poet Cornelius Eady took out his phone the other day and clicked to a black-and-white group photo that was taken 43 summers ago when he was a fellow at Bread Loaf, the famous writers’ retreat held each year in Vermont. Eady is easy to spot — he is the only Black person in the picture. This was not at all unusual for a writers’ retreat in 1980. In fact, it’s not all that unusual at many writers’ retreats 43 years later. But the fact didn’t sit well with him. It was a little over a decade later, when Eady was invited to teach at a different retreat, that he met Toi Derricotte, a fellow teacher. She, too, had often been the only Black poet in the room at such gatherings. When they began talking, they discovered that they both shared the same wish: to create a program specifically for Black poets. “It started as a conversation,” Derricotte said. “We both had a —” “A recognition,” Eady finished. “I thought, ‘My partner in crime has arrived.’”

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A Masterpiece That Inspired Gabriel Garca Mrquez to Write His Own

But at its core, “Pedro Páramo” is a tale of two journeys, or perhaps one journey that unfolds into two. The first is a linear one driven by a Telemachean quest: a man searching for his missing father. The narrator, Juan Preciado, goes to his parents’ hometown after his mother dies, seeking his long-estranged father, Pedro Páramo. He plans to demand reparations. But what he finds is a ghost town. Then he dies. (This is not a spoiler; the story continues after his death as if nothing really happened.) The second journey is Dantesque: a spiraling descent into a kind of underworld. But unlike Dante’s mathematically plotted inferno, with its concentric circles and somewhat navigable geography, Rulfo’s is largely sensory, densely packed with sounds and their endless reverberations. Many Latin American readers know the opening sentence of the novel by heart: “Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo.” From the beginning, we find ourselves in an unstable space-time that we will question and redefine as we move through the novel. For English-language readers, key differences in two translations of the opening line will help bring this ambiguity to light. The 1994 translation, by Margaret Sayers Peden, reads: “I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Páramo, lived there.” The most recent translation, by Douglas J. Weatherford, is: “I came to Comala because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Páramo.” Just as the exchange of “here” for “there” radically changes the story’s spatiality (where the narrator is speaking), the use of “was told” — less removed than “had been told” — shifts its temporality (when the narration happens). Nothing can fall into place in a novel if the author does not have control over its sense of time, be it linear or fractured. In novels of fractured time, the sequence of events must be governed by a logic of its own, one justified by the book’s central questions. Throughout “Pedro Páramo” — in which a central concern is how the world of the living haunts the world of the dead, and not vice versa, as with most ghost stories — time ebbs and flows in a kind of tidal pattern. It is not quite circular, because circles are closed circuits, but the cadence is similar to something cyclical, to the uprush and backwash of water breaking over sand, over and over again. The dead, tormented by lives they can no longer participate in but which their memories replay, over and over again, produce a steady undercurrent of murmurs, laments, mutterings, chatter, whispers, quiet confessions. If where and when we are in “Pedro Páramo” is constantly shifting, then sound is the swift and sinuous vehicle that carries us through it. For a class I taught this fall, I asked my students to find the many sonic markers in the novel. (It was a fun experiment, and we shared the results with the sound designers of a forthcoming “Pedro Páramo” film. They wrote back to say they were inspired by our sound lists and wanted to credit the students.) I was astonished to see how much of the novel is composed of aural details. Still air shattered by doves’ flapping wings. Hummingbirds whirring among jasmine bushes. Laughter. A tap of knuckles on the confessional window. A church clock ringing out the hours, “one after another, one after another, as if time had contracted.” Also sounds we cannot hear, but can almost imagine: “the earth rotating on rusted hinges, the trembling of an ancient world pouring out its darkness.” And of course, the myriad sounds of rain.

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culture

A Masterpiece That Inspired Gabriel Garca Mrquez to Write His Own

But at its core, “Pedro Páramo” is a tale of two journeys, or perhaps one journey that unfolds into two. The first is a linear one driven by a Telemachean quest: a man searching for his missing father. The narrator, Juan Preciado, goes to his parents’ hometown after his mother dies, seeking his long-estranged father, Pedro Páramo. He plans to demand reparations. But what he finds is a ghost town. Then he dies. (This is not a spoiler; the story continues after his death as if nothing really happened.) The second journey is Dantesque: a spiraling descent into a kind of underworld. But unlike Dante’s mathematically plotted inferno, with its concentric circles and somewhat navigable geography, Rulfo’s is largely sensory, densely packed with sounds and their endless reverberations. Many Latin American readers know the opening sentence of the novel by heart: “Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo.” From the beginning, we find ourselves in an unstable space-time that we will question and redefine as we move through the novel. For English-language readers, key differences in two translations of the opening line will help bring this ambiguity to light. The 1994 translation, by Margaret Sayers Peden, reads: “I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Páramo, lived there.” The most recent translation, by Douglas J. Weatherford, is: “I came to Comala because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Páramo.” Just as the exchange of “here” for “there” radically changes the story’s spatiality (where the narrator is speaking), the use of “was told” — less removed than “had been told” — shifts its temporality (when the narration happens). Nothing can fall into place in a novel if the author does not have control over its sense of time, be it linear or fractured. In novels of fractured time, the sequence of events must be governed by a logic of its own, one justified by the book’s central questions. Throughout “Pedro Páramo” — in which a central concern is how the world of the living haunts the world of the dead, and not vice versa, as with most ghost stories — time ebbs and flows in a kind of tidal pattern. It is not quite circular, because circles are closed circuits, but the cadence is similar to something cyclical, to the uprush and backwash of water breaking over sand, over and over again. The dead, tormented by lives they can no longer participate in but which their memories replay, over and over again, produce a steady undercurrent of murmurs, laments, mutterings, chatter, whispers, quiet confessions. If where and when we are in “Pedro Páramo” is constantly shifting, then sound is the swift and sinuous vehicle that carries us through it. For a class I taught this fall, I asked my students to find the many sonic markers in the novel. (It was a fun experiment, and we shared the results with the sound designers of a forthcoming “Pedro Páramo” film. They wrote back to say they were inspired by our sound lists and wanted to credit the students.) I was astonished to see how much of the novel is composed of aural details. Still air shattered by doves’ flapping wings. Hummingbirds whirring among jasmine bushes. Laughter. A tap of knuckles on the confessional window. A church clock ringing out the hours, “one after another, one after another, as if time had contracted.” Also sounds we cannot hear, but can almost imagine: “the earth rotating on rusted hinges, the trembling of an ancient world pouring out its darkness.” And of course, the myriad sounds of rain.

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culture

Your favorite classic Christmas music might have New England ties

There's nothing like a classic Christmas song to get you in the holiday spirit. You probably know many of the time-worn melodies and cheery lyrics by heart, even if you didn't mean to memorize them. But, did you know that some of the most well-known tunes have New England ties? Radio Boston revisits its 2021 conversation with Joe Bennett, a professor and musicologist at Berklee School of Music, about some local Christmas classics that we've come to love over the years.

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New study names 10 most dangerous places to drive in Massachusetts

DEDHAM, Mass. — A new study has found the most dangerous places to drive in Massachusetts, with a Bristol County town taking the top spot. Personal injury lawyers at Jason Stone Injury Lawyers analyzed data MassDOT data from 218 locations in Massachusetts where there have been at least 500 crashes between 2019 and 2023 to determine which areas witnessed the largest percentage of people killed in traffic accidents. “Driving is usually the most convenient way for people to travel, but while we all try to be safe on the roads, accidents can still happen. Taking precautions is vital wherever you are driving, such as ensuring that your car is in full working order and your driving is distraction-free,” Jason Stone Injury Lawyers said in a statement. “And the data shows that fatal crashes aren’t an inevitability – 11 different towns that were included in the study didn’t have a single fatal road accident over the time period that was measured.” A mark of 1.59% of people involved in traffic accidents in Berkley die from their injuries, information discovered in the study showed. Since 2019, 1,007 people have been involved in 562 accidents, 16 of whom suffered fatal injuries, resulting in the highest fatality rate in the state. Next on the list and landing in second place is Sharon with 1.13% of people killed from road crashes. The town has also seen 1,649 crashes, which involved 3,466 people, 39 of whom died as a result. Townsend ranked third, with 1% of people killed in car crashes over a five-year time frame. In the town, there have been 13 deaths from the 1,306 people involved in the 651 crashes. Fourth place is a tie between Freetown and West Boylston, both recording 0.95% of people killed. While the towns have the same percentage of people killed, there are numerous differences. Freetown has seen 1,080 crashes, which is almost double what West Boylston has. Dedham is in fifth place with 0.87% of people killed. The Norfolk County town has seen 1,983 crashes over the last five years, this figure is the largest number of crashes out of the top ten. A total of 4,610 people were involved in those crashes, and 40 of them were killed. In sixth place is Salisbury with 0.77% of people being killed in traffic accidents, based on 22 deaths from 2,869 people in crashes. Westport ranked seventh in terms of the percentage of fatal auto accidents with 0.76% of 3,022 people being killed. In the last five years, there have only been six fatal crashes in the town. Moving down the list at the eighth spot, is Belchertown with 0.73% of people killed. The Hampshire County town has 24.67% of people being injured in various types of crashes. Looking at the ninth place on the ranking, Sutton sits there with 0.72% of people being killed in car crashes. The town has had a total of 413 people injured in all types of traffic accidents. Completing the top 10, 0.71% of people were killed in Newburyport. A coastal community nestled in Essex County and a short drive to Boston, the city has seen 1,156 total crashes involving 2,526 people, and out of that total figure, 18 were killed. 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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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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Which queer holiday song are you?

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts has begun awarding grants to local agencies to set up temporary housing sites for homeless families as officials grapple with finding newly arriving migrants places to stay after hitting a state-imposed limit of 7,500 families in the state’s emergency homeless shelter system. Catholic Charities Boston is the first organization to be awarded a grant to provide temporary rooms to extremely low-income families with children and pregnant individuals, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay announced this week. The grant will pay for a site in the greater Boston area that opened on Tuesday evening and can accommodate up to 27 families, or about 81 people, as they wait to enter the state’s emergency shelter system, officials said. Catholic Charities Boston will provide bedding, meals, staff, and security. The site is available to families eligible for the state’s family shelter system but who could not be immediately placed in a shelter. Democratic Gov. Maura Healey announced the $5 million grant program earlier this month. Sarah Bartley of the United Way said the agency has already received several other grant applications. The grants are meant to support community gathering spaces with restrooms and heat, such as places of worship, community centers, and school buildings, to provide safe space for families to find short-term, congregate shelter, meals, and other basic necessities, she said. The flexible program will remain in place through the winter and spring, officials said. On Monday, the state began letting homeless families stay overnight in the state transportation building in Boston. The space in the office building is large enough to provide overnight shelter for up to 25 families with cots and limited amenities and will only be used in the evening and overnight hours, officials said. The space will be available to families determined eligible for emergency assistance and is expected to operate for about two weeks until additional safety net shelter sites are operational. The spike in demand is being driven in part by migrant families entering the state. About half of the current shelter caseload are new arrivals to Massachusetts, according to the Healey administration. As of last Friday, there were 92 families on the state’s waiting list for emergency shelter.

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Tess Lukey brings Indigenous perspectives to museum spaces

In recognition of Native American Heritage Month in November, MassLive asked readers to identify people who are leaders from the Indigenous community throughout the state, working to make a difference in their own area of interest, be it politics, education, business or the arts. These are people our readers have identified as inspirational, who may be doing good acts for their communities. They are being recognized for their accomplishments, leadership and commitment to inspire change. Tess Lukey is the associate curator of Native American Art at The Trustees.Jenica Morgan-Smith Tess Lukey Age: 30 Community: Lincoln Her story: Lukey said she has been a “museum person” since a child. It was a place where she saw herself as an artist. But it was also a space she thought needed drastic changes. “Seeing a drastic need for change in the places I know and love, I took it upon myself to get further educated and then employed for institutions who were interested in making positive change and impact. In general, I always want to make the world a better place. Museums have the power to do that,” Lukey said. Lukey, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member, has worked for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston and the John Sommers Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has also had fellowships at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Hibben Center for Archaeology Study and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in Albuquerque. Lukey said museums are often plagued by historical inaccuracies and stereotypes and are not welcoming to native communities. As an associate curator of Native American art at The Trustees of Reservations, a non-profit land conservation and historic preservation organization which works to preserve natural and historical places, she is focused on indigenizing museum spaces to not only bring indigenous perspectives but also indigenous voices and ways of being and knowing. In her words: “Just keep going. Try as much as you can to not get lost in exhaustion. Take frequent breaks — both from life and from work. Allow yourself some grace. Stay grounded in your community and your values. Move forward. Keep moving forward. And as much as you can, know that everything happens for a reason. The journey is going to be hard but believe me, the outcome is worth it.” We’re always open to hear about more inspiring people. If you’d like to suggest someone else who should be recognized, please fill out this form.

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A Tuscan Retreat Where Literature is the Primary Value

If the baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte has found a secret to life, it is stories. At the Santa Maddalena writer’s residency at her rambling estate in rural Tuscany, Monti has hosted some of the foremost storytellers of our time — Zadie Smith, Michael Cunningham, Colm Tóibín, Teju Cole, Sally Rooney, Olga Tokarczuk, Michael Ondaatje, Edmund White, and a couple hundred others. While authors appreciate her hushed writing rooms with olive grove vistas, her company is the principal draw. “The only things Beatrice won’t talk about,” Smith said, “are things that are boring.” At 97, Monti is animated and unstoppable. She runs Santa Maddalena as her personal passion project, accepting no applications and choosing writers according to her instincts, in consultation with her network of friends, publishers and other authors. Her taste, developed over a lifetime of nurturing and being nurtured by literature and art, is considered a bellwether, with several fellows going on to win the Nobel, the Pulitzer, the Booker, the Prix Goncourt.

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The New York Apartment Where Kissinger Spent His First Years in America

The Eliot Hotel is one of Boston’s best boutique hotels. Located in the heart of the charming Back Bay neighborhood, The Eliot offers guests the perfect spot to relax and unwind while staying close to all the city attractions you want to enjoy. And the cherry on top? Your four-legged family members are welcome to join you. Keep reading to find out how to have the perfect dog-friendly staycation in Boston this winter. Why you should book a staycation at The Eliot Photograph: Courtesy Eliot Hotel The Eliot offers impeccable service, historic charm, and an award-winning restaurant right on site! The central location means you’re close to some of the best the city has to offer, from shopping on Newbury St to the Museum of Fine Arts there is plenty to do within walking distance. The Eliot may offer historic charm and timeless elegance but the hotel has recently made upgrades and renovations so the rooms are equipped with all the modern comforts you need and want! Bringing your dog to The Eliot Photograph: Courtesy Katie McAleer The Eliot welcomes your four-legged family members! They do not have a size limit so big or small your dog is welcome, but you must bring a crate to crate them if you plan to leave them alone in the room at all during your stay. The Eliot will provide a food and water bowl in the room and some welcome treats for your pup! Conveniently located, there is a dog park right across the street from the hotel or you can walk your dog along Comm Ave. Be sure to let the hotel know when you book that you’ll be bring a dog and ask about their special Puppy Love Package. Dining at The Eliot If you’re looking to have an amazing meal during your staycation but don’t want to leave your pup for too long we have great news, The Eliot has one of the best restaurants in Boston right on site. On the lobby level guests can grab a bite to eat at UNI. Owner and Executive Chef Ken Oringer, winner of the James Beard Award and the Food Channel's Iron Chef Competition, has put together a truly exquisite menu, the sashimi is a must try! Guest of the hotel also have access to a special room service menu for dinner or breakfast or can choose to enjoy a continental breakfast downstairs in the restaurant. Photograph: Courtesy Uni/Melissa Ostrow Uni Spoon A staycation with your dog at The Eliot is the perfect remedy for the winter blues, after all there is plenty to do in the city throughout the winter! Or plan a quick trip out of the city, check out one of our favorite weekend getaways from Boston.

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Oxford University Press has named rizz as its word of the year

Off Beat Oxford University Press has named ‘rizz’ as its word of the year It topped words like “Swiftie” and “situationship." FILE - An Oxford English Dictionary is shown at the headquarters of the Associated Press in New York, Aug. 29, 2010. Oxford University Press has named “rizz″ as its word of the year, highlighting the popularity of a term used by Generation Z to describe someone’s ability to attract or seduce another person. The four finalists were selected by a public vote and the winner was announced on Monday Dec. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File) AP LONDON (AP) — Oxford University Press has named “rizz″ as its word of the year, highlighting the popularity of a term used by Generation Z to describe someone’s ability to attract or seduce another person. It topped “Swiftie” (an enthusiastic fan of Taylor Swift), “situationship” (an informal romantic or sexual relationship), and “prompt” (an instruction given to an artificial intelligence program) in the annual decision by experts at the publisher of the multivolume Oxford English Dictionary. The four finalists were selected by a public vote and the winner was announced on Monday. Rizz is believed to come from the middle of the word charisma, and can be used as a verb, as in to “rizz up,” or chat someone up, the publisher said. Advertisement: “It speaks to how younger generations create spaces — online or in person — where they own and define the language they use,” the publisher said. “From activism to dating and wider culture, as Gen Z comes to have more impact on society, differences in perspectives and lifestyle play out in language, too.”

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Warm weather delays opening for NH Ice Castles; heres the new date

Scientists have detected a poison among the spray of molecules emanating from a small moon of Saturn. That adds to existing intrigue about the possibility of life there. The poison is hydrogen cyanide, a colorless, odorless gas that is deadly to many Earth creatures. But it could have played a key role in chemical reactions that created the ingredients that set the stage for the advent of life. “It’s the starting point for most theories on the origin of life,” said Jonah Peter, a biophysics graduate student at Harvard. “It’s sort of the Swiss Army knife of prebiotic chemistry.” Thus, Mr. Peter was excited when he found hydrogen cyanide at Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn that is about 310 miles across. It has a subsurface ocean that makes it among the most promising places to look for life elsewhere in the solar system.

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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 Globes art critic singles out displays that resonated in 2023

In a culture with an unquenchable urge to trend-hunt and categorize, the calendar might be the most arbitrary measure of all. So, I ’ m taking a pass on writing a year-end best-of list. Instead, let’s call it things that stick. What follows are five experiences still smouldering away in the back of my mind — good, best, neither — months after I first saw them. LESSONS OF THE HOUR, Wadsworth Atheneum The great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass was the most photographed person of his era, and not by coincidence. Douglass, a proto-scholar of image theory, knew that the rapid rise of photography in postbellum America could be a powerful tool to contend with American racism, and that if white Americans were to be moved to hold their Black counterparts as equal, they would first need to see them as such. “Lessons of the Hour” began that story by dramatic and affecting means: Isaac Julien’s stirring “Lessons of the Hour,” 2019, a lush, five-channel video portrayed the intensity and drama of Douglass’s oratory gifts, and his hunger for equality. Then, it moved from tell to show, with scores of 19th-century photo portraits of Black Americans, decked out in their best finery, who had taken Douglass’s exhortations to heart. In the constant deluge of imagery, both moving and still, that we live in today, Douglass appears eerily prescient. He urged Black Americans to take active authorship of how they were perceived — an agency that’s now a second-to-second strategy of a large chunk of the planet (under 40, at least) through the frame of social media, a self-curation machine he could never have conceived. The strategy he imagined in the service of high virtue — what else to call the quest for equality? — has been coopted by every manner of vice. There’s a metaphor here I don’t care to explore more deeply; it’s Wednesday night, I just watched 5 minutes of the Republican debate, and that’s as depressed as I want to get. More than anything, I wish Douglass were here — not to see how badly we’ve gone wrong, but to help us find a way out. Storage jar (detail), 1857. Dave (later recorded as David Drake), American, ca. 1801–1870s. Stony Bluff Manufactory (ca. 1848-67), Old Edgefield District, South Carolina. Collection of Greenville County Museum of Art. Eileen Travell/© Metropolitan Museum of Art/Collection of Greenville County Museum of Art HEAR ME NOW: THE BLACK POTTERS OF OLD EDGEFIELD, SOUTH CAROLINA, Museum of Fine Arts Boston Advertisement David Drake, or Dave the Potter, has become a posthumous art star in recent years for the masterful works he made — outsize ceramic food storage jars that none could match — and the story they embody. Born into enslavement, Drake worked at one of the ceramic factories in antebellum Old Edgefield, South Carolina, where jars were mass-produced and exported all over the South for household use. Drake, who could read and write despite its prohibition among enslaved people, emblazoned his works with aphoristic verse – unique transmissions of the enslaved experience that traveled along with the workaday objects he inscribed. As documents, the jars are remarkable primary-source accounts of a life lived in bondage; as art, they embody the spirit and soul of a man whose cruel circumstances couldn’t snuff his creativity and longing for human connection. “Hear Me Now” stays with me in its clear-eyed intent to craft lineage across generations broken by bondage, and to make that shattered story whole. Alongside Drake, and the countless anonymous makers in the exhibition, were renowned contemporary artists Simone Leigh and Theaster Gates, for whom ceramics, a medium forced on generations of Black makers for profit they would never share, is their chosen medium — one with the imprint of Black American cultural DNA. In many ways, their work is an extension of Drake’s — reclaiming a material and process from the depravity of enslavement, and wholly owning it for themselves. Advertisement A work by Henry Darger from the 2004 movie "In the Realms of the Unreal," directed by Jessica Yu. AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Portland Museum of Art Advertisement This show bothered me, but in the best way. Folk art, a catch-all of misfit otherness — things that make art museums uncomfortable — has been the subject of much reconsideration in recent years, making any show that dares to use the term as fascinating as it is haphazard. “American Perspectives” put those dynamics in high relief, a key art world debate unfolding in real time. It lumped artists like Henry Darger, the Chicago hospital custodian who crafted his epic pictorial saga of the Vivian Girls, heroes of an imagined child slave rebellion, alongside 19th-century handpainted pharmacy signs and carousel horses. Let’s be clear: The product of a deeply examined inner life is not equivalent to workaday craft, however masterful the latter. Herein lies the evolving debate: Darger, who died in 1973, is now collected by the Museum of Modern Art, among other tier-one institutions. So what was he — and others like him — doing in this show? “American Perspectives” put folk art’s work-in-progress definition right in front of our eyes. Advertisement Installation view, "Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village," Colby College Museum of Art. Works shown, left to right: Ernest Blumenschein, "Untitled (Mountain Wood Gatherers)," c. 1926; Virgil Ortiz, "Omtua," 2023; Tony Abeyta, "Citadel," 2021. Stephen Davis Phillips PAINTED: OUR BODIES, HEARTS, AND VILLAGE, Colby College Museum of Art I remain awestruck by this exhibition, not only for the specific conversations it provokes, but for the museum’s willingness to interrogate itself, and to find its own answers lacking. In a field where “landmark” gets tossed around too easily, this is the real deal. Colby had for years in its vaults a collection of paintings by Taos Society of Artists, a group of white painters from the urban east who, in the early part of the 20th century, relocated to New Mexico to cash in on the growing fad for western Native American images. Their pictures were accomplished, but tilt towards uncomfortable clichés of Indigenous people as a primitive, dying race. The past century has affirmed the opposite: Pueblo and Diné communities in the region have both preserved their artistic traditions and produced increasingly vital contemporary art. Artists like Virgil Ortiz and Michael Namingha are among many here to confront the mythmaking of white artists, a century ago, and speak for themselves. Colby could have left the TSA paintings gathering dust in storage. It did the opposite, and invited Indigenous curators to help it reconfigure a clear-eyed re-telling of its own history in the context of the future the museum intends to build. Note: The show continues until July 28. THE EMBRACE, Hank Willis Thomas Advertisement I walked alongside “The Embrace,” by now the city’s most prominent public work of art, from its beginnings; the day it was chosen from a field of five to memorialize Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr. in 2019, I wrote that it was jarring, in the best possible way. We’re used to memorials that ache with overwrought sincerity — figures with hands to hearts, stoic gazes fixed on a faraway horizon. The Embrace’s confounding tangle of arms and hands – an extraction of a moment between the couple when Martin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964— rejects all convention. Instead, it emanates the complexity of mystery and, yes, confrontation. It invites viewers into their own contemplation, rather than spoon-feeding them what to think and feel. Looking back to when it arrived on Boston Common in January, you could have guessed some reactions would shade towards ridicule (a bit by Leslie Jones on The Daily Show, suggesting an intimate act, might have been the apex). And social media, which by its nature divorces an object from its scale, material, and context, reduces real experience to a snippet-sized meme. But for those of us who have been there – who have walked into those arms, who have navigated that knot of emotion, a relic of a tragic, complex time – know the experience itself is irreducible. Being with it, literally, is the only way to understand it, which to me makes all the sense in the world. “The Embrace,” in all its glory, is only and forever for Boston, as it should be. Murray Whyte can be reached at murray.whyte@globe.com. Follow him @TheMurrayWhyte.

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Hanukkah Feels Especially Fraught This Year. It Also Feels Essential to Celebrate. - The New York Times

Apocryphal stories about oil and eight days aside, the true miracle of Hanukkah has always been its adaptability. It’s the most modern of Jewish holidays, reliably shape-shifting to address whatever the most pressing needs or hopes or desires of the community have been in a particular moment. And it’s long had tremendous communal value, especially for those of us who might describe ourselves primarily as secular or cultural Jews. For Hanukkah in 2023, there are cold towns in Canada and wet boroughs in London that are removing menorahs from their city hall greens. Which means that, for Jews, this holiday is an important opportunity. Jewish culture in America can often feel overly fixated on the act of remembrance but it is time, pressingly, for Jewish people to examine our culture in the context of the current moment, and to ask whether what animates the core of our personal Jewishness is nourishing enough, resilient enough, to equip us to withstand both what is happening and what is on the horizon. This is the kind of thing that’s best done together. In the early 20th century, as Eastern European Jews arrived in cities like New York and took up the celebration of Christmas as a way to prove their Americanness, synagogues and Jewish groups made a dedicated push to transform the minor holiday of Hanukkah into a major December happening. After the Holocaust, Hanukkah, which in its most classic iteration commemorates the Maccabean revolt against the Hellenization of Judea in the second century B.C., became more tightly intertwined with the founding of the Jewish state — a way of introducing the diaspora to the idea of a contemporary Israel, and a way for the new nation to mythologize itself. In more recent decades, as some synagogues struggled to fully embrace the reality of interfaith families — a frustrating and self-defeating reluctance, given that 40 percent of American Jews are married to non-Jews — Hanukkah has served as a simple and convenient bonding agent within families and among Jews and non-Jews. As a solstice-timed holiday centered on universal ideas of light-in-darkness, a more anodyne version of Hanukkah arose and took hold. The notion of “Chrismukkah” originated in the 19th century among German and Austrian Jews (the term they used was “Weihnukka,” based on Weihnachten, the German word for Christmas) but Chrismukkah, as a celebration of the blended family, really took flight in America when the phrase was featured in a minor plotline on the TV series “The O.C.” And it’s actually stuck — maybe because Chrismukkah highlights something of the open-ended generosity that’s inherent to Hanukkah. Everyone is allowed in. In Judaism, that’s a rare thing to be able to say. Certainly, in my own life, Hanukkah has been the holiday I’ve relied on as both diversion and balm in tough times. Midst of a divorce? Plan a Hanukkah party for the kids. Recent death of a parent? Hanukkah can be an act of commemoration. If other Jewish holidays are tightly tethered to ancient traditional practice — and to no small amount of spiritual responsibility — Hanukkah can function simply as a celebration of the pleasure of having rituals, even if some of them are of a relatively modern vintage. Hanukkah has long been a potent symbol of resilience, as in the Isaac Bashevis Singer story “The Power of Light,” about the lighting of a menorah in the Warsaw ghetto: “That glimmer of light, surrounded by so many shadows, seemed to say without words: Evil has not yet taken complete dominion. A spark of hope is still left.” The traditional Jewish calendar is already filled with hardship, and its fair share of lugubriousness. Hanukkah’s lightness is its merit. It’s a way to validate Jewish joy.

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Japanese American New Years Food Traditions Transcend Time

Mr. Namba is also fond of eating soba — the more well-known buckwheat version — making special versions with lobster tempura or duck for New Year’s at his Los Angeles restaurants Tsubaki and Ototo. As with many global New Year’s traditions, the dishes have strong symbolic meanings. Ozoni is associated with good health and good fortune, with the mochi signifying longevity. Soba noodles represent breaking ties with the hardships of the previous year and starting anew, Mr. Pursley said, as well as a long life. Perhaps the best example of symbolic Japanese New Year foods is osechi ryori, or a box filled with an assortment of traditional New Year’s dishes, each with a specific meaning. Each year, the chef Niki Nakayama serves a version at her restaurant n/naka in Los Angeles. She includes kuromame, or sweet black soybeans, a wish for good health; datemaki, or a Japanese rolled omelet, that looks like a scroll for the acquisition of knowledge; and kurikinton, a vibrant mash of Japanese sweet potatoes flavored with candied chestnut syrup and topped with the golden candied chestnuts, which represent gold and bring economic fortune.

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Northern lights may be visible in Mass. on Thursday into Friday; here's where

Local News Dog recovering after 20-foot fall down a well in Kingston, New Hampshire Arlo, a 2-year-old German shepherd, is doing well after a stay with the emergency vet. Plaistow Fire Department A dog is recovering after falling about 20 feet down a well in Kingston, New Hampshire, Sunday night, crews said. Kingston Fire and Plaistow Fire Departments both responded around 8 p.m. to rescue a large German shepherd, according to PFD. The lid to the well was displaced by a plow during Sunday’s snowstorm. After unsuccessful rescue attempts, crews ended up lowering a firefighter into the hole to retrieve the dog. Dog owner Cathy Brien-DiNardo told Channel 7 that Arlo, the 2-year-old dog, suffered hypothermia and minor injuries due to his fall. He spent Sunday night at the emergency veterinarian but is now home and doing well. Advertisement: Brien-DiNardo said the rescue into the narrow hole took about 45 minutes while snow was still falling. Crews said the underground rescues can be dangerous as confined spaces could have poisonous gas. “Arlo is home and recovering,” Brien-DiNardo commented on Plaistow Fire’s post about the rescue. She shared a picture of Arlo with bandaged back paws and a heated blanket.

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Wu announces free museum admission for BPS students and families

Twice a month, Boston Public School students and their families will be able to visit multiple museums and attractions without paying a dime. “Starting in February, on the first and second Sundays of each month, BPS students and their families will get free admission at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Science, The Boston Children's Museum, the New England Aquarium, and the Franklin Park Zoo,” said Mayor Michelle Wu in her State of the City address on Tuesday. The announcement follows a trend of increased accessibility at Boston-area institutions. Last year the Harvard Art Museums announced free admission for all visitors year-round, joining other museums with free admission such as Fuller Craft Museum, the McMullen Museum at Boston College and the Mass Art Art Museum. Currently general admission costs a family of four (two adults and two teenagers) $74 at the Museum of Fine Arts, $63 at the Franklin Park Zoo and $136 at the New England Aquarium. Vikki N. Spruill, president and CEO of the New England Aquarium, is proud to partner in this program that she says will help inspire more young people. She wrote to WBUR in an email following the announcement, “We applaud Mayor Wu and her team for creating a program that prioritizes increased accessibility and inclusivity for students and families throughout Boston." "We are thrilled to partner with the city and our colleagues to bring free cultural experiences to BPS students and their families,” wrote Museum of Science president Tim Ritchie in an email. “One of our highest priorities as an institution is creating a learning space that is inclusive, equitable, and accessible for all. The beauty of scientific discovery should not be a privilege, but rather a birthright for every child in the city. We cannot wait to welcome even more BPS families through our doors and to help spark their lifelong love of science.” In her speech, Mayor Wu recounted the role that free museum admission played in her own life. Wu’s immigrant mother often didn’t have enough money to spend on things like museum admission. “But on this day, none of that matters, because itʼs a Tuesday—and on Tuesdays, the big art museum downtown has free admission,” she said in her speech. “So sheʼs there with her little girl, in a little pink stroller, staring up at a painting of a cliff full of wildflowers. And, in this moment, this mom with no money and no words in this language feels like the best mom on earth because she has given her daughter the world for a day.” Mayor Wu has continued to demonstrate a strong tie to the arts. She’s continued to play piano in adulthood and last year she joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a performance at Symphony Hall.

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Businesses, volunteers deliver 223 Thanksgiving meals for families in Westfield

WESTFIELD — Two hundred twenty-three turkeys, each with five pounds of potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green beans, onion rings, cranberry sauce, corn, soup, brownie mix and grocery gift cards were packed and delivered on Monday to Westfield schools for distribution to families needing a little help to prepare their holiday meal. The Thanksgiving food drive, co-chaired by Susan and Ralph Figy and Eileen and Jim Jachym, was boosted by donations and volunteers from local businesses and individuals from the community who sponsored ingredients and gift cards and came together on Friday morning, Nov. 18, to pack the bags in a well-organized assembly line with the help of a crew from Westfield Middle School. Several city councilors also joined the group to put together the meals for delivery to the schools.

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Looking for festive dining? Try these holiday hotspots in Massachusetts

We all know that eating well — and maybe a little too much ― is just as much a part of the holiday season as that late-night drive to find the best seasonal lights or the visit to your local mall Santa. But what are the can’t-miss dining destinations this holiday season? You’ll find them in establishments from Somerville to Burlington, and points in-between. That’s according to Yankee, which recently ran down the Top 10 spots across New England to find the best in festive dining. “‘Tis the season for festive foods: pecan pie for Thanksgiving, Christmas stollen and gingerbread, Hanukkah latkes and rugelach, soul food for Kwanzaa, and tamales for Three Kings Day,” Yankee’s Amy Traverso wrote. “All over New England, cooks and bakers are turning out stellar holiday classics that are worth seeking out.” Start with the Beef Wellington at Mooo in Boston and Burlington, Yankee recommended. The restaurant’s “classic beef Wellington—a pastry-wrapped dome of filet mignon topped with foie gras, spinach, and a mixture of finely chopped mushrooms with herbs and shallots — is a year-round favorite at this luxe steakhouse,” according to Yankee. For the most authentic Christmas vibes, the restaurant’s original location at Boston’s XV Beacon hotel is your destination. After dinner, you can “take a stroll around Beacon Hill to admire the holiday trimmings and (slightly) offset the meal,” according to Yankee. If soul food is more your thing, head to Grace by Nia, also in Boston. “Kwanzaa is a celebration of much more than food, but the dishes that are served during this seven-day holiday are diverse, rich in symbolism, and drawn from the African diaspora,” Yankee’s Traverso wrote. Those dishes can include “jollof rice one night and catfish and mac ‘n’ cheese another. On the final day of Kwanzaa (also New Year’s Day),” Traverso continued. “Nia Grace of the Seaport restaurant and music venue Grace by Nia will serve a brunch menu of soul food classics that includes collard greens (symbolizing good luck), black-eyed peas (wealth), pork (prosperity), and cornbread (gold). And on the side: a generous helping of live tunes,” according to Yankee. But with Hanukkah well under way, you can’t forget that seasonal staple — latkes. And your go-to destination there is Lehrhaus in Somerville. The restaurant is a “unique concept,” according to Yankee, because it’s “a tavern serving modern takes on Jewish foods from across the diaspora, where you can also take classes on everything from the secret history of Jews in punk music to the philosophy of keeping kosher.” The tavern’s “excellent potato and onion latkes topped with herbed labneh or mango-tahini sauce (amba tehina),” should be on your plate, according to Yankee.

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Boston students to get free admission to 6 city cultural sites, Wu says

Starting in February, all students enrolled in Boston Public Schools will gain free admission twice a month to many of the city’s most cherished cultural institutions according to Mayor Michelle Wu — who unveiled the new program in her annual State of the City address on Tuesday evening. In the final moments of her address, Wu said that starting in February, on the first and second Sundays of each month, that all Boston Public Schools students and their families will get free admission to six “treasured” city sites. Those cultural institutions are the Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Science, the Boston Children’s Museum, the New England Aquarium and the Franklin Park Zoo, according to Wu, thanking them for their participation in the program. In a personal anecdote, Wu — the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States — recalled how her mother took her as a small child to “the big art museum downtown” where admissions were free on Tuesdays. Wu grew up in Chicago, Illinois. She said in spite of her Mandarin-speaking parents’ quite modest financial means and challenges with English, her mother was able to feel like “the best mom on Earth because she has given her daughter the world for a day” and how it was a continued source of her mother’s pride that she was able to give these experiences to Wu. Read more: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu pledges to make it easier for homeowners to create accessory housing units Wu said in announcing the program that it was now her mother’s daughter’s turn to help make kids in the city “to feel at home in the places that show them the world,” prompting a round of applause from the audience at MGM Music Hall. Some participating institutions already offer free or discounted admission for youth and other guests on specific days and times or for those who meet certain requirements. On their websites, the ICA and MFA note they are open for free admission on federal holidays such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth and Indigenous Peoples’ Day — though the MFA’s free admission on these days is restricted to Massachusetts residents only. You can watch the mayor’s full 2024 State of the City address below or by clicking here to watch on YouTube.

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How to prevent pipes from freezing in your home when it's cold

A NASA telescope has captured the biggest solar flare in years, which temporarily knocked out radio communication on Earth. The sun spit out the huge flare along with a massive radio burst on Thursday, causing two hours of radio interference in parts of the U.S. and other sunlit parts of the world. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it was the biggest flare since 2017, and the radio burst was extensive, affecting even the higher frequencies. The combination resulted in one of the largest solar radio events ever recorded, Shawn Dahl of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said Friday. Read more: Dartmouth professor captures images of two dying stars colliding Multiple pilots reported communication disruptions, with the impact felt across the country, according to the space weather forecasting center. Scientists are now monitoring this sunspot region and analyzing for a possible outburst of plasma from the sun, also known as a coronal mass ejection, that might be directed at Earth. This could result in a geomagnetic storm, Dahl said, which in turn could disrupt high-frequency radio signals at the higher latitudes and trigger northern lights, or auroras, in the coming days. The eruption occurred in the far northwest section of the sun. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the action in extreme ultraviolet light, recording the powerful surge of energy as a huge, bright flash. Launched in 2010, the spacecraft is in an extremely high orbit around Earth, where it constantly monitors the sun. The sun is nearing the peak of its 11-year or so solar cycle. Maximum sunspot activity is predicted for 2025.

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culture

Who Was the Mysterious Woman Buried Alone at the Pet Cemetery?

Ed Martin III was 14 years old when he began working at his father’s pet cemetery, and in the decades since he has tended to the graves of innumerable dogs, many cats, flocks of birds, a few monkeys, a lion cub, a Bengal tiger and countless other creatures from every corner of the animal kingdom. In all that time, after all those burials, there was only ever one request, a few years ago, that gave him pause. Calling that morning, on Jan. 29, 2020, was Bruce Johnson, a lawyer from New York, who had in his possession the cremated remains of a woman named Patricia Chaarte. Ms. Chaarte had died at her home in Mexico, at the age of 92. In her will, she had requested that her ashes be interred at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, just north of New York City. She had no next of kin. The executor of her estate was not a family member or friend, but merely another lawyer at the firm. There were no further instructions.

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Handels Messiah Teaches Us Something Surprising About Tradition - The New York Times

For these reasons, “Messiah” serves as a kind of test case for how we think about the nature and value of tradition. Does tradition mean attempting to preserve or recover a supposedly purer past? Or does it mean accepting our cultural inheritance as we find it, rough around the edges though it may be? In the case of “Messiah,” at least, the shabbier, less exalted vision of tradition rightly prevails. Many of the most popular recorded versions of “Messiah” emerged along with the rise of stereo in the 1950s. By that time performers and audiences alike accepted that the orchestration of the oratorio would be tinkered with and that the number of singers would be doubled or tripled or multiplied a hundredfold. The default idiom for Handel’s work was romantic, the proper mood regal rather than somber. For my money, the best example of this kind of “Messiah” is a recording made by the British conductor Leopold Stokowski in 1966 with the London Symphony Orchestra. Stokowski was an artist incapable of embarrassment, a textually heedless showman known for his contributions to Disney’s musical “Fantasia” and his wonderfully lush orchestral arrangements of piano works such as Debussy’s “Suite Bergamasque.” His “Messiah,” which features only 16 of the work’s movements, is not a sensitive interpretation. Listening to it with my head three feet away from my ancient Dahlquist speakers is the closest thing I can imagine to finding myself in the position of the shepherds in St. Luke’s Gospel, when “the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.” But Stokowski’s unsubtle “Messiah” is hardly the most radical version, in terms of its departure from Handel’s score, or the most populist. In 1958 Leonard Bernstein dramatically rearranged the structure of “Messiah” and enlisted the Westminster Choir of Lawrenceville, N.J., for an epic faux-Wagnerian performance. In 1959, Eugene Ormandy recorded a version with the singer William Warfield (perhaps best known for his role in the MGM film version of the musical “Show Boat” in 1951) and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a best-selling LP now regarded by music snobs as an embarrassing novelty item. This list of lovable mistreatments of the oratorio could be multiplied infinitely (as my editor found out the hard way). Despite the marginal status of Baroque music among the midcentury classical music establishment, by the 1960s “Messiah” had become one of the most-recorded works in the repertoire.

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97 things to do in Boston this weekend [01

What happened in Sunday’s game between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Chargers? Here’s a rundown of what you should about the 60 minutes of dreary football we watched. FINAL SCORE: Chargers 6 - Patriots 0 - Here’s my recap of Sunday’s game. It rained. The Patriots took the opening kickoff. It kept raining. The Chargers kicked a field goal or two at some point. It kept raining. All the fans went home and sat in a gray, unwavering bleakness as traffic crawled down Route 1 after most of the crowd left early. - As the Chargers ran out the clock in the closing minutes, the stands at Gillette Stadium were 30% full, at best. - The Patriots are bad, sure. We’ve known that for a while. But right now, they’re not even interesting. They look like the least interesting team in football. $200 INSTANT BONUS DRAFTKINGS MASS CLAIM OFFER BET $5, GET $200 BONUS BET FANDUEL MASS CLAIM OFFER BET $50, GET $250 BONUS CAESARS MASS CLAIM OFFER $1,000 FIRST-BET BONUS BETMGM MASS CLAIM OFFER MA only. 21+. Gambling Problem? If you or a loved one is experiencing problems with gambling, please call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org for 24/7 support. LiveChat with a GameSense Advisor at GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234 MA Gambling Helpline. MA only. 21+. Gambling Problem? If you or a loved one is experiencing problems with gambling, please call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org for 24/7 support. LiveChat with a GameSense Advisor at GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234 MA Gambling Helpline. - Who’s the biggest star on the field for the Patriots? It’s a hard question to answer right now. - Heading into Sunday, the answer probably would have been Rhamondre Stevenson. But with Steventon going down with an ankle injury Sunday, New England’s roster is now a quagmire of players that range from “Kinda good” to simply “forgettable.” - You know things are going badly when Ty Montgomery is out there taking handoffs. - It’s little exaggeration when I say that some of Sunday’s most exciting plays came from the punters. The first highlight was Bryce Baringer’s 70-yard boot to flip the field in the first half. Then in the second half, Chargers punter JK Scott aired a kick out of bounds at the 2-yard line. - The Patriots offense took a big hit early on when Stevenson left the game. That left Bailey Zappe to try every which way to get the ball to Ezekiel Elliott and DeVante Parker -- because those were the only players who were generating much of anything on offense. - With Mac Jones benched, Zappe got the start Sunday, which surely answered the prayers of some fans and made others roll their eyes. Not much changed with Zappe running the show. His accuracy was spotty all day in the rain. - Although, I must give Zappe credit for how he moved in the pocket and on scrambles. He did make some nice decisions with his legs. His best play came on a 4th-and-3 scramble where he got a defender to fall for a pump fake, allowing him to scoot by the first-down marker and move the chains. - Part of the reason that the game was so boring was the fact that the Patriots defense actually played pretty well. The unit, which has been solid this year, played one of its better games against a Chargers offense led by Justin Herbert. The Chargers are talented, but New England defense made it an absolute grind to move the ball all day. - The problem is that every time the defense stepped up, the offense laid an egg. Putting in Zappe did little to change the lifeless nature of New England’s passing attack. The lack of protection didn’t help, either. Zappe took some sacks from pretty basic breakdowns in protection Sunday. - Even the rare moments of excitement led to disappointment. That was the case when a 39-yard run from Tyquan Thornton sparked what had the makings of a promising drive. The Patriots were moving the ball, threatening the red zone and then -- boom -- Zappe got sacked on back-to-back plays.

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Attention parents: Trick-or-treaters in Mass. town given alcohol-infused chocolates

WEST BOYLSTON, Mass. — Parents are being urged to check their children’s Halloween candy after alcohol-infused chocolates were given to trick-or-treaters in one Massachusetts town. West Boylston police put out a post warning parents that two trick-or-treaters found candy that contained alcohol. Both parties said they were trick or treating in the Horseshoe Drive neighborhood. The candy given out contains Jose Cuervo and police recommend that parents check their children’s candy. Police are investigating this incident and asking anyone with any information concerning this candy, and from which house it came, to please call the West Boylston Police Department at 774-450-3510. 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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Dear Annie: Put your phone down and watch your kids practice or game

Dear Annie: Recently, I retired from youth sports coaching. I am writing this letter to warn your readers about an alarming trend that I have noticed over the last decade. Namely, parents will attend their kids’ sporting events, but then spend most of the time on their smartphones. This is very different from seeing people glued to their phone screens in an airport or doctor’s waiting room or other places in which they would not normally socialize. I am talking about the people who are parents or guardians at their kids’ practices or games. Their actions tell their kids that they and their activities are not important enough to hold their attention. It’s a bad message. The kids do something great and look to the sidelines for parental approval and get nothing. I’ve even had parents approach me after a game to ask me to describe their child’s goal because they missed it. There is going to be more and more tech. It’s not about the phone, as such. It is about people knowing their role as parents and having the restraint to focus their attention appropriately. Do people own phones or are they owned by them? — Former Youth Coach Dear Former Youth Coach: Your letter brings up an important distinction. Staring at a screen is never that healthy, and there is a time when it is especially harmful — when parents are supposed to be watching and supporting their children. While your physical presence is nice, your attention to the game, and your child, is what matters. If you are just staring at a screen, your kid doesn’t get that reassurance and love they need to do their best. They might wonder why you’re even there or if they are worth your attention. Children watch and mimic everything. If you want to keep your child off of smartphones, put the phone down and be in the moment. Present but absent parents can cause great damage to their children. Dear Annie: I am a survivor of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina. One lesson I learned from that horrific experience is that I had lost a lot of “stuff” that I didn’t need to replace. Many of us accumulate far too many worldly goods. In lieu of exchanging more stuff, my friends now plan outings together and pick up the tab for the celebrant. We have attended jazz concerts, visited museums and watched movies together. We live in New Orleans where there are great restaurants, so we usually include a meal, too. We enjoy each other’s company while having great life experiences. And we don’t accrue more stuff that we have to maintain and store. — Less Stuff, More Fun. Dear Less Stuff: I am sorry for all that you had to endure during and after Hurricane Katrina. It sounds like you were able to take a horrible situation and find a silver lining. The memories and experiences that you create with friends and family are priceless, and you see that. Congratulations on enjoying deeper friendships through fun and joyous experiences. “How Can I Forgive My Cheating Partner?” is out now! Annie Lane’s second anthology — featuring favorite columns on marriage, infidelity, communication and reconciliation — is available as a paperback and e-book. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

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Sluggish: Massachusetts named second-most sleep concerned state in nation, study says

There has been a pretty remarkable parade of intense storm systems this past week, Greg Carbin, the branch chief of forecast operations for the National Weather Service, said on Wednesday. And it isn’t over. Days after severe weather swept from Florida to Maine, another rapidly strengthening system — potentially more intense than the last — will threaten the eastern half of the United States from Friday into Saturday. Starting late last weekend, one storm walloped the Northeast with significant snow, while another hit the Northwest. Less than 48 hours later, that West Coast storm intensified as it moved across the Central U.S., producing widespread wind damage, deadly tornadoes and extensive flooding by the time it moved over the East Coast.

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Mwalim Peters uses storytelling and music to explore Native, Afro-Native experiences

In recognition of Native American Heritage Month in November, MassLive asked readers to identify people who are leaders from the Indigenous community throughout the state, working to make a difference in their own area of interest, be it politics, education, business or the arts. MassLive will publish profiles of these leaders through November. These are people our readers have identified as inspirational, who may be doing good acts for their communities. They are being recognized for their accomplishments, leadership and commitment to inspire change. Mwalim “MJ” Peters comes from a long line of storytellers.Mwalim “MJ” Peters Mwalim “MJ” Peters Age: 55 Community: Cape Cod and the Southcoast His story: Mwalim “MJ” Peters comes from a long line of storytellers. Now, he’s using that to explore the Native and Afro-Native experience through music and theater, he told MassLive. “I come from a line of musicians on my mother’s side and both sides of my family are rich with storytelling and oral history,” he said. He also attended The High School of Music & Art in New York and got his bachelors in music and masters in film from Boston University. He studied theater with New African Company and earned his MFA in writing from Goddard College. But it’s not about the academic training. It’s about the experiences, he said. In his words: “Experiences and practical training will trump an academic preparation every time. The academics are credentials.” We’re always open to hear about more inspiring people. If you’d like to suggest someone else who should be recognized, please fill out this form.

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The Weekender

Credit... Mette Lampcov for The New York Times, Max Whittaker for The New York Times, Mary Inhea Kang for The New York Times

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A Creamy, Melty Potato Casserole Thats Outrageously Easy to Make

One of Sweden’s most delicious exports, Jansson’s temptation, otherwise known as Janssons frestelse, is a creamy potato casserole flavored with melty onions and umami-packed tinned sprats. As to the origin of the Swedish classic, which is often served with schnapps as part of the Julbord (“Christmas table”), there are a few theories. One suggests that it was named after a 1928 Edvin Adolphson film, while an older one says that it was named after the Swedish opera singer Per Adolf Janzon — “not so likely,” according to the Swedish food writer Jens Linder. What we do know, Linder says, is that Jansson’s temptation did not appear on the Christmas table until World War II, establishing itself as a holiday food only in the 1970s. What’s perhaps most tempting about a Jansson’s temptation are the potatoes. They’re cut into long, narrow matchsticks, like French fries, which lets the cream fully envelop their starchy irresistible nooks and crannies. While Linder prefers his taters cut skinny, as they are in restaurant iterations of the dish, his co-author, the television chef Johanna Westman, says she prefers them thick, as in her Grandma Alva’s recipe. The recipe in their holiday cookbook, “The Swedish Christmas Table,” calls for quarter-inch batons. For a dish with so few ingredients — potatoes, onions, tinned fish, breadcrumbs and cream — the possibilities for personalization are infinite. Sprats aren’t for everyone, for instance, and I don’t subscribe to the whole “don’t tell people they’re in there” school of ingredient-hiding in cooking. It’s one way to lose trust in your diners. But here, I couldn’t recommend them more, not least because Swedish tinned sprats, or ansjovis, are nothing like the salty, auburn-copper anchovies we eat in the United States. They’re milder baby herrings that don’t make the casserole taste fishy by any means; they just add a lingering savoriness and salinity without the need for extra salt. The fish’s brine perfumes the cream with warm spices, such as nutmeg and cinnamon, and the sprats themselves melt into oblivion after a long bake. Ordinary anchovies work in a pinch, or you can just leave the fish out altogether, Westman says. Her family’s Christmas lunch includes two versions of Jansson’s temptation (one with sprats, one without) and, of course, schnapps and singing. It stirs something in people. Recently, while making Jansson’s temptation with my mother, Jean, for the first time, I watched her take a single anchovy out of the tin with chopsticks and place it, gingerly, on a spoonful of cold white rice from the rice cooker. After she relished it, she told me about how much her father loved eating tinned fish at the dinner table and how that must be where she inherited her love for them. It’s funny how these stories come out only at the dinner table — in person — which is, I think, why she then said, “I wish you lived in Atlanta.” When I think of the best gifts I’ve received in my life, I can’t think of any physical objects. I think of last year, when I spent the holiday stuck on the road, driving from New York to Atlanta in a rental car with my dog, Quentin, in the back seat, and how I didn’t make it home in time for Christmas. And how much I regretted that. I think of how I came home empty-handed, and how my mother told me it didn’t matter. No one expects anything! We’re not that kind of family! Anyway, she said, there are other kinds of gifts.

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Ask Amy: I think my daughter intentionally smashed her phone do I replace it?

Dear Amy: My teenage daughter recently came to me saying that she needed a new smartphone. I took a look, and it was basically smashed. She said she was at her friend’s house when this happened. I called the friend’s mom and she told me that both girls had deliberately broken their phones in order to get new ones (this was before Christmas, so I guess they were hoping to find a shiny new phone in their stockings). I asked my daughter what had happened and she said, “It just fell onto the driveway.” She didn’t seem too concerned about it. I asked her if she had done this on purpose and she said no. My wife and I can’t quite decide what to do now. She is in favor of getting her a new phone, but I don’t want to reward this behavior. – Broke Dad Dear Dad: Unless you have purchased insurance, replacing this broken phone could be a very expensive proposition (insurance is also expensive, and there is a deductible to replace a broken or lost phone). I do believe that it is something of a safety issue for a teenager to have a phone these days, and because of that, she should have one. However, until you/she are eligible for a free upgrade for the latest model, you can offer to purchase a much less expensive flip phone for her to use until she can afford the phone she wants. (Flip phones are cool! They’re vintage! They’re so very ‘90s!) I think it’s important that your daughter should ultimately pay for the replacement – or negotiate a partial payment with you and her mom. Experiencing the consequences of this incident should inspire her to be much more careful. Dear Amy: “Patricia” and I have known each other for several years. We have always referred to one another as “best friends.” A while back, I found out that she did something horrible to a family member of mine, and I was furious. I didn’t speak to her for several months and started to make plans to confront her about what she had done. Before I was able to confront her, she found out that her boyfriend flirted with me. Yes, he did flirt with me, but I just ignored him and didn’t say anything to her about it. Now Patty blames me for all the emotional turmoil she is going through. This is absurd! I am so sick of her throwing shade at me! Should I confront her about it? – Over It Dear Over It: I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that you and “Patty” are not actually best friends, and perhaps never have been. The reason I can say this is because intimate friends tell one another the truth – even when it is challenging or painful to do so. You state that Patty did a horrible thing to a family member of yours, and yet you ghosted her for months instead of communicating about this incident. On Patty’s side of things, she is blaming you for the fallout from something her boyfriend did. Again – casting blame without pursuing an explanation is not how friends behave and communicate with one another. It seems obvious that at this point, your friendship is broken. Given that so much time has passed and that you have no stated desire to try to repair the relationship, dredging up these episodes might give you two yet another point of conflict. I understand the desire to set the record straight when it comes to your own conduct and whatever untruths are told about you. If you decide to do this, remember that anything you say or write can be dredged up and used against you (or as a way to keep this conflict going) on social media. Therefore, you should make your decision understanding the possible ongoing negative consequences for you. Dear Amy: I’m enjoying the letters about gender-specific toys, especially toy kitchens. I worked in a preschool, and once I asked a boy playing in the kitchen area about the things he’d piled up in the kitchen next to the little sink. He said he was going to play video games – the telephone with its keypad was propping up the frying pan, which was his screen. I asked about the banana perched on top and he said, “I’m charging it.” There are lots of ways to play with a toy kitchen. – Another Amy Dear Amy: I’ll never eat an uncharged banana again. (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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How Your Childs Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life

SPRINGFIELD– V.J. Edgecombe, the top uncommitted college basketball prospect in the country, committed to Baylor at halftime of the Montverde Academy-Prolific Prep game on Sunday night at the HoopHall Classic. Edgecombe is a consensus five-star recruit, ranked fifth in the class of 2024 by ESPN and sixth by 24/7. His final two schools were Baylor and Duke. Edgecombe joins Hillcrest Prep small forward Jason Asemota and Montverde Academy point guard Robert Wright III in Baylor’s 2024 class. A 6-foot-5 Bahamian combo guard with jump-out-of-the-gym athleticism, Edgecombe scored 14 points on 5-of-14 shooting with five rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal to earn player of the game honors in a Long Island Lutheran loss against Christopher Columbus on Saturday afternoon. He plays once more at the HoopHall Classic, against Arizona Compass Prep on Monday at 3 p.m.

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Californias Most Iconic Roadside Attractions

But many of our favorite attractions are far less flashy, and a little more personal. My editor, Kevin Yamamura, a Sacramento native, recalled visiting Casa de Fruta as a child while road-tripping along Highway 152 to visit relatives in Watsonville. He also recommends pulling over at Ikeda’s near Auburn for hamburgers and pie if you’re headed for Tahoe. Two roadside beacons in particular stood out in his memory along I-80 — for the Nut Tree restaurant complex, whose towering sign with three logos was removed in 2015, and for the Milk Farm, which hasn’t been open since the 1980s but whose cow is still jumping over the moon as drivers pass by. My colleague Jill Cowan, a reporter based in Los Angeles, mentioned the elephant seals in San Simeon, the James Dean cutout along Highway 46 in Lost Hills, and the In-N-Out in Kettleman City, a favorite among drivers traveling between the Bay Area and L.A. For me, the highway landmarks that loom largest are those that I’ve seen over and over. When I was a kid, the impossible-to-miss San Onofre nuclear power plant told me we had almost reached San Diego. And on I-5, the grueling Tejon Pass, often called the Grapevine, once signaled that I was well on my way back to college at U.C. Berkeley after a break; nowadays it tells me that I’m on my way back home to San Francisco. Here are some readers’ favorite stops, lightly edited: “A few miles south of Madera, in the median strip of Highway 99, stand a palm and a pine — symbolic of Southern and Northern California and much beloved by all who know what they’re driving by. When Caltrans tried to cut them down, a great outcry put a stop to that. When the pine — actually a cedar — was later blown down in a windstorm, a replacement was planted.” — Susan Weikel Morrison, Fresno

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Tag: Lewiston, Maine mass shootings NBC Boston

The last of the 13 patients that arrived at Central Maine Medical Center after the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine has been released from the hospital. As it has become tradition, the person was released with CMMC employees applauding their exit during their sendoff. The patient now prepares to continue his recovery at home, just before Christmas. “This is an…

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See Billerica couples gloriously over-the-top holiday display

In fact, Ed was still hospitalized when Cindy’s father, James Senior, lost his battle with Alzheimer’s disease at his Pepperell home in February 2022. This past summer, Ed had just returned to work following further foot surgery when the couple’s 36-year-old daughter, Courtnie, died unexpectedly. The date, Aug. 30, was Cindy’s birthday. Their difficulties began in December 2021, when Ed was hospitalized for COVID-19 just weeks after switching on that season’s massive display. During the four-month ordeal, he received last rites twice while on a ventilator battling raging fevers, two bouts of pneumonia, collapsed lungs, complications from diabetic ketoacidosis, and blood clots requiring the amputation of half his right foot. BILLERICA — Given their recent hardships, anyone would understand if Ed and Cindy Lossman decided to take a break from the months-long task of decorating their Billerica home for the holidays in their gloriously over-the-top trademark style. Advertisement Despite the couple’s unabated grief, they never considered dimming the lights on the tradition that has become a local legend. Instead, this year’s presentation is dedicated in memory of Courtnie, whom they call their “angel above.” “I’m not taking Christmas away, on top of everything else,” Cindy insisted. “Not from my grandchildren or from anyone.” For the 29th year, Lights at the Lossmans is shimmering at 26 Biscayne Drive in Billerica through Dec. 31. The spectacle — which began innocently enough with outdoor blow molds of Mickey and Minnie Mouse — now takes four months to organize with endless twinkling lights, light-up Santas, elves, gingerbread men, angels, snowmen, trees, wreaths, snowflakes, candy canes, brightly wrapped presents, various Christmas villages, and garland galore. And that’s just inside. The festive signs and lights at the Lossmans' Christmas display. Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe The winter wonderland continues on the front and side lawns with reindeer pulling Santa’s sled, an army of toy soldiers lining the steps, an animated Ferris wheel, and a scene from “A Christmas Story” depicting a boy with his tongue frozen to a pole. The only understated aspect of the dazzling array is a pair of white wicker seats on the front porch where the Lossmans enjoy watching visitors react with glee or become stunned into silence. Advertisement “I absolutely love the kids, but I also love the adults who act like kids,” said Cindy, noting that a parade of party buses and vans from senior housing communities visit almost nightly. Yet the real magic takes place just outside the display, where a donation box has discreetly united visitors in the true spirit of the holidays for the past decade. At first, however, Cindy said she was hesitant to incorporate even an optional fund-raising component into the free event. “Christmas is supposed to be fun. So many people can hardly afford gifts, and I didn’t want anyone to feel bad or think they had to donate,” she said. But after adding a large quantity of decorations from a Tewksbury family who had concluded their own decorating ritual, unsolicited donations began appearing. “I’d wake up and a pile of canned goods would be on the front steps,” Ed said. “People just assumed we were collecting for the food pantry.” The interior of the Lossmans' home is just as decked out as the outside. Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe The Lossmans improved on the idea, using their annual festivities to raise spirits, funds, and awareness for local residents and causes. Past beneficiaries include Nathan Casella, a Billerica boy fighting Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma; Reece Zink, born with a rare genetic condition; the family of Tim Oliveri, a lifelong Billerica resident who succumbed to pancreatic cancer at age 48; and the Longo family of Chelmsford when Mike, a father of three young children, relapsed into Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Advertisement This year, the Lossmans’ labor of love is dedicated to the Marcus family of Saugus, for whom $42,282 has been raised to date from more than 500 donors toward a $100,000 goal on GoFundMe. After being diagnosed with melanoma in 2016, Larry Marcus endured multiple remissions and recurrences before succumbing to brain cancer on Nov. 27. His wife, Suzanne, is a stay-at-home mom for their 6-year-old son, Cameron, and 3-year-old twin daughters, Charlie and Sky. Suzanne Marcus said she is “speechless” that a couple who learned of her family’s heartbreak through their shared friend, Melissa Geraci of Tewksbury, is demonstrating such uncommon compassion and generosity. “I wish this wasn’t happening and I didn’t need the help, but it’s comforting to know there’s a community behind you and that people really do care,” Marcus said. “I’m humbled and very appreciative. I can’t wait to meet [the Lossmans] and give them the biggest hug of my life.” Geraci, who organized the GoFundMe campaign benefiting the Marcus family, became the beneficiary of last year’s fund-raising efforts at Lights at the Lossmans when Cindy discovered her family’s GoFundMe online. That campaign raised more than $10,200 after Geraci’s paid leave through her teaching job ran out while caring for her twin sons, Matthew and Andrew, who each weighed 2 pounds when born 15 weeks early on Oct. 28, 2022. Advertisement “Because of the GoFundMe and the Lossmans, I was able to focus on my babies with less financial stress,” said Geraci, noting her wish to pay their kindness forward. “The fact that Cindy and Ed have their own tragedies, but are still helping other people, speaks a lot to who they are.” Lauren Connolly and her daughter Paige, 4, viewed one of the many Christmas displays at the Lossmans’ home in Billerica. Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe The Lossmans, who experienced the power of good will firsthand when a friend launched a GoFundMe on their behalf during Ed’s hospitalization, said they are firmly committed to the circle of giving while delighting visitors with continuous improvements. “I’ve still got stuff coming in the mail that you don’t know about, hon,” Cindy told Ed. He looked down and shook his head slowly while telling a visitor, “I don’t look at the checkbook. I don’t want to know.” “Just like I don’t look at the electric bill,” Cindy replied. “I guess we’re in it for the long haul,” Ed said with an exaggerated sigh. “I couldn’t afford the moving trucks.” The Lights at the Lossmans Christmas display also raises funds to help local families in need. Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe For more information about Lights at the Lossmans, including display hours, Santa’s schedule of visits, weather-related cancellations, and photos, visit lightsatthelossmans.com, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Cindy Cantrell may be reached at cindycantrell20@gmail.com.

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7 ways Black joy will show up and show out in 2024

Sign up to get positive Black news stories, words of affirmation and weekly curated playlists delivered to your inbox twice a week: Enter your email to subscribe to Black Joy. When I first started writing as a preteen, I had a goal to write my first novel by 30. With fantasy as my genre of choice, I awed at how authors used words to transcend time and space. I wanted to capture that magic somehow and take people on journeys far beyond our galaxy. Funny how the universe works. I’m 31 now and while I haven’t authored a book, almost a decade in journalism has me feeling like I’ve written an anthology on the trials and triumphs of the human experience. It’s an interesting space where I get to analyze what’s happening and foresee what’s to come. In that spirit, we see a lot of Black celebrations on the horizon in 2024. To be clear, Black joy isn’t a trend like you see on social media. It’s a birthright – an everlasting energy we tap into whenever we feel the weight of oppression. This is a legacy passed down by our ancestors. We’re nurturing it for our descendants. With that being said, here are the ways I foresee us adding to the legacy of Black Joy this year. Time to get lit and be loud with it We stayed booked and busy this year. Naw, I mean literally when it comes to our literacy. Our audience didn’t just give flowers, but whole meadows to Black-women owned bookstores on our Instagram back in December. This energy is needed considering how hard some politicians and their followers were coming for our history and storytelling in 2023 with book bans and school curriculum changes (side-eyes Florida), then have the caucasity to try to rewrite the narrative so it makes white people more comfortable. In typical Black fashion, we refuse to let that happen. So let’s erect more radical little libraries in our neighborhoods. I’m seeing more book clubs and swaps centered on Black storytelling. Bring on the community teach-ins that echo with the same impact as the Freedom Schools in Mississippi. May the nonprofits dedicated to teaching our children how to read be blessed with financial abundance. We come from a long line of Black literary geniuses who’ve woven our identity and heritage into their storytelling. Our stories have not been written in vain. Resistance is joy I’ve never been prouder to be an Alabamaian than on Aug. 5 – the date of the infamous Riverfront Brawl in Montgomery, Ala. When white platoon boat owners attacked the Black co-captain of a riverboat, Black crew members and witnesses of the assault leapt and swam into action to protect one of their own. The memes and hilarious commentary entertained us for days. But I was more pleased with the Alabamaians who added context to what that moment meant for a city where enslavement ships undocked human cargo on that same riverfront. Zoom out from that viral moment and you’ll see how the present pulses with the Black power of the past. When calls for reparations by those whose labor set the foundation of this country and others goes unheard, then rage becomes the orchestrator of justice. Enslaved Africans overthrew a French regime to secure Haiti’s independence on Jan. 1, 1804. I’ve witnessed how people leaned into a restorative form of resistance in 2023. Hundreds of Black and brown queer dancers brought the ballroom scene to the same Brooklyn gas station where Black gay dancer and choreographer O’shae Sibley was stabbed to death in July. Sibley’s murder spotlighted the increasing violence against Black transgender and gay people, but mourners used voguing to celebrate Sibley’s life and the liviness of Black queer culture. The Black skater community initiated the same game plan last January by hosting vigils and roll outs in an effort to reclaim the joy of Tyre Nichols after he was murdered by Memphis Police. We are recognizing loss by amplifying the way we live. Black resistance extends beyond the boundaries of our own nation, especially as the dehumanization and genocide continues in Gaza, Congo and Sudan. There’s a long history of Palestinians and Black Americans working together as siblings against similar oppressions. Boycotts have been issued against companies profiting from the violence. So, if we aren’t drinking Starbucks, what local Black-owned coffee shops can we support? If we aren’t nibbling on McDonalds, is there a Black-owned burger joint that’s been waiting on our coins? Divesting from systems sustaining oppression gives us the opportunity to invest in spaces and places that will nurture and empower our communities. We have the power to create a new reality that will sustain us and that comes from the powerhouse of resistance, according to Black Joy social media producer and archivist MacKenzie River Foy. “Joy is the natural byproduct of claiming your power and knowing your worth,” Foy said. “When we refuse premature death for life, exploitation for cooperation, domination for care - when we dare to say that we deserve better than this - joy follows. And it’s infectious.” America’s mixtape if Black AF Blues. R&B. Gospel. Rock and roll. No matter what music genre you fancy, I can assure you the roots of the sound were planted by Black artists who didn’t get the honors they deserved until long after their deaths. So when I see Black creatives like Andre 3000 taking full ownership of his artistic journey by releasing an album that was absent of his iconic rap bars but showcased his flute and instrumental abilities, I was here for it. It also made me curious. If Black people are the inventors of America’s soundtrack then how do we continue to experiment with music? I see more artists following Andre 3k’s footsteps. But I also see us reclaiming space in genres that once kicked us out – but in a way that doesn’t sacrifice our Black identities. Black artists in the country music space have been trickling into my FYP lately. Alaskan Reyna Roberts made sure to explore the full spectrum of her personality through music with her debut album “Bad Girl Bible Vol. I” last year. And she has created quite the success for herself in Nashville. Virginia native Shaboozey has created an anthem of hope for many with his latest single “Let It Burn.” He’s been Rubik’s cubing different genres to make his own sound in the country space for years. The Black alternative rock space is giving the same energy. Give me Baby Storme performing “This City Is A Graveyard” at the Grammys! Now, this isn’t the first time we fuse different sounds to create new genres, but I’m excited to see how we shake up the airwaves this year. The ancestors are with us A pattern that became clear to the Black Joy team is that y’all love connecting with your aunties, uncs, big mamas in the afterlife! We’ve hosted a few virtual events educating our community about how we can tap into the superpowers of our lineage. Those events sold out quickly - even when we offered extra tickets on Eventbrite. The popularity speaks to our communities desire to connect friends and fam who have entered into the next life. This momentum won’t die down in 2024 as our community continues to curate spiritual practices on our own terms. Those of us who grew up going to church every Sunday, Wednesday, New Years, you name it, may have found love and community in these spaces. Unfortunately, the church has also been identified as a perpetrator of trauma for a lot of us as those with ill-intentions spew criticism and control from the pulpit. This has pushed people out of the church and onto a journey of individualizing their own spiritual experiences – including learning about our ancestors who work things in our favor alongside our higher power. It’s comforting to know that when we interview for that new job, when we leave that toxic relationship or we are celebrating a new chapter of our lives, that we are not entering these rooms and situations alone. Learning about our ancestors can also help us navigate our own lives. We may learn how our grandmother found peace through gardening and start practicing it ourselves. Our auntie who manifested abundance using orange peels may have given us the literal recipe for success. Danielle Buckingham, a Black Joy reporter and co-founder of the Hoodoo Plant Mamas Podcast, said learning about our ancestors is essential to our well-being. “Celebrating our ancestors is also celebrating the most beautiful parts of ourselves. All that we are is because of them. So, honoring them is a self-love practice,” Buckingham said. Balancing self-care with community care In her book “All About Love,” the late Black feminist and poet bell hooks writes, “I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community.” To be clear, this isn’t a knock on our journeys of learning how to put ourselves first. Black people – especially Black women – have been known for being the mules and pillars of our communities. The burnout is real and we need space to nurture our emotional, spiritual and mental health. At the same time, the balance of self-care and community care is an important human need. Young adults are struggling with loneliness, according to a 2021 study by Cigna Healthcare. Even in the self-love posts I see on social media, people are looking for solidarity in the struggle in the comment section. What’s also caught my eye is how people are tapping into their interests and hobbies to find a village, whether that be through Double Dutch, traveling or even sowing together. It’s important that these spaces for us and by us to avoid code switching and microaggressions. I see these connections deepening in 2024. Now, this doesn’t mean we ditch effort to take care of ourselves. We can create a community without being codependent. But I think it is important to heal the isolation the pandemic and the digital age forces us into. So step out with your homegirls, heal with your homeboys, or revel in a celebration of Black queerness. When it feels like the world has forgotten about us, know we got us! A renaissance of the imagination Microaggressions and discrimination have always been threats to the expression of our Blackness. But something I have learned while writing stories for our community is that the imagination is the genesis of liberation. In order to obtain freedom, we have to envision what that looks like for us. This is where Afrofuturism enters the chat. This creative expression empowers reimagines our past, empowers our presents and sets our future by using elements of science fiction and fantasy. We witnessed a lot of this as we stepped out in our glittery and extravagant outfits for Beyoncé's renaissance tour. Halle Bailey’s performance as Ariel gave us the ability to imagine ourselves as mermaids. Black Fae Day, which pushes for positive Black representation in the fantasy space, increased its popularity with a feature in Allure. This abundance will overflow into 2024, but in a more localized and intimate way. With the Tony-award winning musical “The Wiz” still on tour and heading to Broadway in late-March, the hype won’t die down at all. The hangouts may not lead to large crowds, but it’s giving Afrofuturistic family cookouts, weddings and birthday parties. We’ll also be thinking about how we can personally use Afrofuturism to embolden our own past, present and futures. Nurturing our inner child – and our descendants, too! One thing about Millennial and Gen-Z folks, we love breaking intergenerational curses. One way we are addressing our traumas is by breaking away from hustle culture and pausing to observe our inner worlds. That includes connecting with our inner child either through some form of play or even journaling. When we give our inner child space to express themselves, we discover the wants and needs that went unmet during our upbringing. So grab the coloring books, dolls, video games or however else you had fun as a kid. When we indulge in these moments, we learn to become the caregiver we needed in our childhoods. Engaging in this process will not just benefit us. When we reparent ourselves, we also become better parents for our children. We are the new adults and we practice conscious parenting in our households. We don’t engage in verbal assaults or spankings to get our children to do what we want them to do. There are other more respectful means to teach loving accountability that doesn’t lead to the suppression of emotions. We don’t force our children to hug or kiss family members as a sign of respect. We teach them how to speak up and uphold their boundaries so they can learn to respect themselves. When parents learn how to communicate and trust their children, we create environments of liberation within our households — something we cannot promise them in the outside world. But one thing about it, the days of teaching our children respectability politics are long gone cause our kids are gonna know how to express their authentic Black selves without apologies. I’m excited to see how Black parents continue to create new healing cycles in their lineages! Thanks for peeping into the future of Black joy with us. We’re excited to see how your own joy adds to this legacy.

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These Mass. towns put on the best Christmas celebrations in New England, according to Yankee

It’s officially the holiday season here in New England, which means it’s also Christmas festival season. And the six-state region, replete with picture-postcard perfect small towns that soon, hopefully, will be covered in seasonally appropriate snow, puts on no shortage of can’t-miss holiday observances. But which holiday festival to hit first in the 22 days that remain to you before Christmas Eve? Not to worry, the folks at Yankee magazine have you covered. The regional stalwart has put together its list of the 10 best Christmas celebrations across New England in 2023. The Bay State takes three spots Yankee’s countdown. Here they are: Main Street at Christmas, Stockbridge, Mass. This community, nestled in the heart of the Berkshires, and famed for its vigorous arts and culture scene, earlier made a list of the coolest small towns in the nation. Now it can add best Christmas festival to its list of accolades. Artist Norman Rockwell “made Stockbridge famous in his depiction of the town’s Main Street at Christmas, and the town pays tribute to the beloved painter each year in a weekend-long celebration of vintage holiday cheer,” according to Yankee. The celebration, which takes place this weekend, includes holiday house tours, caroling, horse-drawn rides, a visit with Santa, and enough concerts make to appease even the most enthusiastic caroler. And make sure you don’t miss the “the Sunday afternoon re-creation of Rockwell’s painting, complete with period automobiles,” Yankee noted. Nantucket Noel and Christmas Stroll, Nantucket, Mass. This month-long celebration, which kicked off on Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 31, starts with Santa’s arrival on a U.S. Coast Guard vessel. It also includes craft shows, a holiday house tour, and the “Festival of Lights” at the Nantucket Whaling Museum, according to Yankee. The kids also will love the “Magical Talking Tree.” Christmas in the City, Boston, Mass. “Whether it’s a day of holiday shopping on Boston’s city sidewalks, admiring the tree and musical light show at Faneuil Hall, treating yourself to a fancy dinner and performance of The Nutcracker or the Holiday Pops, skating on the Frog Pond, or even sipping a hot chocolate while cruising the city via trolley tour, Boston offers just about everything the urban holiday spirit desires,” according to Yankee. Add in a stop to Snowport in the Seaport neighborhood, and your holiday celebrations in Beantown will be complete.

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Ski areas in Western Mass. open for night skiing

Now that the cold weather is returning, night skiing is getting in full swing with most Western Massachusetts mountains open. Berkshire East, in Charlemont, announced that its first day of night skiing is today. For the rest of the season, it will be open from 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday nights and 4 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The remaining ski areas opened Christmas week for night skiing. Otis Ridge will operate from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; Jiminy Peak, in Hancock, operates from 3 to 10 p.m. daily; and Catamount, in Egremont, opened on Dec. 27 and operates 3 to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and 3 to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Wachusett Mountain, in Princeton, also is open for night skiing daily until 9:30 p.m.

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700 Paintings, 45 Galleries: A Guide to the Mets New European Wing

Let the light in. Five years after the Metropolitan Museum of Art set off on a major renovation of its galleries for European painting, the super-prime real estate at the top of its grand staircase is open again. Up in the attic, the architects Beyer Blinder Belle have replaced 30,000 square feet of skylights for the first time since the Truman administration. Down in the galleries, the Met’s designers have widened the rooms, rearranged the sightlines, shellacked the walls purple and blue. The curators have reassembled the whole painting collection for the first time since 2018, shuffled across 45 new galleries and bathed in beautifully tempered light. The work was done in two phases, so visitors got a taste of the even, shadowless lighting when the Met presented an abbreviated showcase in a fraction of these galleries in 2020. (When it comes to light, this New Amsterdam institution definitely leans more Dutch than Italian.) Turns out, the new efforts at illumination are not only above your head. For more than a century, the Met had organized these paintings by national school, with all the Italian pictures on one side, all the Dutch ones on the other. Come now, and you’ll encounter the whole continent’s art along a single chronological pathway, starting from the early Renaissance in central Italy and ending about 500 years later in France and Spain. This new display wanders back and forth across the Alps, zigzags off-piste, and in a few places jumps into the modern age. A Bacon, a Beckmann and a Kerry James Marshall are hiding in here. Duccio’s break-the-bank Madonna and Child, painted in Tuscany around 1300, now shares a case with Ingres’s painting of the same subject from 1852. You’ll see new acquisitions, not least by women of the 17th and 18th centuries, and freshly cleaned favorites, above all Rembrandt’s “Aristotle With a Bust of Homer,” gleaming through melancholy.

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Westfield Police fundraiser aids family of dispatcher who lost sister, home in fire

A man was stabbed in the parking lot of Kowloon Restaurant in Saugus, Massachusetts, on Saturday night, less than two weeks after a brawl there on Thanksgiving eve. A spokesperson for Saugus police tells NBC10 Boston that the stabbing occurred just after 9 p.m. outside the iconic restaurant. The victim was taken to a local hospital, the spokesperson said. There was no immediate word on his condition. Police are on scene actively investigating what happened. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. No other information was immediately available, including if any arrests have been made. Saturday's stabbing comes on the heels of four people being charged for a fight that erupted there on Nov. 22. A fight erupted the night before Thanksgiving at the iconic Saugus restaurant. This breaking news story will be updated as we get more details

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What Manet and Degas Taught Me About Friendship - The New York Times

Near the end of the “Manet/Degas” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a small drawing by Edgar Degas of a bearish man with a beard. At first glance, you might think the man in the drawing is Edouard Manet, but in fact he’s an author and critic named Edmond Duranty. Nine years before this drawing was created, Duranty wrote something critical of Manet, in response to which Manet, encountering Duranty in a cafe, slapped him. Duranty demanded that Manet apologize. Manet refused. Duranty challenged Manet to a duel. The duel, by sword, took place three days later. Manet was unscathed; I guess you could say he won. Duranty, the man in the Degas drawing, “received a wound in his upper chest,” as the museum text accompanying the drawing states matter-of-factly. I stared incredulously at the text’s last line: “Surprisingly, the two men remained friends after the incident.” By the time I really noticed the Duranty drawing, I was on my sixth or seventh visit to “Manet/Degas,” which is closing today. I’d been dipping in and out of it ever since it opened in late September, arriving at odd hours and loitering with intent. The show for me offered a fascinating narrative of a friendship, and in every gallery there lay coded clues and submerged hints about the intense feelings that the two painters had for, and about, each other. The fact that Degas had done a drawing of a man whom Manet wounded in the chest made me feel that Manet was part of the story Degas was telling. It’s a story both amazing and faintly familiar to anyone who’s read Greek tragedy, the Bible or Shakespeare, or watched the evening news. As grandiose as it sounds, it also felt familiar from my own experience. I recognized in the story the excitement of adjacency that comes with certain friendships that border on rivalry — when you have a friend who inspires feelings in you, some admiring, others confusing or even unpleasant, even hateful, and all of them as intense as love. It’s a love that can turn readily to rage but can also be rocket fuel to keep you going creatively, out of both a need for your friend’s approval and a fear that, with his accomplishments, that friend will leave you behind. Rivalry and affection become so intertwined as to become indistinguishable. When you add ambition to the mix, it creates a complexity that ultimately can make these friendships deeper and more valuable, the most treasured friendships of all, especially after they are lost. Early in the Met exhibit, you encounter a pair of engravings, accompanied by text that details the meet-cute story of Degas and Manet’s relationship. They met at the Louvre, while gazing at a Velázquez. Degas was drawing directly onto the waxy surface of a copper plate without having first made a preparatory drawing, a style Manet found unorthodox. Manet approached him and paid him a compliment for his audacity.

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Ask Amy: I think my daughter intentionally smashed her phone do I replace it?

A prosecutor, Michael Perez, said in his opening statement that Mr. Majors attacked Ms. Jabbari during a ride home in the early hours of March 25 after she saw on his phone a text from another woman. He slapped her face and grabbed her hand violently, Mr. Perez said, adding that the driver would testify that after she got out of the car, Mr. Majors threw her “like a football” back inside. Throughout their relationship, Mr. Majors had shown a need to maintain control, Mr. Perez told the jurors, and in March, he had shown “no hesitation” in using physical force against Ms. Jabbari. The altercation resulted in a fracture to Ms. Jabbari’s middle finger on her right hand, as well as pain and swelling in her arm and right ear, Mr. Perez said. Mr. Perez cast the assault as the natural finale of a relationship that became abusive shortly after it began, two years before the assault. He said that Mr. Majors and Ms. Jabbari met on the set of a Marvel film in 2021, and that they experienced a short-lived “honeymoon phase.” “Just months into the relationship, the evidence will show that the defendant’s true self emerged,” Mr. Perez said, telling jurors that Mr. Majors would yell at Ms. Jabbari and during one argument had thrown household items at the wall, shattering glass. Mr. Majors, wearing a dark suit with a gilded Bible and a large binder on the table before him, spent much of Mr. Perez’s argument facing the front of the courtroom, his face blank. A jury of three men and three women listened impassively. (Misdemeanor trials are typically heard by six jurors, rather than 12.)

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A New Place to Learn Civics: The Workplace

A peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. That was the wish behind a post that Simge Krüger made on LinkedIn in March. In response, people began posting their wishes that her husband, father and brother be killed in combat. Seeing that she lived in Germany, they called her a Nazi. “I was just talking about peace and I’m suddenly a Nazi,” Ms. Krüger, a Turkish citizen who lives in Hamburg, said in an interview. Weeks later, sitting in a workshop led by a pro-democracy organization, she came to understand what happened in that dizzying moment. The insults had nothing to do with her ethnic background or political leanings. The people targeting her comment were trying to whip up emotion and further polarize a world torn over issues like Russia’s war in Ukraine, gender identity and climate change.

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Japanese American New Years Food Traditions Transcend Time

Mr. Namba is also fond of eating soba — the more well-known buckwheat version — making special versions with lobster tempura or duck for New Year’s at his Los Angeles restaurants Tsubaki and Ototo. As with many global New Year’s traditions, the dishes have strong symbolic meanings. Ozoni is associated with good health and good fortune, with the mochi signifying longevity. Soba noodles represent breaking ties with the hardships of the previous year and starting anew, Mr. Pursley said, as well as a long life. Perhaps the best example of symbolic Japanese New Year foods is osechi ryori, or a box filled with an assortment of traditional New Year’s dishes, each with a specific meaning. Each year, the chef Niki Nakayama serves a version at her restaurant n/naka in Los Angeles. She includes kuromame, or sweet black soybeans, a wish for good health; datemaki, or a Japanese rolled omelet, that looks like a scroll for the acquisition of knowledge; and kurikinton, a vibrant mash of Japanese sweet potatoes flavored with candied chestnut syrup and topped with the golden candied chestnuts, which represent gold and bring economic fortune.

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Photos: Boston woman stops to rescue kitten while running Chicago Marathon

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An urban vibe: These are the 10 best suburbs in Massachusetts, ranked

Looking for that urban vibe, but without the big-city prices, traffic and headaches that come with city life? Look no further. A new rankings list by the website StorageCafe runs down the 10 best suburbs that offer the best of city life, with the ease and proximity of suburbs. “One of the best things about Massachusetts is that moving to the suburbs doesn’t have to mean giving up on urban comfort,” StorageCafe’s Maria Gatea wrote. “You just need to know where to look. Some select, city-like suburbs in Massachusetts feature amenities and services comparable to those we can enjoy in a big city.” To reach those conclusions, StorageCafe analyzed 40 of the Bay State’s smaller cities and towns ― those with populations ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 people. Analysts considered such criteria as housing diversity and affordability, demographics, the business environment, health, education, public safety and transportation. The bottom line? “Burlington, Newton, and Wakefield emerge as the best suburbs in Massachusetts, skillfully combining the charm of suburbia with the convenience of city life.” “Somerville and Brookline are leading in house diversity, registering the highest share of apartments in their local housing stock,” and “Wilmington, Lynnfield and Dedham are top rated for the quality of their education,” according to the StorageCafe rankings. Burlington, in Middlesex County, tops the list because “this remarkable suburb manages to hold on to its historic charms while also stepping decisively into the 21st century,” Gates wrote. The community’s “business-related infrastructure is the best among the suburbs analyzed, with 50 businesses registered per 1,000 residents, as well as ample office and coworking space available. Looking at the residential front, there is construction activity, with almost eight building permits per 1,000 residents in 2022, and some housing diversity as well — about 28% of the housing units are apartments,” according to the website. Here’s a look at the rest of the communities: Newton: Ranked best for its health, transportation, business environment. Wakefield: Ranked best for its residential, health and education environment. Waltham: Ranked best for its business, transportation, and health environment. Woburn: Ranked best for its business, transportation, and health environment. Dedham: Ranked best for its amenities, education, and business environment. Brookline: Ranked best for its residential, transportation, and education environment. Norwood: Ranked best for its business, amenities and its population. Hudson: Ranked best for its education, health, and safety environments. Lynnfield: Ranked best for its education, residential, and business environments. “The best suburbs in Massachusetts for those who want to hold on to city-like living are all part of the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metropolitan area—hardly surprising considering that the huge metro area encompasses almost 5 million of the state’s 7 million residents,” Gates wrote.

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I went out in the snow to get the new Dunkin iced coffees so you dont have to

I don’t recommend driving out in the snow — unless you have to. I especially don’t recommend getting the recently returned Pink Velvet Macchiato from Dunkin’ — unless you want to be even more miserable. But the new White Hazelnut Bark Iced Coffee? That’s actually worth making the half-hearted effort to brush off your car and head to the nearest Dunkin’ drive-thru in sweatpants. New Dunkin’ 2024 coffee flavors | Review Like many people working from home, I was sitting at my desk at around 10 a.m. thinking, “Man, I’m starting to drag. I should get a coffee.” I looked outside and saw a fluffy blanket of snow covering the ground. Like a proper Massachusetts native, I thought, “Yeah, let’s go get an iced coffee from Dunkin.’” It was the perfect opportunity. Dunkin’ recently dropped this year’s new coffee flavor: White Hazelnut Bark. They also brought back that weird “Pink Velvet” flavor that debuted in early 2020. So like many grumpy, under-caffeinated professionals today, I braved the cold, dug myself out, thought about brushing out my neighbor’s car (but didn’t actually do it) and journeyed forth. I followed the beige-gray slush channels carved into the snow by the brave Amazon vans and mid-ranged crossovers that came before me to venture out to one of the four Dunkin’ locations within a 1.5-mile radius. So what do they taste like? My order was one “White Hazelnut Bark Iced Coffee” and one “Iced Pink Velvet Macchiato.” Here’s what I received: White Hazelnut Bark Iced Coffee This is one of the more balanced, delightful flavored coffees Dunkin’ has come out with. It’s got that buttery, malleable sweetness that you get from white chocolate along with that nuttiness of the hazelnut. It’s a nice, brighter version of the usual Nutella-adjacent hazelnut flavor you get in a lot of things. There’s a clear goal and direction with this flavor. The same cannot be said about its counterpart. Pink Velvet Macchiato, Iced This drink is made with a layering effect that looks cool when you get it. But it also means you have to mix it up yourself. Even after mixing it, the drink was still a bit imbalanced. The top still tastes like coffee, which is nice for me. The bottom half was not so nice. I haven’t been so disappointed about an ending since I finished “Game of Thrones.” Bran Stark actually does have a better story than something: this coffee. What is pink velvet? I’m still not sure. I was expecting something between pink lemonade and red velvet. I got something I’d describe as “brown car exhaust.” It’s sweet, but also has these strong clouds of murkiness that blot out that brightness. When you first taste it, you get this weird almost metallic flavor that’s somehow overly sweet and bitter at the same time. If you keep trying it, that harsh cloud begins to fade. But even then, there’s not much to be found. This coffee drink is trying to pull off a really complicated concept and has really nothing to attach it to. Any ambitions it has with the flavor are overpowered by the coffee and cream. It’s like a gymnast trying to pull off an incredibly intricate floor routine — only for a Bruins fan in an old Milan Lucic jersey to throw one of those big yoga balls at them mid-backflip. I don’t get chocolate. I don’t get cream cheese. I’m not sure what this is supposed to be. Somehow, this makes less sense than the Dunkin’ Sugarplum Macchiato — and I’ve definitely forgotten what a sugarplum actually is. So are they any good? The White Hazelnut Bark? Yes. The Pink Velvet Macchiato? Absolutely not. The final word The official press release from Dunkin’ claims that the Pink Velvet Macchiato includes “bold espresso, red velvet cake flavor and notes of cream cheese frosting.” I did not get that. To be fair, you can just say anything about what a beverage tastes like. If winemakers can be out here saying their $15 bottle has a “tertiary aroma of cheese rind” and “flavor notes of cigar box,” then Dunkin’ can say their pastel flavor goop tastes like whatever they want. --- “I ate it so you don’t have to” is a regular food column looking at off-beat eats, both good and bad. It runs every other Thursday-ish at noon-ish, (unless it’s snowing and Nick really wants a coffee). You can send any praise/food suggestions to nomalley@masslive.com. Please send all criticisms and complaints about ridiculous Dunkin’ coffee flavorings to mvautour@masslive.com. You can check out the rest of the series here.

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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: Its exhausting seeing friends with kids on their (far-away) terms

Dear Amy: I am a woman in my late 30s. My husband and I don’t have children. Almost everyone we know does. We have demanding jobs with little time during the week to unwind. I love my friends’ kids, but I’m both exhausted from maintaining those friendships and deeply unsatisfied with their quality. On the weekends, in a search for some connection and rejuvenation, I find myself driving hours or taking expensive trips to other cities to visit friends, essentially expending a ton of effort for an hour or two with a friend, during which we have a few minutes of an adult conversation. These friends don’t have any capacity to travel to me because they have young kids, and while I don’t expect that, I’m feeling sad and neglected. I’ve stopped making the effort as much as I used to – I need time to recharge, and these visits are really depleting. We have tried very hard to make new friends nearby, as well. This is going OK, although even these friends are also having babies and cannot engage easily with others. My husband and I feel exhausted all the time, and I’m so lonely – my husband thinks my low mood and loneliness are affecting our marriage. I’m writing because I just canceled a trip to go to a city four hours away for dinner with a dear old friend to meet his new partner, because I was sad that a trip that long didn’t warrant any additional quality time. But the more I pull back to try to feel less exhausted, the lonelier I become. Your advice? – Exhausted and Lonely Dear Exhausted: You do sound exhausted, as well as depressed. Your take on the challenge of maintaining far-away friendships with people who have young children is accurate: You can spend hours of effort for a few moments of adult connection. This is one reason parents of young children tend to clump together – their moments of mutual distraction dovetail well at this stage of life. I think you would really benefit from clearing your calendar – temporarily – in order to focus on taking care of yourself. You and your husband are in the shank of life – at your busiest and most productive – and while this activity level is genuinely tiring, at this stage of life you should also have the energy and capacity to rise to (and even thrive) through your challenges. Take two months to devote to getting some answers. Get a thorough medical checkup and accurately describe your energy level. Ask your physician for a referral to a psychiatrist or therapist to talk about your emotional challenges and depression. Go to the dentist; get a haircut. Start an outdoor walking program with your husband on weekend mornings. Look for an in-person or online book club (or another organization corresponding to your interests) to join. Mitigating loneliness can be hard work, but it starts with essential self-care. Dear Amy: My husband and I have three (adult) kids. For years his brother has always been a problem for me. He is pushy, arrogant, pretentious, and a classic narcissist. I have for years looked the other way. Now he is on his third wife. She and I do not get along. Recently she accused my kids of lacking family values because they weren’t able to attend their cousin’s wedding. This argument exploded. She wrote me a (so-called) apology letter where she referenced that “family is so very important to me.” We went round and round on this and have not seen or spoken since. Naturally, she sent us her annual Christmas card – where she misspelled our daughter’s name – yet again. Would it be wrong to send a card back with a note that points out that her family importance was selective? Or that she actually lied when she said that family is important to her? Just wondering how hard I can push that button. – JP Dear JP: You can push this button as hard as you want – but this will extend an increasingly ridiculous dispute with someone you claim not to want to have anything to do with. What does this do for you? Dear Amy: “Uncharted” was dealing with teacher reports that her bright and curious son was disruptive in reading class. Wow – that sounds familiar! I had similar behaviors, especially in reading. I was labeled as “disruptive” until I was finally diagnosed with ADHD. That changed everything. – Former Student Dear Student: I agree that this boy should be evaluated. Thank you. (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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Service member reunites with military dog partner: 'It's been a blessing'

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Where Did the Snow Go?

Almost no one in the United States experienced a white Christmas. Ski areas in the West are closed. The Great Lakes began the year with the lowest amount of ice in at least 50 years. Midwesterners are jogging in T-shirts in the dead of winter. Record warmth and changing precipitation patterns mean most of the United States is not getting its usual snowfall. The balmy start to winter isn’t just hurting skiers and ice fisherman: The snow that blankets mountain ranges in winter serves as a vital reservoir, cooling rivers, propelling hydropower systems and feeding irrigation channels needed for the nation’s apples, blueberries and almonds. It is also giving many a new appreciation for living in a time of rapid planetary warming. “It’s a big cultural shift to experience 50 yesterday and how disorienting that is from a geographic perspective,” Jessica Hellmann, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, told my colleagues Ernesto Londoño and Michael Levenson (50 degrees Fahrenheit is about 10 Celsius). “It’s a visceral feeling of what climate change looks and feels like for people who are accustomed to living in a particular climate.”

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Over 50 French Figures Defend Depardieu After Sexual Misconduct Allegations

Over 50 actors, artists and other celebrities in France have issued a letter ardently defending Gérard Depardieu, the actor accused of sexual harassment and assault, calling him the victim of a “lynching” and arguing that he should be able to continue working despite a storm of criticism. “We can no longer remain silent in the face of the lynching that has descended upon him, in the face of the torrent of hatred that is being heaped upon his person, without nuance,” they declared in the letter, which was published on Monday by the newspaper Le Figaro. The letter was signed by 56 people, some of them prominent cultural figures, and other lesser-known personalities. They included the actresses Nathalie Baye, Charlotte Rampling and Carole Bouquet — one of Mr. Depardieu’s former partners — as well as the actors Jacques Weber and Pierre Richard; Roberto Alagna, the opera tenor; Carla Bruni, the singer and former first lady of France; and Bertrand Blier, the director whose 1974 film “Going Places” vaulted Mr. Depardieu to fame. The letter came less than a week after President Emmanuel Macron of France mounted his own staunch defense of Mr. Depardieu and condemned a “manhunt” against him, prompting swift shock and bewilderment from French feminists.

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Two Years With Americas Elite Firefighters

SPRINGFIELD — The mayor issued an apology to residents early this afternoon because of less-than-stellar cleanup after Sunday’s snowstorm, the first significant snow of the season. “Even though this was a difficult, long-duration storm, we must and will do better,” Mayor Domenic J. Sarno said in a brief statement this afternoon. Sarno said he met with Springfield Public Works Director Chris Cignoli to conduct a “post (storm) review and clarification on our continued storm cleanup efforts.” In November, Steve Beem, the DPW’s deputy director, told The Republican that the city was struggling to find snowplow drivers, but that the city is “always prepared” for winter. “We do the best we can with what we have,” he said at the time. In 2022, the city had roughly 135 independently contracted drivers. Beem said in November that the city had made significant efforts to entice people to be snowplow drivers, including a $750 performance bonus — which was a $250 increase from last winter, according to city documents. Residents still experiencing storm-related problems should call the city’s 311 Call Center at 413-736-3111 or the mayor’s office at 413-787-6100, for a DPW follow-up response.